Were you using Linaro-media-create to put things onto the SD card or some other route?
Yes.
created the master card using `linaro-media-create`
booted it once and added some secret sauce to it.
duplicated that card to 20 cards using `sfdisk` and `partimage`. (Half of those cards did not boot)
used `gparted` to create a new partition table on one of the failed cards (the new second master) used `rsync` to copy the contents of the first master to a second master reran the duplication process
repeated the step above for the remaining failed cards
ended up with 3 master cards with the exact same filesystem contents and very nearly identical partition tables, but different disk geometries (head, cyl, sector).
AJ ONeal
On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 12:48 PM, AJ ONeal coolaj86@gmail.com wrote:
I have a few inter-related issues:
Why would one kernel boot a card that another kernel can't? Why would a card's disk geometry matter for boot? Who is a good manufacturer for getting hardware-identical cards in bulk? How can I probe the actual "disk geometry" of an sd card?
I bought 100 Transcend SD cards a little while ago and duplicated them
with
an OpenEmbedded-based filesystem (linux-2.6.36). There were a few "bad" cards that I threw out, but the success rate was acceptable.
In the next round of 40 SD cards I used a Linaro-based filesystem (linux-2.6.39) and had about a 50% failure rate when testing that the
cards
would boot, which is absurd. There kernel reports: [ 1.003204] mmcblk0: unknown partition table However, the cards would mount and show files just fine. I reduplicated one of the non-booting cards with an OpenEmbedded
filesystem
and then it booted. Weird!
After some investigation I found that using `gparted` (instead of
`fdisk`)
to create a new partition table and then `rsync`ing the contents of the original filesystem resulted in a booting Linaro card. Rinse and repeat and I ended up with 3 images which only vary by the disk geometry as reported by `fdisk -l`:
50% -- 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 974 cylinders 40% -- 2 heads, 4 sectors/track, 1957632 cylinders 10% -- 247 heads, 62 sectors/track, 1022 cylinders 1 card still didn't boot
I'm lost. Please advise. AJ ONeal
Non-booting kernel message [ 0.923309] Waiting for root device /dev/mmcblk0p2... [ 0.957885] mmc0: host does not support reading read-only switch. assuming write-enable. [ 0.982025] mmc0: new high speed SDHC card at address b368 [ 0.988494] mmcblk0: mmc0:b368 USD 7.46 GiB [ 0.993957] mmcblk0: detected capacity change from 0 to 8018460672 [ 1.003204] mmcblk0: unknown partition table [ 1.036926] VFS: Cannot open root device "mmcblk0p2" or unknown-block(179,2) [ 1.044433] Please append a correct "root=" boot option; here are the available partitions: [ 1.053344] b300 7830528 mmcblk0 driver: mmcblk [ 1.058959] Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs
on
unknown-block(179,2)
Booting kernel message [ 1.122070] mmc0: host does not support reading read-only switch. assuming write-enable. [ 1.146087] mmc0: new high speed SDHC card at address b368 [ 1.152557] mmcblk0: mmc0:b368 USD 7.46 GiB [ 1.158020] mmcblk0: detected capacity change from 0 to 8018460672 [ 1.166351] mmcblk0: p1 p2 p3 [ 1.259674] EXT3-fs: barriers not enabled [ 1.265411] kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds [ 1.271331] EXT3-fs (mmcblk0p2): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode [ 1.278686] VFS: Mounted root (ext3 filesystem) readonly on device
179:2.
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-- Regards, Tom
"We want great men who, when fortune frowns will not be discouraged."
- Colonel Henry Knox
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