[Voyage-linux] [Solved] Voyage 0.5.2 or current using a large (4GB) flash card, Alix 2D3 board, nothing happening after BIOS POST

[Nicolas Pillot]

Hello,

I'm merely posting to send out the info, in case someone is looking
for the same thing as i was.

TOPIC: Voyage 0.5.2 or current using a large (4GB) flash card, Alix
2D3 board, nothing happening after BIOS POST

I ordered an Alix 2D3 board, which the mail brought to me today. BIOS
revision 0.99.
I have bought a 4GB CF flash cart (man, smaller ones are as expensive
as big ones, so why bother ?).
I fsck'ed the cart 2 times in a rowto check (and reallocate) dead sectors.

Summary of the process, TRY #1 : v0.5.2
- plug the CF cart in the usb adapter (which is an USB memory stick
with a CF connector)
- 2 drives appear  : /dev/sdb (for the on-stick memory) and /dev/sdc
(for the CF cart on connector)
- I bring up GParted, create a new msdos partition table on /dev/sdc,
create a new 4GB ext2 partition, make it bootable
- decompress voyage-0.5.2, move into the base directory, run
./usr/local/sbin/voyage.update
- choose install, mount point (/mnt/cf which i just mkdir'ed), target
disk /dev/sdc, using partition 1
- select bootloader grub, installed on partition 1, using serial
console, 38400 bauds, and copy process
- copy process whines about locale (which seem undefined and/or
en_GB.UTF-8 on my system) but ends without errors.
=> I put the card on the Alix, boot, bios display version, base
memory, ram count, and then, nothing. At all.

Summary of the process, TRY #2 : using 'current'
- exact same steps as above
=> Same effect: nothing happens after BIOS POST

Summary of the process, TRY #3 : using pfSense 1.2
- using premade image i DD'ed to /dev/sdc (steps described on their website)
=> After BIOS POST, system starts (i fiddled a little with it, it's
nice, but i don't like using a web interface and can't bear not to gt
the full space i have on the cart)

*** So, ALIX is working, CF cart is working. There's something wrong
somewhere. ***

Searching the web (damn, where's the mailing-list's "search" option
?!), i noticed many of you were using small cards (256 to 1024).

I decided to create more partitions on the CF cart :
- one 'small' 512M primary partition (/dev/sdc1)
- one 'big' 3500M primary partition (/dev/sdc2)

I ran thevery same steps as in #1.
=> After BIOS POST, it boots !!

Conclusion :
- it might be a problem with grub location on the partition (i'm not a
boot process guru, only an idea)
- Using a small "first" partition, voyage linux boots flawlessly !

So i'd say you can safely buy and use a large card, as long as you
create a small partition to install to.

\o/ Yet Another Happy User (YAHU !)

-- 
Nicolas Pillot (nicolas.pillot at gmail.com)