Re: Cloning OS to SD Card: Simplified instructions
 

some disk utility progs may help.

DiskUsage, gpe-filemanager: from www.gronmayer.com/it.
emelfm2, forget where it came from, try google it and dl the .deb file for installation.

post back if questions,


bun

Re: Cloning OS to SD Card: Simplified instructions
 

mmm, I'm almost there... can anyone help, please?

n800 OS2008.

Carried out all the steps with no problems. I get the bootmenu, and can boot into flash as normal.

Performed an " ./nupgrade.sh wipe" on my newly partitioned external 8GB SD. Went well, ended:
...
/home/user/bin/tar: .: implausibly old time stamp 1970-01-01 01:00:00
Committing updates and Unmounting filesystems
Done

but when I select the second partition on "External SD card, partition 2, ext3", from the bootmenu, it says:

Boot from mmc12 failed, booting from flash

Here's my partition table; did I get it wrong?

Nokia-N800-50-2:~# sfdisk -l /dev/mmcblk1

Disk /dev/mmcblk1: 249296 cylinders, 4 heads, 16 sectors/track
Units = cylinders of 32768 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

Device Boot Start End #cyls #blocks Id System
/dev/mmcblk1p1 0+ 232911 232912- 7453183+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/mmcblk1p2 232912 249295 16384 524288 83 Linux
/dev/mmcblk1p3 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/mmcblk1p4 0 - 0 0 0 Empty

Nokia-N800-50-2:~# dumpe2fs -h /dev/mmcblk1p2
dumpe2fs 1.40.3 (05-Dec-2007)
Filesystem volume name: Sardine
Last mounted on: <not available>
Filesystem UUID: c59a9e84-b7a7-4160-8942-f7a7b9ff4d32
Filesystem magic number: 0xEF53
Filesystem revision #: 1 (dynamic)
Filesystem features: resize_inode dir_index filetype sparse_super
Filesystem flags: unsigned directory hash
Default mount options: (none)
Filesystem state: clean
Errors behavior: Continue
Filesystem OS type: Linux

Also, perhaps oddly, I'm unable to manually mount it:

Nokia-N800-50-2:~# mount -r /dev/mmcblk1p2 /mnt
mount: mounting /dev/mmcblk1p2 on /mnt failed
Nokia-N800-50-2:~# mount -r -t ext2 /dev/mmcblk1p2 /mnt
mount: mounting /dev/mmcblk1p2 on /mnt failed


any ideas, please? thanks much...

Re: Cloning OS to SD Card: Simplified instructions
 

oh, and:

Nokia-N800-50-2:/home/user/bin# fsck -f /dev/mmcblk1p2
fsck 1.40.3 (05-Dec-2007)
e2fsck 1.40.3 (05-Dec-2007)
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 3A: Optimizing directories
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information

Sardine: ***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****
Sardine: 20482/131072 files (0.6% non-contiguous), 298412/524288 blocks

Re: Cloning OS to SD Card: Simplified instructions
 

just realised that /mnt isn't empty, so that was a foolish attempt, but it wasn't the problem:

Nokia-N800-50-2:/home/user/bin# mkdir /mnt2
Nokia-N800-50-2:/home/user/bin# mount -r /dev/mmcblk1p2 /mnt2
mount: mounting /dev/mmcblk1p2 on /mnt2 failed
Nokia-N800-50-2:/home/user/bin# mount | grep mnt2
Nokia-N800-50-2:/home/user/bin# mount -r -t ext2 /dev/mmcblk1p2 /mnt2
mount: mounting /dev/mmcblk1p2 on /mnt2 failed

Re: Cloning OS to SD Card: Simplified instructions
 

ah, I am an idiot :(

all working now. the two issues were:

o nupgrade.sh defaults to ext2, but bootmenu.conf defaults to ext3. I changed the latter to ext2, and it now boots fine.

o I couldn't mount the (otherwise fine) partition, as the ext2 kernel module wasn't loaded at that time.

thanks for all the useful posts that made this so easy (user error aside) :)

Re: Cloning OS to SD Card: Simplified instructions
 

at the risk of annoying everyone with yet another post...

I'm interested to compare the amounts of space used by the two filesystems (original jffs2 versus cloned ext2):

Nokia-N800-50-2:~# df -k
Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on

original:
/dev/mtdblock4 257536 176744 80792 69% /

cloned:
/dev/mmcblk1p2 507748 281846 199688 59% /

so jffs2 is giving me on average a 1.6 compression factor, meaning my original free space of 79MB might have given me around 126MB of usable app space.

So my double sized (1/2 GB) ext2 partition is only giving me an extra 116MB of space. Interesting.

I'll shut up now.

Re: Cloning OS to SD Card: Simplified instructions
 

Ok I've read all the posts...ummm How many Megs of flash ram on the N800 do I need available for a successfull install? I've only 28 Mb available am I going to have to dump a lot of appsto get to xxMB or is this only going to work work with a fresh flash of OS2008?
TIA lorez1

Re: Cloning OS to SD Card: Simplified instructions
 

24MB is a plenty for tar to run! If you can run a decent app then I think you can make a successful installation.

Re: Cloning OS to SD Card: Simplified instructions
 

hey,

I know this is a repost, but I still have no answer. Maybe i'll be luckier on this thread...

anyways, the question is:
Is there a way to copy the flash boot from mmc and reflash it on the ROM?

Of course, I understand that the entire boot from mmc must be <256mb, and I have had some "hints"

The idea of creating a file (.jffs2 / .ext2) and then reflashing it with nandwrite sounds OK; I would just need more concise guidelines

The idea of a direct tar after mounting both /dev/mtdblock4 and /dev/mmcblk*p* (bootable) sounds less promising since I don't understand from which boot i'd have to do this.

If anyone has any clue, please be concise since I am not quite familiar with the syntax.

Thank you.

Ilia

P.S. If you are wondering, I have played TOO MUCH with the card boot, and it would take weeks to get the flash boot to the same (perfect...:D) state as is my mmc boot right now.

Re: Cloning OS to SD Card: Simplified instructions
 

Is there an ideal state for the SDHC card to be in when you first start on this process (i.e., doing the steps of Post #1 on this thread)? That is, is it best when you first insert the mmc for it to be

(a) formatted by the Panasonic SD formatter and left in that state?
(b) formatted on a PC using the Windows format tool to make it Fat32? or
(c) formatted within the NIT with the File Manager's format option?

If (d) would be something one does on a Linux machine, that's not an option for me.

I've managed this cloning once before, but the system went haywire (wouldn't load MicroB and wouldn't install or uninstall anything), so now I'm doing it again. I think I may have had a corrupt file somewhere in the system.

But on this round, I've tried many times, but every time I can't get past the partitioning and formatting. Often, I get the partition1 formatted to DOS, and then I reboot and when I go to partition2 for mke2fs, the Tablet tells me I have a corrupt or unformatted card (or sometimes, at this point something else goes wrong).

If it matters, the card is a SanDisk Extreme III 8GB. It is not the same card that I previously used for a boot mmc. It's brand new (or was!).