[How-To] Boot Entirely from SATA

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Re: [How-To] Boot Entirely from SATA

Postby telzey » Thu Dec 29, 2011 10:23 pm

Also, I realized that you might be wanting to use a boot partition so that you can eventually put an ext2 filesystem on it and make it like a normal distribution's "/boot" partition.

Is that what you're thinking of doing?

My main interest in using a GTP partition table is so that I can boot from a Western Digital 3TB HDD with Advanced Formatting.

I guess that if the stage1 or uBoot loaders are unable to handle the 3TB HHDs with their difference between logical and physical sector sizes, then GPT really doesn't matter.

It is pretty easy to partition a disk with GPT using a hybrid MBR so that the Stage1 and uBoot loaders can still find the boot and root partitions (as long as they're in the 1st 2TB of the disk).

Do you know if the stage1 loader and uBoot can handle the 512-byte-logical-sectors-in-4K-byte-physical-sectors that the new Advanced Format drives use?
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Re: [How-To] Boot Entirely from SATA

Postby WarheadsSE » Thu Dec 29, 2011 10:56 pm

I don't have a random 3TB SATA drive to test it on, so.. no.
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Re: [How-To] Boot Entirely from SATA

Postby WarheadsSE » Thu Dec 29, 2011 10:58 pm

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('telzey', 'A')aaah ... finally got it working!

I pressed a key to stop the boot and enter uBoot. There I changed the "bootcmd" variable to the correct root filesystem and then continued the boot ... and it worked!

Now how do I make this permanent?


saveenv

My guess is the rootdev variable is not populating correctly.
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Re: [How-To] Boot Entirely from SATA

Postby 0123456789 » Fri Dec 30, 2011 6:24 am

Forgive my ignorance.

Is a serial cable the only way to fix the bootargs issue, or will a new uboot be made to set the bootargs correctly?
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Re: [How-To] Boot Entirely from SATA

Postby WarheadsSE » Fri Dec 30, 2011 1:12 pm

I can, and will make a u-boot without this issue.
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Re: [How-To] Boot Entirely from SATA

Postby 0123456789 » Fri Dec 30, 2011 6:25 pm

I look forward to your new uboot.

I just want to say thanks to telzy for sharing what they found and for all the support warhead is giving.

It is definitely appreciated.
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Re: [How-To] Boot Entirely from SATA

Postby ftcodes » Fri Dec 30, 2011 6:30 pm

Hello WarheadsSE,

your work on the SATA only boot is definitely worth for all Medion NAS owners, too. These do boot that way, too.

NB: those have HDDs with advanced sector format.

ft
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Re: [How-To] Boot Entirely from SATA

Postby WarheadsSE » Sat Dec 31, 2011 8:46 pm

I patched it to look directly at /dev/sda2, my apologies on that gaff all.

I've picked up a spare sata drive (local Best Buy had Intel 320 Series 80GB for $119, had to jump, considering it was $30 less then even Amazon/Newegg), ran the process myself, and it worked fine.
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Re: [How-To] Boot Entirely from SATA

Postby skealoha86 » Sat Dec 31, 2011 9:41 pm

It works! Downloaded the 12/31 tarball, edited and reran the disk_create script on my drive, and my Plug is now up and running. And to confirm, the PogoPlug Pro likes the Tt BlacX. Thanks, WarheadsSE :D
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Re: [How-To] Boot Entirely from SATA

Postby 0123456789 » Sat Dec 31, 2011 10:11 pm

Worked for me as well, many thanks.

I have a friendly suggestion regarding the disk_create script.

I know your steps clearly say to set the disk variable, but in my eagerness to try the new u-boot I forgot to re-update the script.
It might be nice to put a quick safety check to prevent accidentally running it without updating first. Or simply set it to something that is not likely to exist.

It also seems the ! is missing from /bin/sh
# /bin/sh => #!/bin/sh


$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '
#!/bin/sh

# uncomment line below and set to the correct disk
#disk=/dev/sdX

if [ -z "${disk}" ] ; then
echo "You must uncomment/set the 'disk' variable"
exit -1
fi
workarea="."

stage1File=$workarea/stage1.wrapped
')
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