Moving cubietruck Linaro to a „real“ hard drive

In this guide I will record the steps I completed to move the rootfs to a SSD harddrive.
When your hard disk is connected to your cubietruck power on and connect via Putty (or control directly via keyboard).

1. Check, if the hard disk was found and what kind of partitions are available:

   seiler@cubietruck:~# sudo fdisk -l

   The resuls will look somehow similar to this:

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
   /dev/sda1 * 2048 206847 102400 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
   /dev/sda2 206848 312578047 156185600 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
   

    

2. I have a sdd connected with two partitions sda1 and sda2 – sda1 has a boot flag.
3. In the next step the partitions will be deleted (yes, you will loose the data on your hdd).

   seiler@cubietruck:~# sudo fdisk /dev/sda

    

4. With „d“ followed by the partition number you can delete a partition. In my case, I used: „d“, followed by „1“ and „d“ followed by „2“.
5. To add a new partition press „n“

   Command (m for help): d
   Partition number (1-4): 1
   
   Command (m for help): d
   Selected partition 2
   
   Command (m for help): 2
   2: unknown command
   Command action
   a toggle a bootable flag
   b edit bsd disklabel
   c toggle the dos compatibility flag
   d delete a partition
   l list known partition types
   m print this menu
   n add a new partition
   o create a new empty DOS partition table
   p print the partition table
   q quit without saving changes
   s create a new empty Sun disklabel
   t change a partition's system id
   u change display/entry units
   v verify the partition table
   w write table to disk and exit
   x extra functionality (experts only)
   
   Command (m for help): n
   Partition type:
   p primary (0 primary, 0 extended, 4 free)
   e extended
   Select (default p): p
   Partition number (1-4, default 1): 1
   First sector (2048-312581807, default 2048):
   Using default value 2048
   Last sector, +sectors or +size{K,M,G} (2048-312581807, default 312581807):
   Using default value 312581807
   
   Command (m for help): p
   
   Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
   255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders, total 312581808 sectors
   Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
   Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
   I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
   Disk identifier: 0x4b1d5d07
   
   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
   /dev/sda1 2048 312581807 156289880 83 Linux
   
   Command (m for help):
   a
   1
   
   w

    

6. In the next we are formating the newly created partition:

   seiler@cubietruck:~# sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1

   Output looks like:

   mke2fs 1.42.5 (29-Jul-2012)
   Discarding device blocks: done
   Filesystem label=
   OS type: Linux
   Block size=4096 (log=2)
   Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
   Stride=0 blocks, Stripe width=0 blocks
   9773056 inodes, 39072470 blocks
   1953623 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
   First data block=0
   Maximum filesystem blocks=0
   1193 block groups
   32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
   8192 inodes per group
   Superblock backups stored on blocks:
   32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208,
   4096000, 7962624, 11239424, 20480000, 23887872
   
   Allocating group tables: done
   Writing inode tables: done
   Creating journal (32768 blocks): done
   Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

    

7. Moving the data:

   seiler@cubietruck:~# sudo dd if=/dev/nandb of=/dev/sda1 bs=1024

   Output on command line will look like:

   2048+0 records in
   2048+0 records out
   2147483648 bytes (2.1 GB) copied, 235.38 s, 9.1 MB/s
   seiler@cubietruck:~#

   This process took about 4-5 minutes to complete.

8. Finally, you need to edit the  uEnv.txt to boot from the SSD hard drive:

   seiler@cubietruck:~# sudo mount /dev/nanda /mnt/

   seiler@cubietruck:~# sudo nano /mnt/uEnv.txt
   

   Set the last line to:

   nand_root=/dev/sda1

   Save (Strg+O) and Exit (Strg+X)

9. Last step: rebooting:

   seiler@cubietruck:~# sudo reboot

    

   Broadcast message from root@cubietruck
   (/dev/pts/1) at 19:13 ...
   
   The system is going down for reboot NOW!