[ubuntu-za] Vodafone webbook

[Andy Rabagliati]

On Sun, 29 Jul 2012, Stefano Rivera wrote:

> Hi tim (2012.07.29_21:16:01_+0200)
> > Clone the current configuration and do a fresh 12.04 install. What's
> > there to lose?
> 
> ARM devices tend to be more like embedded systems than normal PCs that
> can just be imaged and re-installed. ARM machines will (hopefully)
> mostly support UEFI some day, but for now, they all have different
> firmware, bootloaders, kernels, and boot restrictions.

If I can create boot media that it will recognise (perhaps an ISO9660 image
of an arm distro) then I would be more confident trashing the current
setup - but I fear that at the moment I will just brick it.

> If you don't have media that it'll boot from, you need to know exactly
> how to create it, so that you can restore your backup image.
> The kernels are updated (AFAIK) with flash-kernel, so I'd look at it, to
> see how the device finds its bootloader and kernel.

the flash drive is formatted like this :-

# fdisk -l
Disk /dev/mmcblk0: 3959 MB, 3959422976 bytes
4 heads, 16 sectors/track, 120832 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 64 * 512 = 32768 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

        Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/mmcblk0p1              33         608       18432   3c  PartitionMagic recovery
/dev/mmcblk0p2             609        1600       31744    6  FAT16
/dev/mmcblk0p3            1601      113024     3565568   83  Linux
/dev/mmcblk0p4          113025      120832      249856   82  Linux swap / Solaris

#########################

Partition 1 has no structure, but begins like this :-

0000000    0527    5619    a5e9    01d6    834e    8409    3100    4084
          ' 005 031   V 351 245 326 001   N 203  \t 204  \0   1 204   @
0000020    0090    0080    0090    0080    0e56    a7e6    0205    0002
        220  \0 200  \0 220  \0 200  \0   V 016 346 247 005 002 002  \0
0000040    6843    7261    6f6c    7474    2065    656b    6e72    6c65
          C   h   a   r   l   o   t   t   e       k   e   r   n   e   l
0000060    0000    0000    0000    0000    0000    0000    0000    0000
         \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0
0000100    0000    e1a0    0000    e1a0    0000    e1a0    0000    e1a0
         \0  \0 240 341  \0  \0 240 341  \0  \0 240 341  \0  \0 240 341
*

Partition 2 contains this (I did apt-get upgrade this AM)

root at E:~# mount -o ro /dev/mmcblk0p2 /mnt
root at E:~# ls -l /mnt
total 17974
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root     387 2012-07-30 08:39 boot.scr
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3355820 2012-07-30 08:39 uImage
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3355820 2012-07-30 08:39 uImage.bak
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5844635 2012-07-30 08:39 uInitrd
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5844635 2012-07-30 08:39 uInitrd.bak

It is not normally mounted :-

root at E:~# cat /etc/fstab 
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc           proc    nodev,noexec,nosuid 0       0
/dev/mmcblk0p3 /               ext4    noatime,errors=remount-ro 0       1
/dev/mmcblk0p4 none            swap    sw              0       0


> I know these devices are based on the i.mx51, so if you can find some
> documentation for Ubuntu on other mx51s, that may be applicable here too.
> 
> Your best bet is to prod someone at Canonical who was involved in this
> project. I don't know who was, but I can guess Ogra. And if it wasn't
> him, he'll know who.

Thanks Stefano.

Cheers,  Andy!