The HP Mini 1000 Mi Edition has one of the most interesting and innovative Linux interfaces found on any netbook. BusinessWeek describes the Mi Edition netbook as running Linux the same way that a TiVo does. In other words, you’d never even know it was Linux if you weren’t paying attention. Because you’re not greeted with a typical operating system desktop and start menu, command line, or dock. Instead when you launch the computer you see a home screen that’s almost cellphone-like with quick access to your music, movies, browser bookmarks, and an internet search bar.

Underneath the shiny program launcher and home screen, the HP Mini 1000 Mi Edition is running Ubuntu 8.04 Linux. And if you want to bring up a terminal window, the Synaptic Package Manager, or other apps you can do that. Mi Edition certainly isn’t perfect. It has a few quirks. But it’s still interesting to at least take for a test drive — even if you don’t actually have an HP Mini 1000. We’ve already seen that it’s possible to install Mi Edition on other netbooks like the Acer Aspire One. But HP’s installer will overwrite any data on your hard drive, which means you’ll need to reinstall Windows, OS X, or your Linux distribution of choice if you decide not to stick with Mi Edition.

But there’s another way. For the last few weeks I’ve been helping Adam McDaniel debug a method for building a LiveUSB with Mi Edition installed. The process takes about 30 to 60 minutes (not counting the time it takes to download the disk image from HP’s servers), and when you’re done you should be able to run Mi Edition from a USB stick, SD card, or other removable storage. This is a persistent installation, which means any files or settings that you change will be stored on the flash card.

Adam is the developer behind the Array kernel for the Asus Eee PC and he’s included some steps in this tutorial for adding support for Eee PC hardware. In other words things like wireless should work out of the box if you’re using an Eee PC 900, 901, or 1000 series netbook. (Update: Adam tells me the steps should be exactly the same for the Acer Aspire One or the MSI Wind U100. If you have another netbooks, odds are that adding the Array kernel will not add wireless support, so you’ll probably want to leave the kernel alone). There are still a few kinks. For instance, I can’t get audio working on my Eee PC 1000H yet, and when I put the netbook to sleep it stubbornly refuses to wake up.

The complete instructions are after the break. You’ll need a computer running Linux (the instructions were written for Ubuntu, but should be similar for other distros), and a 2.5GB or larger USB flash drive or SD card. Keep in mind, we tested these steps on an Eee PC 1000H. While you should be able to load the operating system on netbooks with similar hardware like the Acer Aspire One or MSI Wind U100, some of the hardware, such as the wireless card might not be supported.

HP Mini LiveUSB Setup Instructions

Written by Adam McDaniel

The following instructions can be used to create an bootable HP Mini LiveUSB stick that will NOT overwite your entire netbook. These steps allow you to try out the HP Mini (Dennis) interface on an EeePC, Acer Aspire One, MSI Wind, any non-HP netbook that has a 9″ display or higher.

Not all non-HP hardware is supported. Madwifi wireless drivers are available for the EeePC 900, but the Dennis installer will not provide wireless on later models, nor wired connectivity. Instructions are provided for setting up wireless/wired connectivity for most netbooks. (See Step 17)

Enjoy!

–
Adam McDaniel

1. Insert your USB Key. It must be minimum 2.5G in total size.

2. Launch GParted to manipulate the USB Key’s partition table.

$ sudo apt-get install gparted
$ sudo gparted

3. Select your USB Key’s drive in the top right This document assumes your usb key is found in /dev/sdb
Delete any existing partitions.

1. Right click on any existing partitions, select “Delete”
2. Click “Apply”

Your partition table should now be clear:

4. Add in a single ext3 partition to your USB Key.

1. Right click on the “unallocated” partition, select “New Partition”
2. Use Maximum Size available.
3. Create as: Primary Partition
4. Filesystem: ext3
5. Click “Add”
6. Right click on “New Partition #1″, select “Format to…”, “ext3″
7. Press “Apply” in the tool bar to apply the changes to the USB Key. (This may take a while to complete.)

5. Set the partition to include the “boot” flag.

1. Right click on the “/dev/sdb1″ partition, select “Manage Flags”
2. Place a check by “boot”
3. Click Apply.
4. Click Close.

Your partition is now complete. Close GParted.

