Installing ubuntu on USB disk

[Nitish Jha]

Hello,

i finally got my Pandaboard. very nice board btw , i was able to get Ubuntu 10.10 running through the SD card using the prebuilt images. In the FAQ (http://omappedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_on_OMAP_FAQ#I_want_to_install_Ubuntu_on_external_USB_hard_disk_instead_of_sluggish_SD_card) its suggested that to improve speed a USB disk could be used. I am trying to do this but am running into problems

1] i generated the new boot.scr pointing to the correct partition on the USB disk. I also copied the contents of the SD card to the USB disk partition

   this works and the pandaboard starts to load ubuntu from the USB disk

2] around the end of the startup process the screen goes blank and i can't see anything.

  pressing Ctrl + Alt + F1 brings up the text console through which i am able to login but when i try to run any command with sudo it says "can't access /etc/sudoers permission denied". I think there is a permission issue on the files when i copied them from the SD card to the USB disk . This might also be causing problems as it unable to read the xorg conf ?

I have used the command that is suggested in the FAQ

i wanted to know if anyone else has run into this issue or if anyone else has been successful in running ubuntu from the USB disk. Any suggestions are welcome regards

Host Machine: Ubuntu 10.10

Pandaboard: Ubuntu 10.10 Stable build

Regards,

nitish 

 

[Stehle, Vincent]

On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 5:50 PM, Nitish Jha <nkj...@gmail.com> wrote:

i wanted to know if anyone else has run into this issue or if anyone else has been successful in running ubuntu from the USB disk. Any suggestions are welcome regards

Hi,

I am using an USB HDD on a daily basis.

You need to modify /etc/fstab, /boot/boot.script and /etc/flash-kernel.conf (for UUID). Then you need to run flash-kernel (in a chroot) and reboot.

Best regards,

V.

[modyrater]

You have entered the nightmare zone. I had this issue at work installing Ubuntu to a desktop. I used some bootargs suggestion I googled and found

I didnt document it. I recently built 2 machines at home one went smooth one is still sitting there

the common factor was a nividea graphics card.

 

BTW you need a native version of Ubuntu installed onto USB to replace the one on the SD

 

what version of the installer are you using

[Gokul.C]

use command cp -rfvp <source> <destination>

This should work out.

If not use command dd if=/dev/sdX of=/dev/sdY

where sdX is the mmc partition and sdY is the USB disk

--
Gokul.C

[Dechesne, Nicolas]

On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 7:05 PM, modyrater <mark.la...@gmail.com> wrote:

I recently built 2 machines at home one went smooth one is still sitting there

the common factor was a nividea graphics card.

at least on panda we are sure this isn't because of the nvidia card ;-)

[Nitish Jha]

so this what i tried based on your responses

UUID of working SD Card = a055c329-caaf-4c96-b3dd-bd4484bed126
UUID of ext3 partition on the USB disk = 8c5640e1-8a32-4e2e-8696-f2bf456c63d6

this what i did

1] booted the pandaboard using the sd card and ran ubuntu from the SD card

than in ubuntu i modified the files mention by Vincent

/etc/fstab
# UNCONFIGURED FSTAB FOR BASE SYSTEM
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
UUID=8c5640e1-8a32-4e2e-8696-f2bf456c63d6 / ext3 defaults,noatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
#/SWAP.swap  none  swap  sw  0 0

/etc/flash-kernel.conf
UBOOT_PART=/dev/mmcblk0p1
ROOT=UUID=8c5640e1-8a32-4e2e-8696-f2bf456c63d6

/boot/boot.script
 fatload mmc 0:1 0x80000000 uImage
 fatload mmc 0:1 0x81600000 uInitrd
 setenv bootargs quiet splash ro elevator=noop vram=32M mem=460M@0x80000000 mem=512M@0xA0000000 root=UUID=8c5640e1-8a32-4e2e-8696-f2bf456c63d6 fixrtc
 bootm 0x80000000 0x81600000


namely as u can see i replaced the UUID of SD card to that of the USB disk

after this i ran the cmd (do i need to chroot to this usbdisk parition and run flash-kernel, i did not do this)
#sudo flash-kernel

after this i shutdown the pandaboard and moved both the USB disk and SD card to my host machine and copied the files over using cp -rfvp <source> <destination>

after this i put them back on the panadaboard

i still get the same error , ubuntu starts to load up and screen blank , i can enter the text console using ctrl + alt + f1 and login but i have the same problem when i try to use sudo
can't open /etc/sudoers permission denied

any help is greatly appreciated

Thanks,
Nitish

[Nitish Jha]

ok got it working 

had to use dd and that seemed to do it. also made sure to change the the UUID of the partition after the dd

Thanks for all the help provided

regards,

nitish 

[Stehle, Vincent]

On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 12:39 PM, Nitish Jha <nkj...@gmail.com> wrote:

(..)

namely as u can see i replaced the UUID of SD card to that of the USB disk

Perfect.
 

after this i ran the cmd (do i need to chroot to this usbdisk parition and run flash-kernel, i did not do this)

Yes, chroot.
 

V.

[Thomas Paillaugue]

> can't open /etc/sudoers permission denied

How did you proceed when creating the ext<X> partition on the USB
disk ?

If you have a Ubuntu machine handy, I suggest you try using the Disk
Utility (gnome-disk-utility), to recreate that partition.
In the parameters window, make sure you have the filesystem ownership
option _unchecked_.

That should do it, if not, my bad.
But I've been doing USB installs a number of times so there should be
no problem :)

[modyrater]

and if it never works install it on your SD using

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ARM/OMAPMaverickInstall

[kapa...@gmail.com]

I am havint he same problem of booting the pandaboard with usb

what I did was:
1) In replaced the UUID of SD card with that of UUID of usb partition already having the filesystem ubuntu 12.04 in
boot/boot.scr  , /etc/flash-kernel.conf , and /etc/fstab

2)chroot usb_fs partition

3) sudo flash-kernel

4) copied the /etc , /usr /boot directories
from Sd card to usb partition

The system is coming up but there is error in fs coming up (half done ):
it is not coming there is single user is supported but not the gui


Any help will be appreciated

warms regards
Vamsi


On Wednesday, February 16, 2011 10:20:36 PM UTC+5:30, nkj wrote:

H