Problem booting Sheevaplug off SD Card

[plugman87]

Hello,

I'm having trouble booting my plug computer (Sheevaplug) from the SD Card. I've been following the directions listed at: http://www.randomexploits.com/projects/sheevaplug/sd-boot.htm

I've been successful at following these instructions up to and including step 5, which describes how to copy over the OS from the internal NAND Flash. However, I'm running into trouble on step 6 and on step 7. I changed the uBoot settings to tell the computer to boot from the SD Card. This was accomplished by rebooting the plug computer and entering new boot commands using the setenv command. I copied these commands from the instructions verbatim.

The plug fails to boot. (Fortunately I didn't issue the saveenv command after defining the new boot commands. This way I'm still able to boot my plug computer from the internal memory, despite the fact that I had a failed attempt at changing the way it boots.)

My SD Card is a 4 GB SanDisk SDHC Card. I suspect this card is of a different size and manufacture from the one being used by the person who wrote the instructions. (I'm not sure if this could be part of my problem. Should I be modifying the new boot commands which were issued using the setenv command to accommodate the fact that my card may be different?)

Does anybody have any ideas what I'm doing wrong? Is there a better tutorial out there about modifying the plug computer to boot from a SD Card that I should be following instead of this one? Thanks so much!

[bnborg]

I installed Debian "Wheezy" on my SD card.  See:  http://www.cyrius.com/debian/kirkwood/sheevaplug/install.html.

This requires upgrading U-Boot first:  http://www.cyrius.com/debian/kirkwood/sheevaplug/uboot-upgrade.html.

[plugman87]

Hello nborg!

Thank you for the suggestion! However, as I'm new to plug computing, I'm nervous about trying to upgrade the boot loader, lest I get my plug computer into a state from which I don't know how to recover. What I like about the directions I linked to was that they don't force me to 'commit' the changes to the boot loader until I'm sure they work. So, if you don't mind, I would like to save your recommendations for a later time, once I get more experience with plug computing.

Does anybody have suggestions on how to use my current boot loader to boot off the SD Card. I've already got the whole operating system copied over from the internal flash to the card, so it's now just a matter of getting it to boot. I was wondering if the problem I'm experiencing could have to do with mounting the sd card. When I booted up the plug computer just now, the sd card wasn't mounted by default, and I had to issue the 'mount' command. I'm wondering if the boot loader is even able to see the card.

I really don't know what I'm talking about, because I'm new, but maybe one of you pro's could help shed some light on my situation.

Thanks again!

[plugman87]

I solved my own problem. The instructions to follow are located here: http://plugcomputer.org/plugwiki/index.php/SD_Card_As_Root_File_System

The problem was I didn't know where to turn to find the high quality instructions. I think the wiki could use some reorganization to make it easier for new folks to find the documentation they need, instead of having to turn to poorly written third party information they found off Google.

[bnborg]

I don't know what I'm doing either.  I've only had my SheevaPlug about a month.

I had some misgivings the first time I used bubt to flash a new uboot.  But I had confidence in tftp since I had tried several different uImage kernels and uInitrd ramdisk images by loading them using tftp.

I hear what you are saying about PlugWiki.  Some of the pages are old or based on wrong information.  The good pages are hard to find sometimes.  It needs a better index or something.  I thought Martin Michlmayr's pages on www.cyrius.com were very informative.  Not only that, they are up to date.  Martin is on the Debian for ARM development team.  I got there by following a link on the Debian page, which is in turn one of the first links on the"main page" of the PlugWiki.