This tutorial is a log of the process used to prepare an eee-pc 701 to be used long term by an intelligent but 'non-technical', geographically remote person. The stock eee-pc image is not suitable because:

• It lacks sufficient support for Japanese language input… …this is a deal breaker.
• There are other customisations that I'd make.
• If something breaks they'll be lost during re-imaging.
• The partitioning system used is a perfect image of what I wouldn't do. I want to improve it.
• UnionFS on a small disk doesn't work long term. Updates should overwrite superseded versions on a small disk They don't. If something breaks, the USB restore key is a more robust solution anyway.

From this motivation we can derive a clear brief:

• We need to fix the partition table to make the system as robust and flexible as possible over the long term.
• A non-technical remote person needs to be able to use the USB key to un-bork their system.
• Functionality issues need to be addressed in the image
• We need to be able to roll those updates back into the restore image easily.

• You need root privileges to complete this tutorial. You need to accept that using root means you are responsible for what you break. If you don't understand what you're doing & you break stuff, it's your fault. If you do understand what you're doing, and you break stuff it's your fault. If you don't accept responsibility for what you're doing to your computer, you shouldn't be using a root account.
• an eee-pc
• any decent Linux box (this could be the eee-pc. It really depends on how close to the wind you like to sail.)
• the Asus supplied restore DVD or a copy of it's contents (I'm using Support DVD Rev. 1.3 English Version.)
• a 2GB flash key or greater (filesystem will get shredded a few times)
• lots of free disk space (~8-10GB)

• This tutorial is intended to save someone who could work this out themselves a lot of time and frustration in working out/through all the little Xandros peculiarities & gotchas.
• You should be COMFORTABLE doing system administration from a command prompt. This means a working knowledge of fdisk, bc, losetup, mkfs, mount, dd & basic file management commands
• You should understand how hard disks are partitioned, & how filesystems sit within partitions
• If you don't understand something, you should be able to RTFM, in much the same way as I did.

The tutorial is broken into a few bite sized chunks to aid in digestion:

HOWTO Make a Standard USB Image under Linux is kept relatively simple compared to what follows. In this tutorial we set up our working directory with the bit's & peices we'll need. There's an optional extra exercise to create a standard Xandros USB restore key from our kit of parts.

HOWTO Make a Disk Image with a Custom Partition Table is far more in depth. We'll create an empty disk image the size of the eee-pc hard disk, partition it, make file systems & mount the file systems for editing.

HOWTO Transfer Xandros to the Image & Remove UnionFS covers finding & mounting the first partition in the Asus disk image, copying it's contents to our disk image, tidying up the grub config and then removing the bits that set up the UnionFS system.

HOWTO Adapt the USB Restore Script to be More Simple & Flexible explains how to edit the init script from the Asus supplied rescue disk to be a bit more flexible & robust. We'll need to remove some fancy ninja magic to do with Asus' partitioning scheme that's not helping us.

HOWTO Install, Customise & Fold the Customisations Back Into the Restore Key covers installing with our new restore key, and how to role updates & tweaks of our eee-pc back into the new, more flexible rescue/restore disk.

HOWTO Add Japanese support to the EEEPC covers hacking a Japanese interface & input modules into our shiny new baby.

Enjoy. rio sosh code rio