Pogo does not boot when second HDD is attached

[telzey]

It's a little heretical to mention OpenWRT here, but you and I have slightly different goals with the pogoplug.

I just want to have a simple NAS device that can run alongside my tomato-based wireless router.

Having a small r/w root ubifs filesystem on NAND is more my goal. There will seldom be writes to the rootfs, and CE did use SLC NAND instead of MLC, so there shouldn't be a problem with the occasional write.

Once the ubifs is confirmed stable, it'll be easy for anyone to put ALARM or Debian on there.

Because of the work you've done we can all boot from HDD in an emergency and so it is impossible to completely brick pogoplug. That makes it more fun to experiment

[WarheadsSE]

Lol, I know. At least you didn't say gentoo

[dinjo]

Would this be available once the new kernel is ported ?

[WarheadsSE]

Some people just don't read.

The problem is NOT the kernel. It is the uboot!

[dinjo]

So any plans when it can happen in foreseeable future ?

[WarheadsSE]

Yes, as we work on the 3.1+ kernel, we are also looking to porting the USB drivers into the latest uboot. Takes some time though, as this is all free time work.

[Philoo]

I thought about a possible workaround but I feel this would be a bad effort/benefit ratio:
- change the boot args to load an initrd from sda1
- have said initrd on each drive
- have the initrd search for the right drive containing the rootfs and pivot root to it
- have the freshly pivoted to root release the memory used by the initrd.

this assumes the available kernel is able to load an initrd which I haven't verified

the other (low tech, immediately available) workaround is
- if plug fails to boot from the right usb drive switch it off
- remove all additionnal usb drives.
- boot from right drive
- plug the other ones.

[WarheadsSE]

Without going into gross details, loading initrd from disk = fail.

Kexecboot + search = win. Except, no kexec in the 2.6.31 kernel as it is

[Philoo]

Duly noted.

Well I guess it's difficult to complain against PLX and CE for chosing to "do one thing and one only". I haven't used my pogoplug pro long enough with the stock firmware to really have an opinion whether it did it right.

[dinjo]

Is there any progress on this has this being fixed ?