[iPAQ] Familiar ([u]mount, links, bkimg)

I got my iPaq this week (finally). WinCE lasted on it only long enough to
get Familiar onto it. Excellent work! I hadn't been a big fan of Blackbox,
but it seems to work well in this setting.

I've even used ARM binaries from Debian with no problems other than running
the binaries from locations other than the default install (I haven't gotten
around to creating my own cramfs images for /usr yet). I would recommend
considering adding the Simple File Manager (sfm) to the default images. I
think it's 73K well-spent for a nice, small way to navigate the file system
with the keypad or the pen. (Not _perfect_, but nice and small, and quite
useful.) http://packages.debian.org/stable/x11/sfm.html

It's not perfect, though. I'm having a couple of little problems. None are
fatal, but modestly annoying. If they are addressed in some on-line document
that I've missed, let me know. Otherwise, I'd appreciate any help or
insight.

First, whenever I mount or unmount a file system (either /usr/local or a NFS
mount), it takes a long time (speculation: waiting for a timeout), and and
responds with

"can't link lock file /etc/mtab~: No such file or director (use -n flag to
override)"

/etc/mtab is not updated, but the mount/unmount is actually performed
correctly otherwise (as far as I can tell). I have confirmed that no
/etc/mtab~ exists before issuing the commmand, and none exists afterwards.
I can successfully do a "touch /etc/mtab~" or otherwise create, edit and
remove the file. For the moment, I can hand-edit the file when I
mount/unmount (it doesn't happen too often now that I'm set up).

Second is a bit more troublesome. Running the /root/backupToFlash script,
results in errors like: "/usr/local/.bkimg.tar.gz: Cannot open: Input/output
open. (Yes, the partition is mounted rw.) I can manually create a tar.gz in
/usr/local using the same command as in the script successfully, provided it
has a different name. Any access of the bkimg file results in an
Input/Output error. The rest of /usr/local seems unaffected.

Third, I cannot seem to properly create symbolic links either in /usr/local
or the ramfs. I notice there are correct symlinks in cramfs put an attempt
to, say...

ln -s /etc/foo /etc/bar

Results in
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 8 Feb 10 19:05 /etc/bar -> /etc/bar

The same pattern happens in the /usr/local filesystem, too.

I get the feeling I must be missing something obvious and trivial.
Received on Sat Feb 10 18:32:22 2001