Booting Lenny froma SDHC card

[bryan39]

I have been trying a manual install of Lenny on to a SDHC card
following Martin Michlmayr's advice on 
http://www.cyrius.com/debian/kirkwood/sheevaplug/unpack.html

It has failed to boot from a couple of SDHC cards formatted
at various times as ext2 and ext3. It does boot from a USB stick 
and the SD cards can then be mounted and seem OK. Weird.

Complaints such as
Unable to read "/boot/uInitrd" from mmc 0:1
Unable to read "/boot/uImage" from mmc 0:1
were found.

I have had success with a newly purchased Verbatim Class 6 8GB 
Pro Series SDHC card. Out of the box, it had a FAT32 filesystem
starting at 2 not 1. Some of my other SDHC cards started out this 
way as well. For example, a Transcend Class6 8GB microSDHC which 
was formatted like this

debian:~# fdisk -l /dev/sdb
Disk /dev/sdb: 8015 MB, 8015314944 bytes
121 heads, 42 sectors/track, 3080 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 5082 * 512 = 2601984 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1               2        3081     7823360    b  W95 FAT32

This time, I repartitioned the card starting at 2.

debian:~# fdisk -l /dev/mmcblk0

Disk /dev/mmcblk0: 8101 MB, 8101298176 bytes
237 heads, 20 sectors/track, 3338 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 4740 * 512 = 2426880 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

        Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/mmcblk0p1   *           2        2920     6918030   83  Linux
/dev/mmcblk0p2            2921        3338      990660   82  Linux swap / Solaris

This time it works. Coincidence?

Is there a reason why the FAT32 system starts on 2?

For info:
U-Boot 1.1.4 (Jul 19 2009 - 16:03:28) Marvell version: 3.4.19

debian:~# uname -a
Linux debian 2.6.30-2-kirkwood #1 Sun Sep 27 22:57:55 UTC 2009 armv5tel GNU/Linux

[DamonHD]

Is the starting cyl of 2 to allow for a partition table?

Rgds

Damon

[Loattejak]

can grub or lilo be used with a linux system even if it was not on the install disc?

Im still a noob with linux...   I understand what you meant..

[pingtoo]

can grub or lilo be used with a linux system even if it was not on the install disc?

My understanding is lilo and grub use bios to access storage, so it is not possible to run it on sheeva without some major hack.

[ghkjhlkl]

I have been trying a manual install of Lenny on to a SDHC card
following Martin Michlmayr's advice on 
http://www.cyrius.com/debian/kirkwood/sheevaplug/unpack.html
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It has failed to boot from a couple of SDHC cards formatted
at various times as ext2 and ext3. It does boot from a USB stick 
and the SD cards can then be mounted and seem OK. Weird.

Complaints such as
Unable to read "/boot/uInitrd" from mmc 0:1
Unable to read "/boot/uImage" from mmc 0:1
were found.

I have had success with a newly purchased Verbatim Class 6 8GB 
Pro Series SDHC card. Out of the box, it had a FAT32 filesystem
starting at 2 not 1. Some of my other SDHC cards started out this 
way as well. For example, a Transcend Class6 8GB microSDHC which 
was formatted like this

debian:~# fdisk -l /dev/sdb
Disk /dev/sdb: 8015 MB, 8015314944 bytes
121 heads, 42 sectors/track, 3080 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 5082 * 512 = 2601984 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1               2        3081     7823360    b  W95 FAT32

This time, I repartitioned the card starting at 2.

debian:~# fdisk -l /dev/mmcblk0

Disk /dev/mmcblk0: 8101 MB, 8101298176 bytes
237 heads, 20 sectors/track, 3338 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 4740 * 512 = 2426880 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

        Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/mmcblk0p1   *           2        2920     6918030   83  Linux
/dev/mmcblk0p2            2921        3338      990660   82  Linux swap / Solaris

This time it works. Coincidence?

Is there a reason why the FAT32 system starts on 2?

For info:
U-Boot 1.1.4 (Jul 19 2009 - 16:03:28) Marvell version: 3.4.19

debian:~# uname -a
Linux debian 2.6.30-2-kirkwood #1 Sun Sep 27 22:57:55 UTC 2009 armv5tel GNU/Linux