Lvm: New page: Some of the SMR's now have solid-state flash memory disks, instead of the laptop, 2.5" disks used on older models. This wiki page contains some notes describing how to write a bootable fl...

2008-09-29T10:15:12Z

New page: Some of the SMR's now have solid-state flash memory disks, instead of the laptop, 2.5" disks used on older models. This wiki page contains some notes describing how to write a bootable fl...

New page

Some of the SMR's now have solid-state flash memory disks, instead of the laptop, 2.5" disks used on
older models.

This wiki page contains some notes describing how to write a bootable flash disk image
(Slackware Linux) to a memory card. It assumes a Linux PC with USB flash card reader/writer,
available as ''/dev/sda''.

The commands below is implemented in this script [Clone script].
Usage:
clone <from_file.tar.gz> <to device>
<to device> can be both the USB bus (/dev/sdx) or a IDE device (/dev/hdx)

The script will place a file .cloned-at on the Flash Disk with time information for the cloning.

If you put the Flash Disk on the IDE bus and the computer will not boot (LILO - Timestamp mismatch) then the MBR on the Flash Disk must be erased as follows:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdx bs=1 count=512

'''Writing an image'''

Format the disk, with one large Linux partition:
sfdisk -L /dev/sda <<EOF
,,L,*
EOF

Create a filesystem:
mke2fs /dev/sda1 -L /

Mount the new, empty partition:
mkdir -p /tmp/u
mount /dev/sda1 /tmp/u

Write a previously created image from ''flash.tar.gz''
zcat flash.tar.gz |
tar --extract --file - --directory /tmp/u --preserve-permissions

Create a patched ''lilo.conf'', so that we can run LILO with the flash card mounted via USB.
(This won't be necessary if the image written above already contains such a file.)
patch -o /tmp/u/etc/lilo_usb.conf /tmp/u/etc/lilo.conf <<EOF
*** /tmp/u/etc/lilo.conf Tue Nov 4 21:34:44 2003
--- lilo_usb.conf Thu Dec 11 11:50:55 2003
***************
*** 4,6 ****
# Start LILO global section
! boot = /dev/hda
message = /boot/boot_message.txt
--- 4,7 ----
# Start LILO global section
! boot = /dev/sda
! disk = /dev/sda bios=0x80
message = /boot/boot_message.txt
EOF

Run LILO:
chroot /tmp/u lilo -v -C /etc/lilo_usb.conf

All done:
umount /dev/sda1
eject /dev/sda

'''Reading an image'''

Mount as above:
mkdir -p /tmp/u
mount /dev/sda1 /tmp/u

Read the partition:
tar --create --file - --directory /tmp/u --one-file-system --exclude lost+found . |
gzip > flash.tar.gz
or
tar -zcf - -C /tmp/u --one-file-system --exclude lost+found . > flash.tar.gz

All done:
umount /dev/sda1
eject /dev/sda

SMR Flash Disk Cloning - Revision history

Lvm: New page: Some of the SMR's now have solid-state flash memory disks, instead of the laptop, 2.5" disks used on older models. This wiki page contains some notes describing how to write a bootable fl...