[debian-non-standard] Problems installing debian on FSG-3 (boots from flash, but cannot see internal disk)

[juan--nsd82 at lavera.dnsalias.net]

Hi Tomasz, answers/commets interleaved with your message:

Tomasz Chmielewski wrote:
> 
> Why did you need to repartition the HDD at all? I thought you said your 
> system doesn't see the drive when booted from a "debianized" USB-stick?
> 

Since pendrive was seen as /dev/sda I said to myself: maybe kernel is 
initially seeing the internal HD but then it gets confused and instead 
of assigning /dev/sdb to the pendrive it "overlaps" /dev/sda. I forgot 
to tell you a strange thing: even if "fdisk -l" showed only the pendrive 
(/dev/sda), "mount" (or was it df? I'll try to document it better in my 
next attempt) was telling me that "/" was "/dev/sdb2". Yes, a letter b 
here.
So I opened the case, mounted the drive in a PC, created partitions, 
changed from reiserfs to ext3, ..... everything as in the standard 
procedure, only done from a PC. Then plugged HD back into FSG to see if 
it was able to boot. As you may imagine it didn't work.

> 
> FSG assistant should work fine. We flash the kernel on an empty mtd 
> partition, so you don't have to backup anything. We change the 
> bootloader in order to boot a new kernel.
> 
> 
> Frankly, I don't remember ;)
> I never had to do it.

I'll test again booting from flash as soos as I have some time and will 
report the results.

> 
> Your drive is not blacklisted or anything... I've no idea why it's not 
> detected.

Let's hope we can gather some more data after my second test (i'll try 
with some other disks also)



(about kernel)

> 
> 1) download http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/linux-2.6.24.tar.bz2
> 2) download and apply the patch: 
> http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/snapshots/patch-2.6.24-git5.bz2
> 3) download and apply the patch: 
> http://marc.info/?l=linux-arm-kernel&m=120161468117771&q=raw


> There should be a /proc/config file when you boot your FSG from a 
> USB-stick. If you have a night or so, you don't even need to 
> cross-compile it - you can do it on FSG (and then, kexec to a new kernel 
> to see if it works).

But if i'm not seeing the internal HD I probably won't have enough space 
on the pendrive to do the native compilation. So I'd prefer crosscompiling.

Anyway, the file I have to "kexec" after kernel compilation is zImage?
> 
> If you really need a cross-compiler, you can search the web to see how 
> to build one, or I can send you my own binaries (not sure if they will 
> work on your system, though).
> 
> I guess the easiest way to build a cross-compiler would be:
> 
> svn co https://svn.openwrt.org/openwrt/trunk/
> 
> Then - make menuconfig, choose a platform which runs on ARM, deselect 
> all other packages, make, done.

I'll try this after the "second boot attempt".

Just a last question abusing your patience. I don't have the serial 
cable (yet). But I do have a usb-to-serial cable. I suppose this only 
allows for logging into the system when network fails, but the kernel 
messages sent during boot go only to the real console. Am I right?

Thanks a lot
   Juan