I'm nearly 7 months late to this thread, but regarding this: "I compiled mjpg-streamer, and installed it", I have a question about instructions.  I've followed this older howto (using Michelmeyer's Debian on SD):

http://www.sunspot.co.uk/Projects/SWEEX/slug/notes/Debian_notes.html

Essentially, I've done this:
apt-get install imagemagick
cd /usr/src
svn co https://mjpg-streamer.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/mjpg-streamer
cd jmpg-streamer
make clean all

I get the following error: 
In file included from v4l2uvc.c:27:
v4l2uvc.h:35:21: error: libv4l2.h: No such file or directory

After about 2 hours of searching, I have not found out how to get the file, libv4l2.h.   How do I install mjpg-streamer?

Well--over an hour from the time I plugged in the mini usb cable and got the error message, "SheevaPlug JTAGKey FT2232D B"  driver missing until I found this thread and the solution.  It had been quite a while since I had used the usb cable, and the thing that I can think of which would have changed things was installing a new u-boot and Martin Michlmayr's Debian on USB thumb drive.  And the drivers from the FTDI site didn't work. 

Kudos to those who posted the solution.  Bad karma for those who created the problem.

I did partition the SDHC card, and it appeared ok to me--that is, the same as the successfully copied 2gb card. 

When you say, "there is a bug with u-boot that requires the kernel and initrd to sit below the 2GB mark", if that would cause me a problem when I untarred the files from the 2gb card onto the 16gb card, how would I fix it?

As indicated above, I successfully copied a 2gb sd onto another and booted ok.  Now I have tried the same process (and actually going from the same tar file) to a 16gb sd.  The 16gb card looks ok to a casual examination--all directories in place, including the  created /proc, /sys, /mnt.  I get the Marvell>> prompt--no boot as with the 2 2gb sd cards. When I type boot, I get "SDHC found" and other identifying information, but then
** Unable to read "/boot/uInitrd" from mmc 0:1 **
** Unable to read "/boot/uImage" from mmc 0:1 **
## Booting image at 00400000 ...
Bad Magic Number

And then the Marvell>> prompt again.  Is there something obvious that I have omitted?

Ah, ok, thanks.  Not some form of 12 volts direct to a regulator for plug.

>I have one of those cheap UPS supplies and have a automotive battery in a battery box next to it.  It will last for days...

Can you explain this setup a little more fully?

Oops, modified code above to use "mkdir /usb/proc", etc.  Thanks.

/etc/fstab shows swap on the SD:
/dev/mmcblk0p1       /               ext3    errors=remount-ro 0       1
/dev/mmcblk0p2       none            swap    sw              0       0

My question was whether it would tend to conserve the SD if swap were on a ramdisk (which might seem a little contradictory, since ram is what is being swapped), or whether there should be no swapping.  It's not an area about which I know much, other than having seen recommendations against having swap on SD or USB flash.

Ok, this is what I did to copy my 2gb SD to another 2gb SD.  First, on a Linux PC, I created a directory, /usb.  Then I mounted the old SD and tarred all partions excluding proc, mnt, sys.

mount /dev/sdb1 /usb
cd /usb
tar cvpzf /home/lb/sheeva.tgz --exclude=proc --exclude=lost+found --exclude=backup.tgz --exclude=mnt --exclude=sys .

This created a 500mb+ tgz file.  Then I partitioned the new SD the same as the old one, with linux partion for partition one and a 50mb swap partition on 2.  Then I formatted the drive, mounted it on /usb, extracted the tar, and created the excluded directories.

mkfs.ext2 /dev/sdb1
mount /dev/sdb1 /usb
tar xvpfz sheeva.tgz -C /usb
mkdir /usb/proc
mkdir /usb/lost+found
mkdir /usb/mnt
mkdir /usb/sys
[Edit:  modified above to refelct tbm's catch below]

I put the new SD in the Sheevaplug and powercycled, and, lo, I can ssh in as with the old SD.  Now I'm awaiting an 8gb SD from Amazon.

Thanks very much for the pointers.

Question: how should swap be handled?  Should it be set up on a ram disk?

With debian successfully installed on flash, what is the best way of making a bootable backup to the other flash option?

That is, if you can boot to SD, how do you make a copy to usb which you can boot (and then perhaps copy back to a larger SD)?

Thanks for that very interesting interview with Marvell folk and associates. 

Do you know what handheld device the Marvell person was using to control the big screen?

Brian,

Very nice indeed to add all the optware packages and expecially the kernel modules to SheevaPlug. 

>To get the uImage, you can either extract it from data.tar.gz in the ipk (actually a tar.gz)

How exactly do you get the uImage out?  I downloaded the ipk to a linux box and tried “tar x” on it, but got nothing for a long time and hit ctrl+C to exit.  Please pardon my newbieness.

>Make sure to "set mainlineLinux yes; set arcNumber 2097" in u-boot since this is mainline linux kernel.

Again pardon my ignorance.  I'm looking at the “Writing jaunty Filesystem” pdf.  It's a bit daunting.  I have a Marvell>> prompt, and have done “printenv”.  What do I do to tftp the image?  Does it have to do with setting mtdparts, bootargs, and bootcmd in addition to the environment variables you mention?

Lance

Ok, thanks, I got that image file from the LSP download.  My problem is that I can't get past the login--something caused the password to change and the one which worked for me for a day and a half doesn't work now, and the original doesn't either.  But I can get to the Marvell>> prompt on the USB-serial line.  Are there instructions for flashing the uImage.sheeva.040309 image from that point?

I'm sorry, I don't understand which of the links on the above page provides access to the file, uImage.sheeva.040309

>Marvell has posted an updated uImage file (uImage.sheeva.040309).

Where is this file located?

Here's another person wanting to do that.  Where is the Ubuntu binary image?  For that matter, where is the source--when I tried to "apt-get" linux-headers, it wanted the plug's version, which is not in the Ubuntu repository.  So is the repository used by Marvell to compile the image available?