6. Open a terminal and create the working directory structure

$ mkdir ~/hpmini-liveusb
$ cd ~/hpmini-liveusb
$ mkdir dennis-install
$ mkdir rootfs
$ mkdir bootfs
$ mkdir dennis-liveusb

7. Download the not-so-secret dennis recovery image from Ubuntu:

$ wget http://dennis:wooCh4eLuoJ@mobilepartners.canonical.com/dennis/images/gm-1/dennis-stable-install-usb-gm-1.img

8. Convert to root.

$ sudo su

9. Mount your usbstick into the dennis-liveusb directory.

# mount /dev/sdb1 ./dennis-liveusb

10. Mount the downloaded install image to the dennis-install directory

# mount -o loop ./dennis-stable-install-usb-gm-1.img ./dennis-install

11. Mount the install image’s bootfs

# mount -o loop ./dennis-install/bootfs.img ./bootfs
# mount -o loop ./dennis-install/rootfs.img ./rootfs

12. Begin building the liveusb structure.

# mkdir dennis-liveusb/boot
# cp -vau ./bootfs/* ./dennis-liveusb/boot
# cp -vau ./rootfs/* ./dennis-liveusb

*Editor’s Note: Go grab a cup of coffee. This step is going to take a while.

13. There’s a minor change needed to the rootfs’s initramfs-tools directory.
Edit the file ./dennis-liveusb/etc/initramfs-tools/disk

# gedit ./dennis-liveusb/etc/initramfs-tools/disk

*Editor’s Note: You can use any text editor, so if you’re more comfortable with mousepad, kate, or another text editor, fire it up.

14. Find lines 28-37:

*Hint: if using vim, type “:set number” to view line numbers.

If using gedit, goto Edit > Preferences > Display Line Numbers

28       for device in ‘hda’ ‘hdb’ ’sda’ ’sdb’; do
29         echo “checking device /dev/${device}”
30         if [ -e /sys/block/${device}/removable ]; then
31            if [ "$(cat /sys/block/${device}/removable)" = "0" ]; then
32               echo “found harddisk at /dev/${device}”
33               found=”yes”
34               break
35            fi
36          fi
37       done

Change the first line to only contain the possible mount points where your LiveUSB image will exist on the target system. For most systems, the we should look for the USB first on /dev/sdb then /dev/sdc and finally /dev/sdd.

Also, we need to modify one of the IF checks. We WANT removable drives to kick in. Update line 31 to test for removable devices by setting 0 to 1.

After you perform these two changes, your block should look like this: Red text is code that has changed, grey code should remain the same.

28       for device in ’sdb’ ’sdc’ ’sdd’; do
29         echo “checking device /dev/${device}”
30         if [ -e /sys/block/${device}/removable ]; then
31            if [ "$(cat /sys/block/${device}/removable)" = "1" ]; then
32               echo “found harddisk at /dev/${device}”
33               found=”yes”
34               break
35            fi
36          fi
37       done

Save the file and close gedit.

15. Install grub on the usb stick.

# grub-install –root-directory=./dennis-liveusb –recheck /dev/sdb1

*Note, if you get an error during the grub-install talking about the missing boot record, or the error “boot/grub/stage1 not read correctly”, make sure that /dev/sdb1 is flagged as ‘bootable’ in GParted or fdisk.

16. The Array.org eeepc kernel can be installed onto the Live USB, This will provide wireless and wired connectivity for non-hp hardware. The steps here based on http://www.array.org/ubuntu/setup-hardy-alt.html

# cd ./dennis-liveusb
# wget http://www.array.org/ubuntu/dists/hardy/eeepc/binary-i386/linux-image-2.6.24-21-eeepc_2.6.24-21.39eeepc1_i386.deb
# wget http://www.array.org/ubuntu/dists/hardy/eeepc/binary-i386/linux-ubuntu-modules-2.6.24-21-eeepc_2.6.24-21.30eeepc6_i386.deb

17. Mount over the /dev directory onto the LiveUSB image.

# mount –bind /dev ./dev

18. Install the eeepc kernel’s deb packages. Since the HP Mini is LPIA architecture but the packages are i386, we need a “more persuasive” dpkg command.

# chroot . dpkg –force-architecture -i *.deb

Ignore the warnings: “dpkg – warning, overriding problem because –force enabled: package architecture (i386) does not match system (lpia)”

19. Depending on your model of netbook, your wireless card’s driver may not auto-load on bootup. Adding the following modules to /etc/modules will ensure that regardless of your netbook, you should have wireless.

# echo ath_pci >> ./etc/modules
# echo rt2860sta >> ./etc/modules
# echo r8180 >> ./etc/modules

*Note, ath_pci is needed by EeePCs 900 and earlier.
- rt2860sta is needed by EeePCs 901 and later, plus the Acer Aspire One.
- r8180 is needed by the EeePC 701SD, plus the MSI Wind.

There is no harm in including all three modules, regardless of your device.

20. Remove the downloaded debs, unmount ./dev

# rm *.deb
# umount ./dev

21. Thats It! Unmount everything else we’ve done so far and logoff as root.

# cd ..
# umount ./dennis-liveusb
# umount ./rootfs
# umount ./bootfs
# umount ./dennis-install
# exit
$

22. Transfer the USB key into your EeePC and reboot!

You will need to press <ESC> on the BIOS loading screen. Doing so will open the Boot Menu.
Select your USB key, the HP logo should soon appear.