[Voyage-linux] Problem booting DD image

[Jim Cromie]

On Mon, Sep 5, 2011 at 10:16 PM, Gustin Johnson <gustin at meganerd.ca> wrote:
> FYI PCEngines uses tinyBIOS, it is still a bios, just a really
> stripped down one.
>

ah yes, I misremembered the name.  maybe pcbios is what Soekris calls it,
but I do think it was licensed and altered by Soekris from PCEngines.

> You should be able to clone on CF to another, I have in fact done
> this.  I have not really messed with Soekris hardware but I have a
> hard time believing that it is significantly different from the PC
> Engines stuff.
>

I havent tried to dd an image, its fairly straightforward to install
from tarball,
and am not disputing dd-ability - Id expect it to work, with the CHS/LBA
caveats that have been mentioned - relying on the all CFs block<->flash mapping
being compatible is asking for trouble.  Supposedly, Cylinder > 1023
triggers LBA
in most devices, so maybe thats a simplifying factor, iff they all do so.

at any rate, hot-swapping CFs doesnt work on Soekris, on reboot it drops
to combios prompt, after failing to find bootable device.  Cycling
power will fix it.
I havent tried putting the same CF back in after pulling it, maybe sometime.

I responded on the chance that OP had been hotswapping CFs without cycling
the power, and has a BIOS with a similar bug/characteristic.

> Doing a dd or ddrescue to differently geometry should not be a problem
> as long as the target geometry is larger (I have a mix of CF cards, I
> keep my base image small enough to fit on the smallest card that I
> have).
>
> Now cloning to a thumb drive might be a problem if the BIOS does not
> or cannot boot from USB.  What model of Soekris is this?

net4801, circa 2005  It cannot boot from USB, as I read once, so never tried.

>
> On Mon, Sep 5, 2011 at 10:34 AM, Jim Cromie <jim.cromie at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Sep 5, 2011 at 9:01 AM, Jim Salk <jsalk at salk.net> wrote:
>>> I have my CF card set up with Voyage just the way I want.  Now I would like
>>> to clone it for use in additional systems.
>>>
>>> I tried using DD to clone the CF card to a thumb drive and then back to a
>>> second CF card.  It did not work because the thumb drive was larger.
>>>
>>> I then used DD to create an ISO of the CF card and using it to create a new
>>> CF card.  That seemed to work (no DD errors), but the card would not boot.
>>>
>>> So I purchased another card reader and used DD to make a copy of the
>>> original CF card directly to a new one.  No errors, but the new card would
>>> not boot either.
>>>
>>> I understand that if you DD a bootable drive, the new drive should be
>>> bootable as well.  I assume this is correct.  The new card should be a
>>> bit-accurate copy of the original.  Yet the new card will not boot.
>>>
>>> Is there anything I am missing here?
>>>
>>
>> FWIW, I thrashed away many hours while trying to get a 2nd CF drive to boot,
>> when it had identical image as 1st CF.  Turns out I had to poweroff my Soekris,
>> a reset was insufficient for the BIOS to see the new drive.  IIRC, it
>> uses a bios
>> derived/licensed from PCEngine's pcbios.
>>
>>> Thanks, in advance, for your help.
>>>
>>> - Jim
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> Voyage-linux at list.voyage.hk
>>> http://list.voyage.hk/mailman/listinfo/voyage-linux
>>>
>>
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>