OESF Portables Forum

Everything Else => Zaurus Distro Support and Discussion => Distros, Development, and Model Specific Forums => Archived Forums => Angstrom & OpenZaurus => Topic started by: radioz on September 27, 2006, 12:21:26 am

Title: Altboot Problem
Post by: radioz on September 27, 2006, 12:21:26 am

I'm having trouble getting altboot to work with compressed cardfs files. I'm trying to use the latest Hentges release on my 5600.

Perhaps I don't fully understand how to set it up correctly, so maybe someone can point out the error(s) I'm making.

1) I extracted the bootstrap initrd.bin, zImage, and updater and copied it to a blank SD card and then flashed my Poodle.

2) I used a second empty SD formatted as ext2 and created a directory named 'boot-images'. Into that directory I copied:
     cardfs-gpe-poodle-openzaurus_oz3.5.4.2-rc2-gpe2.7-T1-RC1.bin
     cardfs-opie-poodle-openzaurus_oz3.5.4.2-rc2-opie1.2.1-T1-RC1.bin

    I discovered by reading the /etc/alboot.func file that boot images must be named
    '*-rootfs.bin', so I renamed the two files using that suffix.

4) When I boot the system, I get the altboot menu and select 3 for booting off SD.

5) It then displays a menu showing the two rootfs choices from above. I pick one (say Opie).

6) I get an error from fsck that says 'bad magic number in super-block...' and then fails.

Is it something I'm doing wrong?

Thanks,
radioz

Title: Altboot Problem
Post by: CoreDump on September 27, 2006, 06:46:42 am

Altboot tries to fsck's your SD card which fails. Try formatting the SD card.

Also make sure you are using the standard partitioning  

Title: Altboot Problem
Post by: radioz on September 27, 2006, 11:20:50 pm

The SD card gets mounted just fine. It seems that FSCK fails while trying to check the rootfs file before it trys to mount it.

Now here is where I am confused by the conflicting information I've seen regarding altboot.

The cardfs files from Hentges seem to be just compressed tar files. I thought that the cardfs files needed to be ext2 formatted binary disk images that could then get mounted as a loop file. Am I wrong?

Title: Altboot Problem
Post by: CoreDump on September 29, 2006, 10:56:04 am

Quote

The SD card gets mounted just fine. It seems that FSCK fails while trying to check the rootfs file before it trys to mount it.

Now here is where I am confused by the conflicting information I've seen regarding altboot.

The cardfs files from Hentges seem to be just compressed tar files. I thought that the cardfs files needed to be ext2 formatted binary disk images that could then get mounted as a loop file. Am I wrong?
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Ahem oops. You can't use cardfs files to boot, they are add-ons only. Use the images from the ext2 folder.

Title: Altboot Problem
Post by: radioz on September 29, 2006, 11:18:22 pm

Thanks for that.

I've loaded the images from the ext2 directory into the /media/card/boot-images directory (and verified the md5sums).  During boot-up the mount of the card works fine, but the mount of the image file fails ('wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock...').

I've also tried mounting one of the *rootfs.ext2.gz files on my Linux machine as well as on the Zaurus with the same result as above.

Here is the mount command I'm using:

"mount opie.ext2.gz /mnt/something -o loop -t ext2"

The mountpoint exists.
I've tried with and without the -t parameter.

I've uncompressed the gz file and verified that IT will mount as an EXT2 image.

What I'm trying to accomplish is to have both GPE and OPIE avaiable on the same card.

How do you mount a compressed ext2 with the mount command in busybox?

radioz