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

Tomasz Chmielewski mangoo at wpkg.org
Tue Jan 29 17:30:47 CET 2008


juan--nsd82 at lavera.dnsalias.net schrieb:
> 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.

It's what /etc/fstab on the USB-stick says.
But I think the disk was there - look what initramfs built in the kernel 
does (see the "init" file in initramfs.tar.bz2:

This is our "emergency" device - USB stick:

EMERG_DEVICE=/dev/sdb2

We compare all partitions that are available for kernel:

cat /proc/partitions

and if one of them is sdb:

if [ "$PART" == "${EMERG_DEVICE##*/}" ]

we try to boot from USB-stick.


This means, the kernel saw sda and sdb, so there were two devices connected.


> 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.

You should have asked here first. ;)
It should work out of the box. If not, there is something wrong, but 
without a dmesg, it's hard to tell anything meaningful.


(...)

>> 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?

Yes, see here:

http://wpkg.org/Running_Debian_on_Freecom_FSG-3#kexec


>> 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?

You can also send kernel messages - but it will only work after the 
system is fully booted (more or less). So you won't see each and every 
kernel message, starting from the beginning.



-- 
Tomasz Chmielewski



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