boot from internal mmc fails
 

I've been using the internal mmc storage as the boot device on my N810, and it suddenly stopped booting.

I had configured it with:

• internal flash formatted as a single ext3 partition
• removable 4GB SD card formatted as a single ext3 partition
• modified bootmenu.config, based on this thread

Today, the only significant change I made was to upgrade omweather. After shutting down (with "sync;init 6" from a root xterm window), the device will no longer boot to the internal mmc storage. Attempting that produces a few disconcerting events, seemingly at random:

the boot process hangs with the text "booting from mmcint flash" and there is no progress bar at the bottom of the screen

or

very soon after the "booting" message is displayed, the screen goes black

or

very soon after the "booting" message is displayed, the screen goes black with just the battery charging icon being displayed

or

the device displays the booting message, pauses, then returns to the Boot Menu selection screen. The Nokia splash screen is not displayed.

Most of these conditions require removing the power cord & battery to restart the boot process.

I will often get the same conditions when booting from internal flash, but I can usually manage to get that to work correctly.

From the Boot Menu I can boot to the internal flash, or to the USB Network Recovery mode.

I have been successful at connecting to the tablet using ssh through USB networking (a huge "thank you" to Fanoush for enabling this feature)! From there, I can do:

insmod /lib/modules/2.6.21-omap1/jbd.ko
insmod /lib/modules/2.6.21-omap1/ext3.ko
mount -t ext3 -o noatime /dev/mmcblk0p1 /mnt/new_root

and successfully mount the internal mmc partition as /mnt/new_root. There are no errors displayed in dmesg, and the filesystem seems clean.

One difficulty in working on the tablet in the USB network recovery mode is that the tablet seems to close the ssh connection or USB link every 10~15 minutes, making it a game of "beat the clock".

Are there any suggestions about where to go next to re-enable booting from the internal mmc card, preferably without loosing the installed applications and data? If this was a server, I'd be looking at things like re-writing the bootblock, making sure the kernel image is correct, etc., but in the tablet environment (with pivotroot & all), I could use some guidance.

Thanks!