Reinstalling Linux
From MobileRobots Research and Academic Customer Support
Although only our pre-installed Debian install can be best supported by MobileRobots staff, many users wish to upgrade Linux on their onboard computer to more recent versions of their favorite distributions. There are several ways to go about this, requiring varying degrees of hardware or software setup.
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Reinstall via PxE
Support for Pre-eXecution Environment(aka LAN-booting) on your motherboard means it is not necessary to attach external media to reinstall, only a network cable. You need to setup a PxE server with the required files for your distribution. All major linux distributions provide small, network install initial images and configs for ease-of-network install. See this howto for instructions on a multi-OS-distributing server on an Ubuntu-Edgy box.
Reinstall via CDROM
Robot onboard computers do have IDE or SATA connectors on its mainboard. Manuals for onboard computers can be found at the Manuals page. Remember to verify proper BIOS setup for CDROM-use and booting.
See How do I connect a CD-ROM disk drive to my onboard computer? for more details.
Debian 3.1 images that can be burned onto CDs are available at: http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/archive/3.1_r8/i386/iso-cd/ . Note that the normal Debian mirrors no longer supply packages for Debian 3.1, instead use "deb http://archive.debian.org/debian sarge" as the APT installation source (in /etc/apt/sources.list, for example).
Debian 5.0 images are available at http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/release/5.0.5/i386/iso-cd/ . The "netinst" image (fits on one CD and downloads packages from the internet) is recommended for 5.0. The computer must be connected to a network with access to the internet for netinst to work.
Hardware Configuration
Mainboards are generally Intel-based and well supported in any modern GNU/Linux Distribution. Remember to gather information on your hardware via the associated manuals or software inspection. Some software for extra-special hardware requires you to Contact Support.
Using a different Linux Distribution
If you ordered a robot with Linux installed on the onboard computer, we used a version of Debian GNU/Linux. Older robots had RedHat 7 installed. If instead, you want to use a different distribution (e.g. SUSE, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.), make sure to read the README.txt files distributed with software packages such as ARIA and ARNL to check what build tools are required and their required versions. You may need to install additional software packages than your distribution's default, or change default selections.
