How to install Bullseye on Cubox-i4Pro on USB or eSATA disk?

[Rick Thomas]

I recently tried installing the two-part image for MX6_Cubox-i from [1] on my Cubox-i4Pro.

It worked fine when I installed to an SD card -- I used a 32 GB card for the installer and installed to that same card. But that's kinda limited. The box has USB and eSATA ports that I'd like to be able to use, if only because they should be faster than the SD card.

Ideally, the configuration I would like to have is system (root and /home) reside on a 32GB USB flash stick, if necessary with /boot on an SD card, but ideally with /boot on the USB stick as well.

I tried doing an "expert" install with manual disk partitioning -- putting /boot on the SD card and root and /home on the USB stick -- but when it rebooted it just hung, even after power-cycling.

Same thing happened when I did a "guided" partitioning install with all partitions (/boot, root, and /home) on the USB stick.

What am I missing?

Rick

[1] https://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/armhf/daily/netboot/SD-card-images/

[Vagrant Cascadian]

On 2021-07-07, Rick Thomas wrote:
> I recently tried installing the two-part image for MX6_Cubox-i from
> [1] on my Cubox-i4Pro.

I'm pretty sure while debugging #982270 (ethernet on imx6 systems), I
managed to get a successfull install to eSATA, though not *positive*
(maybe I just got as far as testing ethernet).

> It worked fine when I installed to an SD card -- I used a 32 GB card
> for the installer and installed to that same card. But that's kinda
> limited. The box has USB and eSATA ports that I'd like to be able to
> use, if only because they should be faster than the SD card.

Yeah, I'm running bullseye on a cubox-i4pro from eSATA.

How are you powering your eSATA? I use a eSATA+USB-power adapter to plug
in the SSD, and I'm not sure if it is still required, but I have a
boot.scr on a bootable partiton on microSD which basically does:

sleep 1
usb start
sleep 3

which powers up the USB and then the eSATA has power via the USB, and
allows u-boot to load the kernel+initrd+dtb directly off of a /boot
partition on the eSATA SSD.

You can find this type of cable:

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=eSATA+Data+%2B+USB+Powered+Cable&ia=web

This looks pretty much just like the one I have:

https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1.fxzNVXXXXc1XFXXq6xXFXXX5/2-5-Inch-Hard-Disk-Drive-SATA-22-Pin-to-eSATA-Data-USB-Powered-Cable-NEW.jpg

I don't have a link for the exact one I have.

For a more power-hungry disk, you might need an externally powered eSATA
cable adapter instead... almost no experience with that.

> Ideally, the configuration I would like to have is system (root and
> /home) reside on a 32GB USB flash stick, if necessary with /boot on an
> SD card, but ideally with /boot on the USB stick as well.

That sounds less ideal than eSATA, but whatever floats your boat. :)

> I tried doing an "expert" install with manual disk partitioning --
> putting /boot on the SD card and root and /home on the USB stick --
> but when it rebooted it just hung, even after power-cycling.

What do you mean by "hung"? U-boot never displays on the serial console?
U-boot hangs at some point? U-boot loads the kernel+initrd+dtb and it's
stuck at "Starting kernel..."? The kernel loads and prints messages but
the initramfs never finds the rootfs?

A boot log would be very useful here. :)

> Same thing happened when I did a "guided" partitioning install with
> all partitions (/boot, root, and /home) on the USB stick.

I haven't worked with USB rootfs much on the cubox-i precisely because
eSATA is a better interface, but depending on where exactly it hung,
maybe you're missing modules in the initramfs...


live well,
vagrant