Flash disk cloning
SMR Flash Disk Cloning
2012 version with Xubuntu 12.04
NB! not finished yet, but:
Make new boot image
Update image on one of the 4GB sticks, then make new imagefile
- put 4GB stick on another linux (with GRUP installed)
- mount the disk on a local directory as root, e.g.:
sudo bash mkdir -p disk mount /dev/sdb1 disk
- copy everything on disk to an image file (it takes several minutes):
cd disk tar -czf ../image/smrXubuntu20120715.tar.gz * cd .. umount disk
Clone image to (new) disk
Make a new bootable disk from existing image:
- put the destination disk on the system (if not already there), list disk devices:
ls /dev/sd* /dev/sda /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb /dev/sdb1
- use df to which disks are mounted (e.g. /dev/sda1 is mounted at /) :
df Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/sda1 55805420 50781108 2228604 96% /
- Use fdisk -l /dev/sdb1 to see if it has the expected size.
- reformat the disk (using all space (the first 2 ,,) for a linux partition (the L), and bootable (the*):
sudo bash echo ",,L,*" | sfdisk -L /dev/sdb
- make ext4 filesystem of the new partition
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb1
- mount the new partition
mount /dev/sdb1 disk
- now write the image to the partition (this takes several minutes)
cd disk tar -xzf ../image/smrXubuntu20120715.tar.gz
- now to the boot sector part - this may be optimized
- as it should refer to the new system, then chroot is needed
- and maybe some remount of system file-systems is needed too:
for i in /dev /dev/pts /proc /sys /run; do sudo mount -B $i /mnt$i mount -B /dev dev mount -B /dev/pts dev/pts mount -B /proc proc mount -B /sys sys mount -B /run run
- then engage the new system as the root filesystem and install grub from here
chroot . grub-install /dev/sdb
- then you may check the result
grub-install --recheck /dev/sdb
- you may now halt the system and remove the new disk
halt
problems observed
it seems like the first boot using the new disk fails to get wireless and nis (yp-bind) up and running, which results in that it is impossible to login.
A new reboot seems to solve the problem.
New in 2011 version
In order to support both VIA Nehemiah and Intel Atom based platforms two kernels must be included in the smr flash image.
- 2.6.32.20-rtai supports multicore systems and hyperthreading
- 2.6.32.20-rtai-up supports single core systems and is optimized to the Via processors
A new clone script called multiclone must be used when this image is flashed. The script is in the root folder of rt15.
Flash cloning procedure on rt15
Via processors using CF-card flash-disks:
- Log in as root (If you don't know the password abort immediately)
- Insert the CF-card in the reader in the front of rt15.
- Check the device name the card is given: tail /var/log/messages. Usually it is /dev/sdb.
- Go to the image folder: cd image
- Locate the image you would like to burn (usually the newest one), for instance: flash-2011-01-01.tgz
- Start the procedure:
root@rt15:~# ../multiclone flash-2011-01-01.tgz /dev/sdb via
NB: Note the two dots in front of multiclone
The procedure for cloning Intel Atom images is the same, except atom must be stated last in stead of via as in:
root@rt15:~# ../multiclone flash-2011-01-01.tgz /dev/sdb atom
Old description
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
