[Buildroot] Problems loading buildroot image to CompactFlash

[Bernhard Fischer <rep.dot.nop@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Mar 21, 2007 at 05:09:35PM -0500, William Somerset wrote:
>Hello,
>
>I'm having problems getting a BuildRoot Image to boot on a compactflash.  I
>got grub installed on the disk but whenever I try to boot the CompactFlash,
>I just get a blank screen.  I tried just dd'ing the image to the
>compactflash but I get 'missing OS' whenever I boot the compactflash that
>way.
>
>Also, I tried installing the Linux Kernel from the menu and it had problems
>installing.  This is from getting the copy of buildroot from svn at around
>2pm CST today (March 21, 2007).  I loaded the grub prompt, changed the root
>to the compact flash and got grub to install to the compactflash but I guess
>without a kernel, it's kinda pointless.  Should I just make 1 partition or 2
>(one for boot, one for main)?  Also, when I tried making an ISO, I got
>errors from it not having some place to copy to.
>
>Does anyone have a walkthrough or anything to help me out getting a
>buildroot image to compactflash?

- install grub unto the CF
- mount the CF at (e.g.) /mnt/l0
- tar -C /mnt/l0 -xf /my/rootfs.$myarch.tar
- sync && umount /mnt/l0
- qemu -snapshot -hda /dev/$cf_device -boot c
- enjoy

Procedure varies depending on your target, of course. Since you're ia32
compatible the above works nicely; Alternatively you can provide a e.g.
512k disk to let grub boot from and use a jffs2 as -hdb or something
like that.