[How-To] Boot Entirely from SATA

[WarheadsSE]

Nice point. Done.

[myjunk]

@WarheadSE

for this guide, am wondering if it will still work if the pogo plug is bricked. (mine is the pro version and it got bricked due to errors in my rcS script and the eth is not coming up when playmg with opt ware)

If it will work, then is it possible to end up being able to get to the NAND filesystem to fix the rcS script?

Thanks..

[WarheadsSE]

This method bypasses the NAND entirely, as I have said multiple times.

This means that it does not need that NAND, at all to boot.

Once it it running, it is a full system.

[myjunk]

@WarHeadSE

thanks for confirmation. This gives hope that my pogo will be OK (this is the pogo-p01)

The answer to the 2nd question is not as clear. Booting directing into Pogo via the SATa, will I be able to access the NAND filesystem? Is it mountable? Since my original opt ware install went haywire, I'm hoping that I can still salvage it w/o getting a serial cable (I have one on order ca-42, but the instructions are a bit confusing for me, in terms of the pinouts both on the board and the cable. Cable RX go into TX on board?)

If I can boot of the SATa, mount the NAND, then I can fix the rcS script and my pogo will be back to normal again. Do-able?

Thanks

[Geoff]

I wonder if it is possible to upgrade an existing installation that was done the old way (rootfs on sda1), so that everything works exactly as before (installed packages, configuration, data). What would happen, for example, if the contents of the new rootfs on sda2 were replaced by a backup of the contents of the old rootfs? Could the old rootfs be upgraded first in some way that makes this work? If so, this would save a lot of headaches for those who have been using their customized PogoPlugs for a relatively long while.

[WarheadsSE]

Yes, you can mount the ubifs. Just because it is SATA doesn't mean that has changed.

Yes, you can use your backup in place of the rootfs tarball. Xenoxaos hooked up my running drive, and a replacement drive and ran through all of these steps, plus a few today. We simply used cp -ar as root on another system.

[myjunk]

OMG... That's freaking good news. Time to go look for a spare SATA drive and hopefully my enclosure (HDD docking thing) works.

Thanks for the update. I'll check back if I got issues.
(time to google ubifs)

[WarheadsSE]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('telzey', 'A')lso, 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).

[myjunk]

@warheadsSE - Is there a newer osnax_sata_boot.tgz file available? I thought that you've fixed the typo in the disk_create bash file and added the check for the different sdX (instead of putting it as sdc by default)

[WarheadsSE]

Is there cached version? because I posted the MD5 in the OP