[yocto] Problem creating bootable flash

[Chris Tapp]

Hi Paul,

On 29 Mar 2013, at 23:15, Paul D. DeRocco wrote:

> I'm still having no luck booting my system. I've built
> core-image-base-cedartrail-nopvr, with only one modification (added samba
> from OE), and I'm trying to boot it on an Intel DN2800MT mobo from a 1GB
> eUSB SSD. Here's what I've done:
> 
> Opened gparted, selected /dev/sdb, which is the SSD.
> 
> Created a fresh MSDOS partition table.
> 
> Selected the 979MB unallocated space, created a new 949MB FAT16 partition.
> 
> Selected the remaining 30MB unallocated space, created a new FAT16
> partition, which will hold my application data.
> 
> Invoked the pending operations.
> 
> Selected the first partition, set the "boot" flag.
> 
> Exited gparted.
> 
> In terminal, went into my images directory, and did
> 
>    sudo dd if=core-image-base-cedartrail-nopvr.hddimg of=/dev/sdb1

This should end
   of=/dev/sdb

The hddimg file includes the partition info and both partitions, so you don't need any of the other steps.

> After a few seconds, it finished.

I'm assuming you did a 'sync' or similar at this point.

> I then unplugged and plugged the SSD from
> the USB header, and it automounted the two partitions and popped up two
> windows showing their contents. Closed the second one, and examined the
> first one. It contained the usual five files for booting a live image.
> 
> Opened syslinux.cfg in an editor. It showed that syslinux is configured to
> use a serial port, which is wrong for my system. Also, it showed two boot
> choices, one called "boot" for running the live image, and the other called
> "install".
> 
> Eventually, I'll get the build to supply a custom syslinux.cfg, but for now,
> I figured I'd just manually edit it. Since I want it to interact with the
> screen and keyboard, and not a serial port, I removed "serial 1 115200". The
> default is supposedly "console 1", which I would expect would use the video
> and keyboard from the text mode it inherits from the BIOS. I also removed
> the "install" section.
> 
> The options on the minimal boot kernel included "console=ttyS0,115200" and
> "console=tty0 video=vesafb vga=0x318". Since I don't know what my mobo
> supports for VGA video, I figured I'd just let it use text mode, so I
> replaced them both with just "console=tty0". The final contents of
> syslinux.cfg were:
> 
>    ALLOWOPTIONS 1
>    DEFAULT boot
>    TIMEOUT 10
>    PROMPT 1
>    LABEL boot
>    KERNEL /vmlinuz
>    APPEND initrd=/initrd LABEL=boot root=/dev/ram0 console=tty0
> 
> I did a "Safely remove" on the device, unplugged it, plugged it into my test
> motherboard, and fired it up.
> 
> I went into the BIOS boot menu, to make sure the BIOS recognized it as a
> bootable device, and it did. I hit Enter to boot it. All I got was a
> standard black VGA text mode screen with a blinking gray cursor. At that
> point, Ctrl-Alt-Del wouldn't reboot.
> 
> If my device wasn't bootable, I'd expect the BIOS to complain. If it was
> still in the BIOS, I'd expect to be able to reboot with Ctrl-Alt-Del. If it
> actually ran ldlinux.sys, and yet didn't properly use the video, I'd expect
> it to time out and boot the live image. But I don't see any evidence that
> it's doing that.

I think you've got a bootable device because you configured it to be, above.
You shouldn't need to do this as the 'dd' should set it all up for you.

> 
> Does my syslinux.cfg look correct for showing the syslinux stuff on the text
> mode output? Do my kernel options look correct for getting the live image
> boot kernel to talk to the screen in text mode? Can anyone see anything else
> that might be wrong?
> 
> -- 
> 
> Ciao,               Paul D. DeRocco
> Paul                mailto:pderocco at ix.netcom.com 
> 
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Chris Tapp

opensource at keylevel.com
www.keylevel.com