E02 not booting from external HDD but OK with Flash Drive

[dragonfly77]

My level is a newbie on Linux, and i do apologize if I ask some stupid question.

I have a running Pogoplug P21 V3 for a month now. Whilst i had small problem on getting it up, and it took me time to realize what that pink box warning on the "How To Install" page, i was able to get it up eventually.
It has an external Harddisk attached to it and is running Apache, Samba and Webmin.

Now, having delighted with it, i bought another Pogoplug, but this time is a E02. Which i thought is better in terms of hardware specs and the kernel. I had another external 2.5inch HDD, plugged it in and followed the instructions which seems easier this time as compared to V3.

When it rebooted:
1) It booted only to the Pogoplug OS
2) running "pacman -Syu" says "command not found" (duh of course)
3) But the extenal HD is plugged in to the USB port nearest the Ethernet.
4) running "fdisk -l" says that it can see the /dev/sda1 as 320GB
5) The external HDD is formatted as EXT3

After reading (and trying very hard) to understand on the posts here on this forum, there were 2 possible explanations that i came up with:

1) E02 seems to be picky on what is plugged in on its USB
2) I need to add the PRE_UP="sleep 15" to the /etc/network.d/wired-eth0

TROUBLESHOOTING DONE:

With item 1 above, i plugged in a 16GB USB flash drive, started from scratch and it worked! , I see the "Alarm" and pacman is in there.

Unfortunately, i intend to use this E02 to install Lighttpd or Nginx, and will be used as my local file server as well so the 16GB (or even 64GB) would not be enough. I really need to make this E02 to boot off from external HDD.

MY QUESTION(s) ARE:

A) Any thoughts or please give me directions on how can i get the E02 to boot off from the external HDD. On the item 2 above, i cannot add the code PRE_UP sleep 15 because i dont see any "/etc/network.d/wired-eth0" folder or file, and is maybe because i dont have netcfg installed or pacman installed. etc.

B)If booting off from this external HDD is not possible, then i'll settle with the fact that it can boot off from that 16GB flash drive. And im thinking of attaching the external HDD instead to the second USB port.
Can i then install Lighttpd or NGINX on the external HDD ?

thank you so far for taking time in reading this.

[moonman]

External HDD booting should actually work better. The usual problem is that instructions tell you to use EXT3 f/s while they don't tell you to change usb_rootfstype to ext3. So boot without any drive attached (into pogoplug os), ssh in and run this command:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '/usr/sbin/fw_setenv usb_rootfstype 'ext3'')

After that you should be able to boot. If not, setup netconsole to see what's up: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3355 under actiavating netconsole.

[dragonfly77]

moonman.

thanks for this quicktip.
ill try this first thing when i get home later and will post back the results.

-dragonfly77

[dragonfly77]

@moonman

hmm, just a thought, i did entered this command already when i followed the instruction on the initial setup of E02 on this page http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv5/pogoplug-v2-pinkgray. Its the number 4 on the list.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '4. Set the U-Boot variable to tell the kernel to use ext3:
/usr/sbin/fw_setenv usb_rootfstype ext3')

In any case, i'll try to execute that command again later when i get home.

EDIT: oh I see it.. yours is "sata", while the word on the command above is "usb"
told yah, i'll be asking some stupid questions.

[Socaltom]

Did you make the partition table DOS compatible?

[dragonfly77]

@Solcatom

not sure how to "make the partition DOS compatible", but i used a Windows application to format the HDD to Ext3. Something similar to this http://www.partition-tool.com/easeus-partition-manager/linux-partition-manager.htm

I am pretty confident that went ok since i also used this application to format as EXT3 for the other HDD that i used for the Pogoplug E21 and there were no problems detecting it.

[Socaltom]

If you use fdisk as the instructions directed, then it will tell you to use option o in fdisk to create a dos compatible partition table. I don't know anything about your tool, so i can't tell you if its ok or not. The best advice I can give is to try following the installation instructions completely and see if that fixes your problem.
Tom

[moonman]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dragonfly77', '@')moonman

hmm, just a thought, i did entered this command already when i followed the instruction on the initial setup of E02 on this page http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv5/pogoplug-v2-pinkgray. Its the number 4 on the list.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '4. Set the U-Boot variable to tell the kernel to use ext3:
/usr/sbin/fw_setenv usb_rootfstype ext3')

In any case, i'll try to execute that command again later when i get home.

EDIT: oh I see it.. yours is "sata", while the word on the command above is "usb"
told yah, i'll be asking some stupid questions.

[dragonfly77]

@moonman

thanks for clarifying about the sata and usb

@SocalTom

sorry, i should have made it clear of what i did exactly.
Yes, i first used the windows tool to format the external HDD as EXT3
However, after that, i followed the instructions step by step each from step 1 to step 11. So i would assume that steps 5 and step6 below would erase everything i did on the Windows tool.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')5. Start fdisk on the USB drive:
/sbin/fdisk /dev/sda

6.At the fdisk prompt, delete old partitions and create a new one:

Type o. This will clear out any partitions on the drive.
Type p to list partitions. There should be no partitions left.
Now type n, then p for primary, 1 for the first partition on the drive, and then press ENTER, accepting default values.
Exit by typing w.

[dragonfly77]

I went back to square one and started from scratch on this. Followed the steps from 1 to 11. .. still its not booting from External HDD, and its only booting to Pogoplug OS.. Although it is able to see the 320GB if i run "fdisk -l

I will be setting up a VM linux and will be testing out the netconsole. (im a little slow in Linux, so please forgive me).