microSD content after moving to SSD?

[Temar]

I have a cubietruck board and successfully moved my Armbian installation from my microSD card to my SSD.

 

I would like to clean up the microSD card now and shrink it to a smaller size, so I can move the content to a smaller card. What do I actually need on that card to be able to boot to SSD? Just the '/boot' folder or does the boot loader need any other data to do its magic?

 

 

[Igor]

You need u-boot loader and /boot directory.

[Temar]

That explains why it does not work :-)

$ dpkg -l '*u-boot*' | grep ii
ii  linux-u-boot-cubietruck-next 5.24            armhf        Uboot loader 2016.11
ii  u-boot-tools                 2014.10+dfsg1-5 armhf        companion tools for Das U-Boot bootloader

$ dpkg -L linux-u-boot-cubietruck-next
/.
/usr
/usr/lib
/usr/lib/linux-u-boot-next-cubietruck_5.24_armhf
/usr/lib/linux-u-boot-next-cubietruck_5.24_armhf/u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin
/usr/lib/u-boot
/usr/lib/u-boot/platform_install.sh

^^

Are you talking about that u-boot loader or do I have to install it somwehere to the new SD card? Like GRUB or LILO?

 

 

EDIT:

Found http://linux-sunxi.org/Bootable_SD_cardwhich describes how to write the bootloader to the SD.

 

 

I tried to clone the SD card by copying the first MB and then reseting the partition table, but that didn't work either:

$ dd if=/dev/sdf of=/dev/sdg bs=1M count=1

$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdg bs=512 count=1

$ dd if=/dev/sdf of=/dev/sdg bs=446 count=1

$ parted /dev/sdg
(parted) mklabel msdos
(parted) mkpart primary ext4 1048576B 100%

$ mke2fs -L ROOT -t ext4 /dev/sdg1

$ mount /dev/sdg1 /mnt/sdg1
$ cp -a /mnt/sdf1/boot /mnt/sdg1/
$ umount /mnt/sdg1

Will try the proper way from the homepage tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

[Temar]

Hmm, I can't seem to get this to work, my cubietruck just won't boot. Usually the green light flashes a few seconds after powering it up, but with my new card it does not.

 

Here is what I did, with /dev/sdg being the SD card I'm trying to prepare:

## cleanup SD card
$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdg bs=1M count=1

## write u-boot
$ dd if=/usr/lib/linux-u-boot-next-cubietruck_5.24_armhf/u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin of=/dev/sdg bs=1024 seek=8

## reread partition table
$ sfdisk -R /dev/sdg

## create maximum size Linux partition 1
$ cat <<EOT | sfdisk -L --in-order -uM /dev/sdg
1,,L
EOT

## format partition
$ mke2fs -L ROOT -t ext4 /dev/sdg1

## mount and copy data
$ mount /dev/sdg1 /mnt
$ cp -a /boot /mnt/
$ sync
$ umount /mnt

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong here?

[Ford Prefect]

Hi

Am I right in assuming that in that configuration after boot it would be possible to remove the

boot SD card to use the interface for other purpose ?

I am thinking of moving armbian to an usb2 hard drive.

[Temar]

Yes, you can unmount and remove the card.

 

However, you will no longer have the contents of the /boot directory available. When updating your system or installing a new kernel you have to insert and mount the card again or you will get problems.

[Ford Prefect]

Thanks

In fact the card will be in most of the time it is so easy to loose them when not in use