gah, debian destroyed my os. like an idiot i download the debian tar to my root directory and extracted it, so it wrote over many of my libraries before I could stop it. I can't open any programs, including my terminal. SSH isn't working either. I'd like to just copy over the old libs from scratchbox, but have no way to do this. Any ideas?

backup your home directory, reflash, re-install your apps, restore home

I'd have thought installing it in the root would have worked... or did you stop it halfway? If you could, somehow, finish untarring it in /, it should actually work, I think. I'd guess you overwrote the libraries, but didn't get the new apps that use them...

Of course, if you can't open xterm, or ssh in, it might be hard to do anything.

What I'd do, probably, is to get a Linux machine running and reading SD cards, whether by permanent install or livecd. Then you can repartition an SD card and put an e2fs on, extract Debian there (as Debian is the only standalone rootfs I know of; extracting the contents of a Fiasco image is not complete.), and flash a multi-boot initfs on the tablet to let you get there.

Then, from your SD-Debian, you should be able to access the internal flash, backup /home/user, and any other files you need, and be ready to reflash with ITOS. (Then, if you want to keep using the Debian you used for the recovery, you'll need to put a multi initfs back on, or just flash only the rootfs.)

Man, that really rocks ! It is much better than the hiddous hidon

Thank you very much, at least, there is fun things to do now !

Okay some help here please. I am not sure where I am going wrong but am unable to get the bootmenu to run the mmc2 debian partition. It errors out saying unable to boot from ext2 and booting from flash.

First I have an 8GB internal SD card that is mounted under my flash os as follows:
/dev/mmcblk0p2 -> /extfs
/dev/mmcblk0p1 -> /mmc2

I have the /usr/share linked to /extfs/share/ to save room on the flash

I ran Fanoush's modified initfs which seems to have installed okay. I didn't clone the flash system as the first two steps:
# insmod /mnt/initfs/lib/modules/2.6.18-omap1/mbcache.ko
# insmod /mnt/initfs/lib/modules/2.6.18-omap1/ext2.ko
failed and I want the debian and not the flash os.

I then tar -xvf debian-armel-n800-beta2.tar -C /initfs/
as root under the gainroot terminal and this seemed to complete with no errors.

I reboot and initfs fails to boot the ext2 debian partition. Any ideas?
Thank you.

Those insmods are required to access an ext2 filesystem; if they failed because you they're already loaded, you're cool; otherwise, you need to get them working first.

You say you untarred into /initfs/, but you said your second partition (I assume it's ext2, but don't know) is on /extfs/ ?

You may need to change bootmenu.conf; look at it and see if it conforms to your system.

Benson, thanks for the help. You are correct the tar line should have read:
tar -xvf debian-armel-n800-beta2.tar -C /extfs/
I was getting confused with the different paths.
I guess that I may need to configure bootmenu.conf. I have also successfully setup chroot so debian does appear to be working!

Are you replacing default OS with Debian ? If so, it sounds great

Maillaxa, I am attempting to run IT2008 from flash and debian from the ext2 on the internal mmc of my N800. I am working on locating and possibly editing the bootmenu.conf.
I thought I had the chroot solution setup to run debian apps from hildon. I can run the script debian as root and launch for example xclock with this command:
debian xclock
But when I try to follow these instructions and run the program as user it seems to launch, but then ask for a password. I have tried rootme but it returns authentication fail. I haven't launched debian directly from the mmc should that matter? Would this be asking for the hildon root password or the debian root password? Pressing on.

Those instructions have a three-way branch in the middle; sudo method, gainroot method, and ssh method. Which one are you trying to use?