Will This Work For Booting The Pandora?

[willrandship]

I found this script for making beagleboard and omap3 bootable SD cards. Will it work wih the pandora, and will it be necessary?
http://www.xora.org.uk/2009/08/14/omap3-sd-booting/

 

[VRAndy]

Shouldn't be necessary for normal use. The Pandora has half a gig of built-in storage for the bootable partition.

 

[willrandship]

OK, thanks!

 

[kingoddball]

It also has 2 boot loaders tucked away nicely in case you screw up your NAND firmware so you can boot off SD without any extra fancy steps.

 

[mindlord]

Well, booting from SD is actually a bit more difficult than just copy a file to an SD card and GO!

From what I understand the card will have to be formatted to EXT2 or EXT3 which takes Linux to do. Windows won't be able to do this nicely. But, again under normal use circumstances, there will be no need to create a bootable SD card.

 

[Rapfnny]

I believe even on Pandora, you'll need to format it for omap3. Here's a nice guide.
http://wiki.davincidsp.com/index.php?title=MMC_Boot_Format

 

[skeezix]

As above, you shouldn't need it.

However, to make a bootable SD is something like that, yeah, though the script bits depend on the Linux distro you run it on. ("mke2fs" versus "mkfs.ext2" that sort of thing.)

In general, I imagine people will float around a SD-image (like an .iso), and just write that to an SD when you're in a pinch

But yeah, essentially you make either 1 SD with two partitions on it (fat for boot, ext2/3fs for OS image), or 2 SDs (1 for boot, the other for OS image), or other arrangements (SD boot, image on NAND, etc.) It really is only a couple steps to do on Linux or BSD, and a bit more effort on Windows.

But not generally needed except for techhies

jeff

 

[TrashyMG]

As above, you shouldn't need it.

However, to make a bootable SD is something like that, yeah, though the script bits depend on the Linux distro you run it on. ("mke2fs" versus "mkfs.ext2" that sort of thing.)

In general, I imagine people will float around a SD-image (like an .iso), and just write that to an SD when you're in a pinch

But yeah, essentially you make either 1 SD with two partitions on it (fat for boot, ext2/3fs for OS image), or 2 SDs (1 for boot, the other for OS image), or other arrangements (SD boot, image on NAND, etc.) It really is only a couple steps to do on Linux or BSD, and a bit more effort on Windows.

But not generally needed except for techhies

jeff

I have a beagleboard coming in the mail, so it's good info for me.. Plus I plan on trying other Operating Systems on SD cards on the Pandora when I get mine.. just for fun.

Thanks for the info

 

[paulguy]

Will it only boot to SD when booting from NAND failed or will there be a bootup leycombo or something to trigger it? If not will I be able to set up some kind of menu on the NAND with an option for SD boot?

 

[EvilDragon]

I guess booting off an SD Card when we got U-Boot installed in the NAND will be easier

It's only a bit complicated creating bootable SD Cards when you have no bootloader on anything installed on the Pandora (which is the case with our development units)

 

[mindlord]

Could cygwin provide the tools needed for Windows users to create boot disks? I'm sure someone could slap together a small cygwin directory with the needed tools and scripts if it is possible.

 

[laurencevde]

AFAIK, no. Cygwin is userspace-only, and doesn't have fs-drivers. You can create and check ext2/3-partitions, but you can't mount them...

I think a tiny linux-VM would be a better and easier way to go.

 

[mindlord]

Still more hassle than just downloading an ubuntu live CD and rebooting with it. It's a shame that ext2/3 filesystem drivers for Windows are so unpredictable and unreliable.

 

[peca]

And what about fs-driver for those Windows?

 

[Letalis Sonus]

Ext2IFS is rather unstable, e.g. it likes to simply stop working when you boot up your Windows the next time so the ext partition will still be displayed as "unformatted" (and there's still no ext4 support which makes it rather obsolete for usage with modern desktop Linux distros).
Additionally, I had some bad experience with mobile drives on Windows, e.g. Windows (at least XP) can not handle more than 1 partition on an USB stick, if you have more on it only the first one will be detected. It wouldn't surprise me if there were other restrictions concerning SD cards with 'exotic' file systems.

 

[mindlord]

Looks like Windows fails... good thing I don't have it installed on any of my computers.

 

[Squidge]

The easiest ways for Windows users is to distribute images and let those users copy the image to an SD card. Perfect as a recovery system, not so good if you want to edit the contents of those images.

Then again, you don't NEED two partitions - you can use two SD cards instead, but you still have the problem of the second one needing to be ext2/3, and of course the first NEEDS a partition table, something which Windows doesn't bother to provide for removable storage most of the time (and even if it did, most likely would be incompatible). Third party tools should be able to write a suitable partition table though if you just want to play with different kernels.

 

[laurencevde]

I'd say a minimal recovery-image on the NAND, that can do some system maintenance, fix, partition and format sd-cards, and download and install a full install. Should fit within a couple MB, including kernel, and can just sit there on the NAND, next to the main system.

 

[peca]

If it is really hard under Windows, then maybe be better to boot some linux from USBflash and make SD card under it. I if someone linux gurus prepare small linux image that boot from USB on PC and than prepare SD card for poor/dumb Windows users (including me), it will be neat.

 

[fearofshorts]

Hey, sorry to go off topic (I suck at searching), but does anyone know how much space is left on the nand after installing the OS on the Pandora?
Also, is it possible to just copy PND files to the nand (un-extracted, just as if it were on a SD) for really commonly used programs. I think I might need this, as I'd rather have just one version of VLC to configure rather than three or four for each SD I fill with videos. Or would actually installing the program to the nand be a better alternative?