pogoplug mobile boot problem

[foompah]

I'm booting a pogoplug mobile from a USB flash drive, and I've installed uboot-pogoplugv4 2015.10-1 and linux-kirkwood-dt 4.3.3-1. This works only if I have another computer set up to monitor netconsole output. If there's no computer to accept netconsole output, it never shows up on the LAN. Also, there is no systemd journal for the failed boots. However, the LED on the front does turn green. I didn't have this problem with the non-dt kernel.

So, in other words, if I'm watching uboot and kernel output to try to diagnose the problem, it works fine. If I'm not watching, it fails.

[WarheadsSE]

That's.. odd. Since netconsole is UDP based, and doesn't care about responses.

[foompah]

I thought it was odd. It's very consistent though, I'm sure I'm not imagining it. I've booted it both ways many times, and it's always the same. I'm not sure what else I can do without a serial port, and I'm really bad at soldering.

[foompah]

OK, I think it's just picky about USB drives. The first one I tried has the odd behavior I described earlier, the second one didn't work at all, and the third one works fine.

[0xDEADBEEF]

Hmm, I having difficulty booting from USB drives on the pogoplug v4 as well. Would you mind sharing what USB drives worked for you? Maybe even a dump of what dmesg shows for the drive? Mine is USB3.0 and I suspect that might be causing problems. I remember something about USB HDD emulation being an important factor as well.

Also, for future reference, uboot fails with the following (this is with ext2 and ext4 on the the drive):
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '
...
PEX interface detected Link X1
Net: egiga0 [PRIME]
Hit any key to stop autoboot: 0
(Re)start USB...
USB: scanning bus for devices... 1 USB Device(s) found
Waiting for storage device(s) to settle before scanning...
0 Storage Device(s) found

Reset IDE:
Marvell Serial ATA Adapter
Integrated Sata device found

** Can't read from device 0 **

** Unable to use usb 0:1 for fatls **

IDE device 0 not available
** Bad partition 1 **
')

[moonman]

Did you plug it into usv 2.0 port? Uboot does not see any storage devices on your device.

[0xDEADBEEF]

I plugged it into the 2.0 port on the top/middle of the device. I assume that's the only 2.0 port since the side ports are blue. I have a 500MB USB2.0 flash drive that works on that port, but it's too small for the arch rootfs. The other flash drive is 16GB USB3.0. I may be able to try more flash drives, but I wish I knew what causes some to be bootable and some not to be.