Release Pandora SD Installer

[Zucadragon]

It's a 16 gig card, I completely formatted it and let the program set up the partitions. No matter how large or small I choose the options it gives that error. It's a category 10 sdhc card though, and the wiki says that those give problems.


I tried a 32 gig category 4 card, and it worked fine on that one.


It didn't want to boot on the 10 card btw.

Thanks for the info. I don't have a category 10 card myself but from what I see on the board, they seem to give the Pandora a lot of problems and not just for the SD installer.

Yups, so I'll test this new, bigger card, and see what kind of problems I come across. The other one seemed to work fine when just running roms and PND's and such, but it was a bit glitchy at times, we'll see if it's any better now ^^

 

[quartercast]

Thanks for this Dave1234, installing rootfs now!


Interestingly, the installer wouldn't let me browse to or install an image from within /media/sd/pandora/apps. In fact, it displayed /media/sd/pandora as empty.

 

[Dave1234]

Thanks for this Dave1234, installing rootfs now!


Interestingly, the installer wouldn't let me browse to or install an image from within /media/sd/pandora/apps. In fact, it displayed /media/sd/pandora as empty.

Odd. It works fine for me. What hotfix version were you using at the time? I mean the version that was actually running, not the one you were trying to install.

 

[Esn]

Just thought I'd mention that there's a grammatical error in the final dialogue; "then" should be "than".


Also: now that I have it installed, where do I place my PNDs and other programs? ONLY in the PANDORABOOT partition, or in the other one also?


Also: I don't know if it's due to booting from SD card or due to something changed in Hotfix 6 alpha 4, but the little black rectangle in the Links2 browser when I type or delete text moves a lot slower than it used to when I keep a direction on the d-pad or the backspace key pressed.

 

[Dave1234]

Just thought I'd mention that there's a grammatical error in the final dialogue; "then" should be "than".

I'd not spotted that. I intend to do another version at some point that will have a few small fixes and tweaks. I've not got round to it yet as I'm working on something else Pandora related.

Also: now that I have it installed, where do I place my PNDs and other programs? ONLY in the PANDORABOOT partition, or in the other one also?

PNDs go on the PANDORABOOT partition (which I intend to rename to BOOT in the next version), or you could use a second SD card if you prefer. Not sure what you mean by "other programs".

Also: I don't know if it's due to booting from SD card or due to something changed in Hotfix 6 alpha 4, but the little black rectangle in the Links2 browser when I type or delete text moves a lot slower than it used to when I keep a direction on the d-pad or the backspace key pressed.

That sounds like a hotfix issue to me, unless it only appears when booting from SD and not when using the same hotfix from the NAND. I'd suggest mentioning it in the hotfix thread.

 

[MarioPandio]

I dont seem to be getting the issue ESN is having with Links2 from HF6a4 on SD here. The cursor speed seems pretty fast. Perhaps a re-install?


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[Esn]

I dont seem to be getting the issue ESN is having with Links2 from HF6a4 on SD here. The cursor speed seems pretty fast. Perhaps a re-install?


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For me, the cursor speed becomes much slower both in the start menu (when you keep a d-pad direction pressed) and in other applications. Maybe it's because of my SD card, I don't know.

 

[MarioPandio]

I wasn't trying to belittle at all, merely to test whats happening for you to see if it can be replicated. I once had a weird issue myself where the d-pad could no longer scroll in the menu or anywhere else, when held in a given direction. It had to be tapped for each movement and was a MAJOR pain. That followed my SD and NAND install getting corrupted by a freak PNDstore useage issue, which under HF6a4 is now a bloody marvel to use, as its intended to be.

 

[Dave1234]

Finally got around to updating the SD installer.


Changes:

• Shortened the partition names to BOOT, ROOT and SWAP, as requested by MarioPandio.
  
• Fixed the grammatical error that Esn spotted.
  
• Added a "diagnostic boot option": boot with the right shoulder button held and select "Boot from SD1:1". You will get kernel messages instead of the splash screen while booting.
  

The new version can be found on PandoraBits and also in the repo. Enjoy.

 

[MarioPandio]

Thanks for the update and additions Dave1234. Will try it out on a few spare cards


Quick question though :


Having used SD Installer as intended but then, having replaced the ROOT partition with subsequent HF6 beta's, I notice the SWAP partition is no longer automatically active. Gparted can be used to 'SwapOn' the partition but the OS isn't seeing the partition at all otherwise.


Is there some command or script that could re-enable the swap partition at boot time? Or could an additional feature be added to your program, that will replace only the ROOT partition and re-unite the SWAP partition with it?


Thanks for everything regarding this PND already

 

[Dave1234]

Is there some command or script that could re-enable the swap partition at boot time? Or could an additional feature be added to your program, that will replace only the ROOT partition and re-unite the SWAP partition with it?

What you need to do is to add a line to the file /etc/fstab. Here it is:

/dev/mmcblk0p2       none                 swap       sw                    0  0

Do that, reboot, and you should get your swap back.


Hope this helps.


EDIT: The other thing you should do, if you are reinstalling by overwriting the root partition, is to copy the new kernel image to the boot partition. Copy the file /boot/uImage over the one on the boot partition. If you don't do this you might get problems the kernel and driver versions not matching.

 

[MarioPandio]

I'd twigged the advice in your edit already and wrote about it elsewhere. Without it the panel and xfce menu is messed up for example but once you swap them over, everything appears to work fine except the swap.


I'm about to try your addition to the fstab file but suspect the tabbing is critical (like the screenblanking fix) and can prevent boot up until you drop to nano and re-edit things.


edit: Worked first time adding the line under the last one from under the /<whatever> column.


Thank you very much again

 

[MarioPandio]

Just wanted to add some feedback that I´ve encountered zero issues using the new version for HF4, HF5 and HF6 images. Works a treat. The included diagnostic boot up is nice and also if not desired, its easy to store that boot.txt and rename the autoboot.txt to boot.txt as normal if that function isn´t wanted by default. Top notch and cheers again.

 

[Dave1234]

Just wanted to add some feedback that I´ve encountered zero issues using the new version for HF4, HF5 and HF6 images. Works a treat. The included diagnostic boot up is nice and also if not desired, its easy to store that boot.txt and rename the autoboot.txt to boot.txt as normal if that function isn´t wanted by default. Top notch and cheers again.

Thanks MarioPandio, you are the best beta tester I have.