Booting another machine from an OpenPandora

[#endgame]

It turns out that you can make a bootable SD card, put the OpenPandora into SD-Mass-Storage mode and boot other machines with it over USB. This is pretty handy if you're looking to use it as an administration tool.

I was also able to load debian install ISOs using ISO Optical Drive and boot them on my netbook (using SuperZaxxon 1.52).

I've blogged what I did, but I'll mirror it here too.

Pretty much all the commands require root, so run `sudo -i' to get a root shell and BE CAREFUL.

The card was automounting at /media/sd, so the first thing to do is unmount (but not eject) it so we can mess with partition tables and such:

# umount /media/sd
It's currently partitioned with a single partition that fills the entire card. Great. Let's make it bootable. Those following along should double-check they're targeting the right /dev nodes:

# fdisk /dev/mmcblk0
Command (m for help): a
Partition number (1-4): 1

Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.

WARNING: Re-reading the partition table failed with error 16: Device or resource busy.
The kernel still uses the old table. The new table will be used at
the next reboot or after you run partprobe(8) or kpartx(8)
Syncing disks.

Well, force the re-read then:

# partprobe

Now I want to relabel it "bootcard" instead of "sd". You may need to install dosfstools:

# dosfslabel /dev/mmcblk0p1 bootcard

Then I remounted the card, grabbed version 4.06 of SYSLINUX (the latest version, 5.01, didn't have working keyboard input for me) and installed it to the block device, along with its MBR code. Note that these commands are being run from different directories of the syslinux distribution. Note that if you don't make the "boot" directory first, you get a stupidly cryptic "/dev/mmcblk0p1: No such file or directory" error:

# mkdir /media/bootcard/boot
syslinux-4.06/linux# ./syslinux -i -d /boot /dev/mmcblk0p1
syslinux-4.06/mbr# dd conv=notrunc bs=440 count=1 if=mbr.bin of=/dev/mmcblk0
# echo "say Hello from SYSLINUX">/media/bootcard/boot/syslinux.cfg

I've attached a wallpaper that looks nice with SYSLINUX's vesamenu, based off a logo I found on the wiki. Here's the start of my syslinux.cfg to set it up:

UI vesamenu.c32
MENU TITLE Pandora BootCard
MENU BACKGROUND pandora.png
MENU COLOR border 34;40 #00000000 #000000000 std
MENU COLOR title 1;36;40 #ff00b0fe #00000000 std
MENU COLOR tabmsg 1;33;40 #90ffff00 #00000000 std
MENU COLOR sel 33;40 #ffba7e00 #00000000 std
MENU COLOR hotsel 1;33;40 #ffffff00 #00000000 std
MENU COLOR unsel 34;40 #ff00425f #00000000 std
MENU COLOR hotkey 36;40 #ff0092c8 #00000000 std

 

[Askarus]

That's great.

Follow this link .

http://boards.openpandora.org/index.php/topic/10894-application-soleil/page-1

 

[#endgame]

Oh, very nice.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Thx, you 2 ^^.

 

[Askarus]

SOLEIL: Much more than just a bootable OS.