I'm having problems booting from the recovery USB stick I've made on the Tonido and on a Linux box. I've tried 2 different sticks (a 4GB Lexar drive and a 1GB SanDisk drive). I've made the 1000MB ext2 partitions and copied everything, but it just won't boot from the USB drive. It probably has to do with the u-Boot USB boot functionality being experimental (at least on the SheevaPlug off which the TonidoPlug is based).

Edit: Nevermind, works now.

If after I setup the external USB HDD, and all is well, I then unplug the USB-HDD and restart the Plug... what happens?

Similar question, and one that an answer might need to be known prior to me undertaking the task...

How to I reinstall a "clean" tonido instance on the Plug, if I corrupt the device, or make some mistake along the way. (I'm a Linux noob.)

Thanks!
Michael

If you unplug your USB drive and reboot, it will boot off of your internal memory. It will use whatever setup you had prior to moving to external boot. (i.e. If you had a clean install on your internal memory and then moved everything to external and from there upgraded apps, added software, etc, it will not have any of the new software).

I thought I saw a help article on re-flashing the kernel on the internal memory but now I can't find it. Hopefully someone will come along and point it out.

edit: Found the article about flashing. (here)

I am able to boot from a SanDisk Cruzer 4GB flash drive (always so far).

I just bought a Seagate external USB harddrive, but I am not able to boot using this drive. I have multiple partitions on this disk and noticed that the partition order is random (see viewtopic.php?f=37&t=776).

Coincidentally, I had trouble installing/booting linux on rackmount server this week. The boot failure message mentioned using the "rootdelay" kernel option. Apparently, the rackmount was trying to access the /dev/ structure before the devices and devmapper were done.

Trying to get this to work, I've noticed that the TonidoPlug reboots amazing fast. I'm wondering if the problem is just a timing/race condition, where the TonidoPlug is not waiting long enough for the device to be ready.

From what I've read, it appears that TonidoPlug uses uBoot (not grub/lilo). Does anyone know to put the "rootdelay" option into the kernel boot option?

TonidoPlug's u-Boot variables give it a 10 second delay, but regular hard drives that spin up are not supported by the bootloader at all...not a TonidoPlug fault, just the bootloader.

I would personally be happy with a longer bootup time if it meant I could boot from the external disk. The rootdelay is a mostly uneducated guess to a solution. I would like to test this solution, but I have not done enough homework to figure out how or what is needed.

If it is a bootloader issue, then I'm hoping someone with bootloader experience can help.

I successfully ran all the commands however I also cannot get the plug to boot from the usb drive. When I run the last command to check, it says its the 512mb flash drive based on the size.

Did anyone figure this out yet?

EDIT: After re-reading, mike, are you saying that Tonido plug will only boot from external flash disks and not hard drives?

I am able to boot from a flash drive, and I can boot from a Buffalo powered external harddrive set to the "On" position.

When the buffalo is set to "Auto" (ie. power on when host is on), the TonidoPlug will boot from the internal NAND. I also tried with a Seagate non-powered external harddrive, but the TonidoPlug boots from the internal NAND. I basically think it's a timing issue where the TonidoPlug does not wait long enough for the external devices to initialize, but I do not know how to insert a delay.

I have a similar problem, though not quite like that.

I can boot fine off a DataTraveler 16G Flash Stick when directly connected. I cannot boot off a Rocketfish 3.5" USB HD enclosure however. I have tried formatting the first partition as 4GB and 2GB to try to keep it nice and simple for the boot code, but nothing.

This enclosure has a hub inside so it can provide another two USB ports (handy). Since Tonido only has a the one USB port (and my purposes require a large drive) I tried putting the Stick on the HD's hub. It will not boot from it like that.

The hub in Rocketfish seems to be setting itself up as the first HD in the chain, and there's no way to change this apparently. I tried installing the system on a small partition on the HD, nothing. Tried turning off all bootable flags on the HD so it would have to go to the datatraveler, nothing.

The drive inside the enclosure (A Caviar green 1.5T) advertises itself as /dev/sdc. When in the hub, the Flash Stick is sdd.

When connected directly and able to boot, the Flash stick shows as sda1.

This really left me pining for another port. When I bought the Rocketfish I thought I was being so smart by getting something with a hub right on it (cool futureproofing). Now I've tried everything and I can only successfully boot the Flash Stick, never off the Rocketfish's internal drive. Dang.

I guess I could write something to chroot it on boot if there's a viable identical system on /dev/sdc1 but that would just be ugly.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

I have noticed that the rockfish usb hub I have prevents booting from an external hard drive. If I plug the drive (seagate freeagent 500M) directly it will boot.

You may be the victim of the rockfish hd hub's chipset being the same as the rockfish usb hub I have that prevents booting.