Booting from SD card using GRUB on hard drive

[argie]

Interestingly enough, my laptop's BIOS works just fine for booting off a USB drive, but the manufacturer says that they have no plans to update it to allow booting off the SD card reader. Unfortunate.

From the LiveCD, the SD card is recognized right off.

Hmm, I'll try that later then. Exams this week.

[specialcharacter]

Wow, snap. I have exact same laptop and have been trying to boot from sd card so I can get it booting quicker.

Does anyone know if using vor's method of using a /boot partition on a hard drive looses the benefit of speeding up boot time?

[sdennie]

Only 2 or 3 files totaling about 10M worth of data need to be read off the hard drive before the boot process would pass control onto the SD card so, I don't think you'll notice the difference between this hybrid setup and a pure SD solution.

[specialcharacter]

Bah. I tried your suggestion Vor, but it cannot find the volume. I couldn't see the drive in /dev/disk anywhere so I assume it isn't loaded until later.

Is there a way to get round this, or find more information about the problem?

[sdennie]

Bah. I tried your suggestion Vor, but it cannot find the volume. I couldn't see the drive in /dev/disk anywhere so I assume it isn't loaded until later.

Is there a way to get round this, or find more information about the problem?

My guess is the kernel modules for the SD reader aren't in the initrd image. I don't have an SD card with me at the moment so can't test this but, edit the file /etc/initramfs-tools/modules and add the following lines to it:

mmc_block
mmc_core
sdhci

Make sure you have a backup kernel before doing the following (it should be safe but, it's best to have a backup kernel if this goes wrong):

sudo update-initramfs -u

Reboot and see if you can use the SD as the root partition now.

[specialcharacter]

Phew, got it! Cheers Vor, I wouldn't have had a chance without your post!

I had to add 2 other modules for it to work, ricoh_mmc and sdhci_pci. I'm not sure if ricoh_mmc is needed, as I added it before trying sdhci_pci.

mmc_block
mmc_core
sdhci
ricoh_mmc
sdhci_pci

Now just need to download the normal DamnSmallLinux instead of the embedded version. I'll be back to let you know about improved boot time!

[anfy]

I'm trying to do something similar on my aspire one... how do you point the /boot folder to the SD card? Can I do the same thing, but put the /boot folder in an existing Ubuntu partition? (in another folder, like /boot2 or something)?

[PavelMan]

Guys! I have an exact same setup -- XPS1330 with build-in card reader.

Just booting from a flash drive and trying to add the card's UUID (as it shows up when already booted into Linux) does not help. This device is not recognized at that stage yet.

So yes, I need to move my windows partition on a hard drive a bit and make some room for at least a /boot partition there.

But I do not have a complete understanding what else should be there. Instructions above mention editing something in /etc -- does it have to be on that partition as well?

Those who managed to pull this off -- please, help me to create a little guide, "how-to" on this topic? It would be super cool to be able to do such a thing, since may people hate a usb dongle sticking out...

Please, help.

[parti]

Hello.
I were able to install Ubuntu on a diskless (broken ATA bus) netbook using the information in the posts here.
To sum things up, this is what I did:
1. Install Ubuntu using:
/ on sdcard
/boot on USB Memory
Installing GRUB on the USB memory.
2. Reboot into installer cd, "try ubuntu".
3. Mounting sd card as /mnt
4. Mounting usb memory as /mnt/boot
5. chrooting into /mnt
6. editing /etc/initramfs-tools/modules, adding the modules (including tifm_sd)
7. update-initramfs -u
8. Reboot!

Not too specific on commands and such. Ill edit it to provide the commands that I used if someone asks.
Thanks for the thread!

[JigglyWiggly_]

I will bump this, BECAUSE ALL OF YOU DESERVE AN AWARD. Got it working