Boot from SATA (SD Req) and installing Debian Wheezy

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by bolts25, Oct 19, 2013.

  1. bolts25

    bolts25 New Member

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    Boot from SATA drive

    Ok. Works fine on the SD card but the card won't last forever.

    It would be much better to boot from the SD Card and then run from a SATA drive.

    For that to happen we need another uBoot image I guess.

    Also will need to know which plug to purchase that will match the SATA power plug on the UDOO board.

    I would guess all this need to come from the UDOO developers?
     
  2. firehopper

    firehopper Member

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    Re: Boot from SATA drive

    supposedly you can boot from the hard drive. I cant wait to try that out. I have a sata hard drive from a laptop I've been saving for my udoo :) but I also want to get a small SSD, 32 gig should be enough for now :)

    the power connector seems to be a 2 pin jst connector. ebay or Sparkfun have them.

    I'm sure digikey and mouser also have them.
     
  3. josolanes

    josolanes New Member

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    Re: Boot from SATA drive

    Man I really want to play with the ability to use the SD just as a bootloader and continue elsewhere. It could, potentially, open up other doors as well - I'm thinking the possibility to install from a USB CD drive using the bootloader to begin the install process elsewhere, for instance, onto the sata drive as well

    I'm not part of the UDOO team but I'll see if it's possible to use GRUB or similar to boot the system and allow it to be modified during my time off after this work week

    EDIT: I'm wondering if something like this, for instance, is doable: http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/art ... rub_intro/
    ^ This is what I plan to attempt next days off. This may allow installing from USB drives or USB cd drives, etc as well and should allow the ability to use a SATA drive (since GRUB would simply point to the correct drive to continue booting). If this happens to work I'll be picking up a SATA drive soon after for better performance and longevity as well
     
  4. bolts25

    bolts25 New Member

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    Re: Boot from SATA drive

    All good comments, but that is not moving us forward at all.

    I am sure some of the HW/SW UDOO Team members must be watching the forums?

    I am sure they could tell us exactly what the power connector is. Perhaps even provide a Mouser/DigiKey number?

    I am sure they could confirm if the Quad will boot from SD then continue from SATA?

    If it can't do that now, I am sure they could build a UBOOT to do that.

    Team UDOO - Help us to help ourselves. Please.
     
  5. andcmp

    andcmp New Member

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    Re: Boot from SATA drive

    Hi bolts25, it is possible to boot from the microSD and then run the OS from a SATA drive and you don't need a different uBoot, but you have to change some uBoot's environment variables. A guide about how to do that will be available on our wiki shortly.
     
  6. andcmp

    andcmp New Member

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    Re: Boot from SATA drive

    You can run the OS from an external hard drive but you'll need to boot from the microSD card.

    Correct! ;)
     
  7. josolanes

    josolanes New Member

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    Re: Boot from SATA drive

    Excellent, that's exactly what I'm looking for! :)
     
  8. Lifeboat_Jim

    Lifeboat_Jim New Member

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    Re: Boot from SATA drive

    I have a cheap SSD standing by, just waiting for the board of course!
     
  9. ags131

    ags131 New Member

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  10. josolanes

    josolanes New Member

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    Re: Booting from SATA and Debian Wheezy

    I'll definitely be trying this tomorrow :cool:

    Glad you were finally able to post a topic too! :)
     
  11. andcmp

    andcmp New Member

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    Re: Booting from SATA and Debian Wheezy

    Hi ags131,

    first of all, thanks for your contribution.
    We need to be really clear about booting from SATA because actually booting from SATA is not possible. Only the Kernel and the File System could run from an external SATA drive but the uBoot needs to be on the micro SD.
    I see that in your tutorial you explain this well, but maybe the titles you did choose are a little misleading.

    Could you please change to something more clear?

    Thanks
     
  12. Totalslaughter

    Totalslaughter New Member

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    Re: Boot from SATA drive

    Got it working with help from the tutorial that got put up. I am running off a 120GB msata mushkin ssd now in a msata to 2.5 sata adapter. I deleted all files except the boot folder from microsd card and restarted to verify it working. Can tell things are loading faster and more responsive for sure.

    Couple notes that were missing from the tutorial at - http://www.elinux.org/UDOO_boot_from_sata
    and might be helpful to others.

    I used win32disk in windows to write the ubuntu img to the ssd then booted UDOO from microsd and plugged ssd into UDOO with usb adapter to copy over the tarbar and extract it through the command line.

    When connecting to UDOO through com port and micro usb cable from another computer to change the boot device you use the micro usb port on the far left side of UDOO. Not the one right next to the hdmi port. I was able to use the serial monitor in arduino ide on my windows computer, just make sure to select the com port and set speed to 115200 or it will be gibberish.

    Also the first time I restarted UDOO it lagged and then spammed so I was unable to press a key to stop the auto boot. Just do it again and time it to start sending a character a few seconds after the last shutdown messages about all remaining processes will be terminated in 2 seconds.
     
  13. Lifeboat_Jim

    Lifeboat_Jim New Member

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    Re: Booting from SATA and Debian Wheezy

    Nice work Ags.

    @Andcmp - booting from SATA for quads on the roadmap for next year at all? Would be highly desirable.
     
  14. ags131

    ags131 New Member

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    Post edited to hopefully be a bit more clear, the imx6 is capable of booting from SATA, but I don't think the current SPI NOR uboot has it supported, (if SPI-NOR is even being used) some boards such as the Boundary Devices boards have a uboot that checks for SD and SATA, maybe that could be something to add in the future?
     
  15. ags131

    ags131 New Member

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    Re: Boot from SATA drive

    @Totalslaughter Thanks for those other pointers, I will be sure to add those to the tutorial. :)
    And now that I'm editing it, I should have clarified that you do NOT have to use the tar method if you already have a system there. (Such as by using DD)
     
  16. ralphie79

    ralphie79 New Member

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    Re: Boot from SATA drive

    Just confirming that I have it working on a 1TB Seagate SSD drive that I had lying around. Was a a bit of stuffing around to copy the system files over without another linux pc (not knowing much about linux or trying another way in windows). So managed to make another micro sd card UDOO boot and copy the original one on a usb card reader to my new sata drive. You do notice the difference in speed loading stuff. Thanks for the tutorial on the wiki pages!
     
  17. Thnesko

    Thnesko New Member

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    Re: Booting from SATA and Debian Wheezy

    Did i miss something?? Does booting from SATA not work on the quads? I ask because im having trouble with booting from SATA, it keeps just booting from SD event thought the variable is set?
     
  18. firehopper

    firehopper Member

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    Re: Booting from SATA and Debian Wheezy

    it wont boot from sata, yet.. it requires the boot info from the sd card (the uboot) but then its supposed to pull everything else from the sata if you have the env variable set.
     
  19. Flint

    Flint New Member

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    Re: Booting from SATA and Debian Wheezy


    :? So is it just a simple u-boot change that is needed, or is there hardware changes to get this thing to boot from a hard drive? I have 160GB drive ready (out of a defunct laptop), whenever the boot order is fixed.
     
  20. the1cyrus

    the1cyrus New Member

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    How about a tutorial on booting into linux or android?
     

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