Arch Linux

casual.formality

Member

Registered: 2010-05-24

Posts: 3

Archlinux installed on SD card not booting w/o external card reader

Hello, this is my first time here, so hopefully I don't sound too much like an idiot.

I've been trying to install Archlinux to an 8GB SDHC cards (Tried on two different ones, Kingston and Polaroid).  I'm doing this via an Archlinux live CD on my Desktop (HP m9040n with Windows 7) through it's built-in SD Card reader.  The install goes nicely, and I can boot from the SD card alright on my desktop.  However, when I put the card into my ASUS eeePC 900's SD card slot, it won't boot, showing:

Buffer I/O error, dev sda, sector 16015344
Root device '/dev/disk/by-uuid/[UUID]' doesn't exist. Attempting to create it.
ERROR: Unable to determine major/minor nubmer of root device '/dev/disk/by-uuid/[UUID]'
You are being dropped to a recovery shell
     Type 'exit' to try and continue booting
/bin/sh: can't access tty; job control turned off

sda is the SD card.

Now for the fun part, when I put the SD card into a USB all-in-one card reader, and hook that up to the eeePC, it boots fine.  I followed the USB guide on the wiki site, and it boots alright on anything but the eeePC built-in card reader.  Please help   Let me know what other information you need.  Thanks in advanced.

   -Adam

sand_man

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2008-06-10

Posts: 2,164

Re: Archlinux installed on SD card not booting w/o external card reader

The UUID will be different on every machine you put the SD card into. You can try using /dev/sdX which may or may not work.

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jasonwryan

Anarchist

From: .nz

Registered: 2009-05-09

Posts: 30,424

Website

Re: Archlinux installed on SD card not booting w/o external card reader

This post has some helpful information: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=88266

Note the bit about the USB hook:

The only difference is that an SD card needs the mkinitcpio USB hook enabled.

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Arch + dwm   •   Mercurial repos  •   Surfraw

Registered Linux User #482438

Gusar

Member

Registered: 2009-08-25

Posts: 3,605

Re: Archlinux installed on SD card not booting w/o external card reader

The UUID will be different on every machine you put the SD card into. You can try using /dev/sdX which may or may not work.

Isn't the UUID tied to the partition? Well, if it isn't, something that should work then is using /dev/disk/by-label/[label_here]. /dev/sdX for sure won't work, PCI card-readers name devices /dev/mmcblkXpY, X being the card number, Y being a partition number. Hmm, this gives me an idea, it's possible casual.formality is missing card-reader modules (sdhci sdhci-pci and company) in the initrd, that's why it works with an usb card-reader, but not the internal one.

casual.formality

Member

Registered: 2010-05-24

Posts: 3

Re: Archlinux installed on SD card not booting w/o external card reader

Thanks for replying.

The USB hook is enabled.  I tried using the sd* convention, and it does technically fix the problem, but it takes almost 18 minutes to boot.  It goes through a 180 second timeout after half the commands, starting at the error posted above.  Any suggestions?  Thanks again.

   -Adam

ayok

Member

Registered: 2010-07-11

Posts: 1

Re: Archlinux installed on SD card not booting w/o external card reader

ok... so im in the exact same boat.. trying to get Archlinux on an SD card with xbmc.  had some trouble in the installer but figured it out after looking at this board and the various wikis.  however i am having the exact same issue.  i now have usb hook enabled and detecting and mounting the SD card.  however it just hangs shortly after this and after about 5 minutes will just start to work and boot normally.

this is unacceptable for a media system, and not sure what the cause is... casual.formality, did you find a solution?

thanks.

just wanted to add that im using the latest netboot installer and using UUID, system is an acer aspire revo.

Last edited by ayok (2010-07-11 11:42:09)

parintachin

Member

Registered: 2009-05-25

Posts: 72

Re: Archlinux installed on SD card not booting w/o external card reader

have you set rootwait in the kernelline in grub ?

casual.formality

Member

Registered: 2010-05-24

Posts: 3

Re: Archlinux installed on SD card not booting w/o external card reader

I never did find a resolution for this.  I ended up giving up on ArchLinux for the media/torrent server, and am now using Ubuntu 10.04 Server.  Since I was just looking for a minimalist installation in the first place, the server setup works fine.  Sorry I couldn't help more