[absolutezero1287]

So, here's the thing. I bought an mp3 player about a year ago. It's screen shattered a few months after I purchased it. However, I didn't sit on it, I didn't drop it, nor did I leave it in the sun. I didn't abuse the mp3 player (Creative Zen Vision M) in any way. So naturally, I demanded a refund.

I called up Creative and explained the issue. I even sent them a link to a website where over 30 people had had the same problem. The offered to replace the screen at a "modest" $70. Naturally, I was pissed because the player cost me almost $300. I wasn't going to pay that so I just stuffed it somewhere in my closet.


I found my forgotten media player while rummaging through my closet and I had a great idea. Why not put Ubuntu on it? It may have a broken screen but it can be connected to a TV for viwewing videos. It can also be plugged into a USB port...so why not?

What I've done so far...

Booted into my XP partition and used the software that came with the player to create a "removable disk", i.e. a partition. I then booted into Xubuntu and used Gparted to format the partition to ext3 as well as add the boot flag to it.

I used debootstrap to make a minimal install of Ubuntu on it. I then used apt-get to install the linux kernel, x11 and related packages, English language support, grub, and fluxbox.

I installed grub on the player. Grub had the device listed as hd2 due to the fact that I have an actual external HDD. (hd0=may HDD, hd1=my external HDD, hd2=ext3 partition on the mp3 player).
root (hd2,0)
setup (hd2,0)

After doing all of this, I figured that it would boot Ubuntu everytime I started it up. Well, surprise...it didn't. The strange thing is that upon inspecting /boot/grub I noticed that the menu.lst file was missing. I don't know why.

This custom build will has one purpose, to play media, that's it. The player doens't support wifi, so I see no point in leaving internet related drivers and modules. Unless I decide to make it into a portable OS that I can boot into via USB. That's also a possibility.

Anyone have any ideas? Thought? Questions? With the proper input this thread could become a tutorial. I just need some help!

[prunejuice]

I've had way better success installing and booting PCLinuxOS off USB thumb drives.

[Cr0wZz]

Try

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/

[avisitor]

Wait, are you really trying to get the mp3 player to run Ubuntu on itself or are you trying to use it as an external drive to hold Ubuntu for your computer? If it's the first, good luck (it's not going to happen). The latter is fairly easy.

[absolutezero1287]

Well, now that I found out exactly what goes into booting Linux from such a device then, yes, I realize that it's not going to happen. But if I can't do that then I'd like to use it as an external drive to hold Ubuntu. Or at least a minimal build of Ubuntu.

[avisitor]

Yeah, you see that you need to compile a version of Linux for it's RISC processor. I'm not sure exactly what kind of processor it is. However, it'll work just fine as an external for Ubuntu.