installing to eMMC

[kamm]

Hi all. I'm totally new to beaglebone and to arch, so hope this question isn't too naive.

I'm wondering why the instructions at http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv7/ti/beaglebone-black say to download and extract a new copy of the root filesystem which of course loses any new user accounts, files and other changes that may have been made to the system already installed on the SD card, rather than just copying the already-working system from the SD card to the eMMC.

I followed the instructions as far as zeroing, partitioning, and creating the new file system on the eMMC, and mounting it to /home/alarm/mnt on the running SD card system, then copied the entire running file system to the eMMC by

$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', 'cp -ax / /mnt')

Then installed u-boot per instruction 6 to /dev/mmcblk1 and followed remaining instructions 3 and 4 to remove the SD card and reboot from the eMMC. New system seems to be working correctly. Am I missing something?

[bulletmark]

@kamm, did you ever determine if this approach was valid?

Certainly seems an easy way to clone SD->EMMC. If it works then I guess cloning from EMMC->SD would also work the same way, and thus it would also be easy to clone one BB EMMC to another BB EMMC using EMMC->SD->EMMC?

[WarheadsSE]

Generally, the installation guide is about installing, not migrating

[bulletmark]

@WarheadsSE, I absolutely respect your statement which is correct. The Arch ARM installation procedure (at least for the BB) is superbly simple, clear, and efficient. Much better than copying raw large fixed size SD dd images around the place and then having to resize etc which other's like Debian require.

The OP's question is really about an independent (although related) issue which amounts to "is it possible to copy the root file system of a running Arch ARM system?". That is a valid and interesting question to which we hope the experts here may respond to? If it works then it allows a simple way to copy the eMMC to/from SD card to clone systems etc, as my post asked.