I said I'd never blog

Just a quick note in case I have the same problem again; if you get the following error message:

# su - hackable1
su: pam_start: error 26

Then this will fix it:

# cp /usr/share/pam/common-{account,auth,password,session} /etc/pam.d

I figured it out thanks to strace.

This sort of things happens to me because I am writing build scripts for Hackable:1, a software distribution for Hackable Devices from Bearstech. You can already obtain our first beta release.

Based on Debian, with bits of FSO and Openmoko inside, the distribution is currently assembled by decompressing the packages in a target directory. The sort of problem described here appears because post-installation maintainer scripts are not executed: I am reproducing the useful bits in the build scripts, pre-configuring everything possible in the process.

In the future, and unlike Openmoko's official distribution ASU 2008.9, Qtopia or the others, I would really like to allow users to upgrade without losing their personal data. Re-partitioning the flash with a home directory (around 32MB?) or using the MicroSD storage for this comes to mind. But more on that later.