General NAS-Central Forums

Hm. Re-reading the wiki and some forum articles I think it's perfectly possible that the '1st-32MiB file' doesn't contain a partition table. For the EMC imager stick the box only needs to boot. The bootscript in the (original) initrd re-creates the partition table. So there doesn't need to be a partition table to start with.
You can just create one, if you first save the MBR code area. That is needed by the rather simple bootloader in the SoC:

I've tried your code but it didn't have any effect.. Looking at the wiki page I tried the following different approach. It at least seems to leave the partition table intact, I'm however not so sure if the bootstuff is still perfectly fine.



Edit: well that seems to keep the partition table intact but it does break the rest.
I've also tried booting it without a partition and just the magic stuff on it. The NAS hangs; so that confirms that it indeed tries to boot from the HDD!

No effect? THe idea is that you create a partition table with fdisk. How can that have no effect?
Shouldn't the value of seek and skip be the same? An you still need the code area. No idea if that will be preserved by a partition editor.

I've been going about this completely wrong. Rereading your answer apparently the MBR area contains code needed to boot.

Should I create a normal ms-dos partition table or a GPT table, because the Wiki also speaks of a GPT area.

I'll try your exact instructions this afternoon instead of misinterpreting it myself thanks!

Edit: My collegue found this topic about booting Arch Linux on the 782x entirely from Sata. The sector offsets etc all seem to be the same so I'll be trying that first.

It doesn't matter. The data in the CodeArea makes the SoC to find the 1st stage bootloader on sector 34. the 1st stage bootloader finds u-boot @154, and so on.

The partition table is only important when Linux wants to read it. And Linux can read both GPT and MBR.

But of course, make sure the 1st partition starts at 32MiB+.

Hello,

Ive done:

and then I followed these instructions


and edited /etc/rc (added telnet daemon)
but I'm stuck (as a newbie) on how to make proper rdimg.gz from the mounted initrd.d. Can you pls poin me (does regular gzip will suffice?)

After that I have a question - if I'll manage to login via telnet, how to invoke firmware flashing ?

I did it like this



It seemed to work, mkimage gave the same header information on the old rdimg.gz file and this newly created one.

done that however Iwas expecting that NAS would obtain ip from dhcp and nothing happened.
I dod not do partition for logs as the MBR was faulty (as discussed earlier)

I can confirm that this works. I've got a magic drive with a single partition on it as well now.

are you using Shuttle KD20 or other oxnas based device?

The KD20

so to sum up, my steps were:

was your procedure any different ?

Except for the fact that afterwards I did the


to create a partition on the disk. FYI the only thing I've got going on right now is the KD20 not booting up and hanging with just a blue light. And when I remove the disk it boots from the nand.
So I still have a long way ahead I guess, I've had trouble opening up the case otherwise I might have the stuff laying around to fix a serial cable.

and your disk has ms-dos or gpt partition table ?