n800 sdcard boot

n800-clone.sh

In short, this is what I did to get my N800 to boot OS2008 from MMC. My steps were:

1) upgraded my N800 to OS2008, http://europe.nokia.com/A4305010
2) enabled the Maemo Extras repository in Application Manager and added http://repository.maemo.org, Distribution: (blank) Components: free non-free
3) installed openssh using Application Manager
4) defined a root password (openssh's installer prompted for this)
5) opened xterm and:

# ssh root@localhost
# visudo

Added to following lines to the end of sudoers:

user ALL = (ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL
root ALL = (ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

6) created two (512 MB and 7 GB) partitions on my 8 GB SD card:

# apt-get install e2fsprogs
# umount /media/mmc1
# umount /media/mmc2
# sfdisk /dev/mmcblk0
/dev/mmcblk0p1:1,16384,6
/dev/mmcblk0p2:16385,,83
/dev/mmcblk0p3:
/dev/mmcblk0p4:
# reboot

7) created file systems on the card:

# umount /media/mmc1
# umount /media/mmc2
# mkdosfs /dev/mmcblk0p1
# mke2fs /dev/mmcblk0p2
# reboot

8) downloaded http://fanoush.wz.cz/maemo/initfs_flasher.tgz using the N800 browser and saved it to: /home/user/MyDocs/.documents/ (default location)

9) unpacked it and ran the script:

# cd /home/user/MyDocs/.documents/
# tar zxvf initfs_flasher.tgz
# cd initfs_flasher
# ./initfs_flash

10) installed the kernel modules:

# insmod /mnt/initfs/lib/modules/2.6.21-omap1/mbcache.ko
# insmod /mnt/initfs/lib/modules/2.6.21-omap1/ext2.ko

11) mounted the file systems to be cloned:

# mount /dev/mmcblk0p2 /opt
# mount -t jffs2 -o ro /dev/mtdblock4 /floppy

12) cloned the files from /floppy to /opt:

# ./tar cf - -C /floppy . | ./tar xvf - -C /opt

13) set up the MMC as a boot option and rebooted the device:

# umount /opt
# umount /floppy
# chroot /mnt/initfs cal-tool --set-root-device ask:mmc2
# reboot



The solution was summarized in this post by fanoush, which involves modifying (as root) /usr/sbin/osso-mmc-umount.sh

However, on my n800 running OS2008, the file actually contained different code. It might be related to the OS2008 version (not sure how to figure this out - if someone could let me know I would appreciate it).

I made similar modifications to the file as follows, changing the second line below. It seems to work fine now.

from:

Code:

if [ $? = 0 ]; then
  umount $MP 2> /dev/null
fi
  RC=$?
else
  # it is not mounted
  RC=0
fi


to:
Code:

if [ $? = 0 ]; then
  if [ "$MP" != "/" ] ; then umount $MP 2> /dev/null ; fi
  RC=$?
else
  # it is not mounted
  RC=0
fi