Hi all,
I managed to upload the archive and to update the website: http://linserver.no-ip.biz/ You can find the image in the downloads section under debian sid. Just in case the host is down here is the download link: http://files.filefront.com/debian+01.../fileinfo.html
There are installation instructions but I haven't tested them so whoever tries should share what happened. The main idea is that the contents of the archive should go on a partition and than boot from it using the modified initfs. As well I have done some more little things and adjustments. I'm anticipating new ideas and recommendations.

Thanks for that, I find this really interesting.
I guess this archive will also work for n800?

Can you explain a bit the first steps of how you initialy started the process? Made a loopback, downloaded a few base files (via debootstrap?) and then via chroot you started the loopback and then went on installing?
I'm quite interested to understand how you transfered this repo into a workable rootfs. I would like to try to redo this stuff on my side for education purpose.

At the moment I've only downloaded the targz. I have no device to test it. But why is it so big? 789Mb uncompressed? Wouldn't it be better to let the user apt-get the non-critical stuffs (I mean the WM and skins, fine but that doesn't make 789Mb or?)

the filefront link isn't work, wanna have a try of it...

For me it works.
(tm)

I've tried it and it works quite well, but this rootfs isn't all that great . I don't really think an average user needs two versions of gcc and so many large libraries (or whatnot) that are only useful for compilation anyway. Something small and more up to date would be much more suitable.

http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian-ports is a nice repository by the way.

Apologies if this not relevant. I am a newbie (although am 100% Ubuntu so not a complete novice) still excitedly waiting for my N800 to arrive

I was reading this thread and on the Debian Mailing List and wondered if this of any use?

This is very new 10th Jan.

http://lists.debian.org/debian-arm/2.../msg00034.html

Is this a way to install Debian Sid?

Additionally without installing Debian Sid would we be able to use these repositories?

My N800 has not arrived yet so I can't even try this out.

Helen

10th January 2007.

It's a year old now :-)

http://wiki.debian.org/ArmEabiHowto
"Creating a EABI chroot using debootstrap"

Thats how it should go.
debootstrap --verbose --arch armel --foreign sid /armel-chroot http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian
on your computer
and
# chroot /armel-chroot /debootstrap/debootstrap --second-stage
on the IT

+ additional work

This is great! I un-tarred it to a 1 gig partition that I used to have HE on and it booted right up without having to change the dual boot script at all (actually surprised me when it came up). It's not perfect, but it certainly has me playing with my 770 again. I wrote a short script to get wireless going without having to type a bunch of if/iwconfig commands on that keyboard. Couldn't find any settings for the window manager, so i disabled the changing wallpaper by changing the name of the directory where the images were. I'd like to get a new browser on it, but I haven't yet been able to successfully install anything with synaptic. The window manager is IceWM, but there's XFCE stuff all over - any way to enable XFCE as the WM? Way to go with this apple2 - this is awesome.

so the wireless works no worries ? is this the same wireless chip thats in the N8x0 series ?

Cheers

-Rip