I will try to put together a little how-to this weekend.

Kos

I am at this moment trying to figure out a live CD or 'pendrive' linux solution so that I can run the linux flasher app. It would be nice if there was a way to make a FIASCO image which the windows-based flashing utility could use.

I've done the flash process and re-flash initfs and fast kernel twice now. Pain in the butt.

Default ubuntu install cd is also a live cd ... work nicely.

Kos

Good old Knoppix does the job just fine.

Thanks for the clarification Mil - I really had the two issues mixed up.

So ideally I can just set up the complicated stuff without worrying about the kernel, then flash that afterwards just for the speed gain...

i'm trying this route now. I may revert to a boot from CD if I have to.

Do tell us if it works, I'd be interested. OTOH, despite several tries, I could never get the flasher to work from within a VMWare image of Ubuntu, while it seems that everyone else does...

Just installed the new HE version, and I'm not all too impressed so far. Browser seems to crash fairly often, and neither Mplayer nor Maemo Mapper (the two apps I've installed) seem to work. Anyone else had better luck, or am I missing something here?

Yes, someone recently provided guide for initfs which is similar, for rootfs you just need bigger mtdram, see
http://labs.vivi.eng.br/blog/?p=29

Also if you mount the MMC card directly in desktop linux you can skip the tar make/extract step and copy it on the fly from mounted rootfs directly to card (cloning via two tar's in a pipe could do this effectively too)

Also when we are talking about complex things not recommended for newbies the second (slightly insane) option is to do it directly on the device. You only need space on mmc card and already bootable system on mmc and one spare mmc partition for the result, steps are (in one go, no rebooting between)

- boot from mmc
- download firmware .bin to mmc card
- use http://nopcode.org/0xFFFF/?p=down to extract rootfs
- mount internal flash and make flashable backup via mkfs.jffs2
- unmount internal flash
- flash new HE rootfs via flash_eraseall + nandwrite (or 0xFFFF)
- mount internal flash (with new HE) , clone to spare mmc partition or make a tar backup
- unmount internal flash
- flash old backup via flash_eraseall + nandwrite (or 0xFFFF)

This uses internal flash as a temporary space. flash_eraseall + nandwrite + flashing script example (initfs_flash) is inside bootmenu initfs flasher.

This is only useful if you don't have anything but the N770. Using PC is much easier.

So what would the steps and commands be if one were booting off the internal MMC and slapped in a fresh 2/4/8GB SDHC card in the external slot with the intent to setup the external card for booting into a new image/WM when placed in the internal slot?