I've been working on my Pogoplug Mobile for a couple months now, (I only get an hour or two at a time to play with it), and I've finally got it up and running.
I want to enable booting from the SD card, but I can't seem to find instructions that connects the dots for exactly my setup.
SETUP HISTORY:
I installed Arch Linux using the regular guide from here:
Pogoplug Series 4
Unfortunately the USB flash drive I used was very unstable, and would only successfully boot a fraction of the time. (I tried 6 different flash drives, until I figured out that most Kingston drives do not work well... and all my drives are Kingston).
In the process of debugging the drive I soldered in the serial debug header so I could see the boot spew, which was very helpful. (I only note this to save people asking if I've done that, and to show people this little guy:
CP2102 - it's a USB-to-UART adapter based on Silicon Labs' CP2102 chipset. [I'm not promoting this seller; I didn't buy mine from him. I just wanted to show that they are selling for ~$2, shipped.] The driver support for this chipset is fantastic... everything from Win2k to Win8.1, also MacOS X, Linux, Android... even WinCE. And it has worked flawlessly for me. I have an older one with a Prolific chipset, and the stupid thing bluescreened Win7 on me... which is a feat!)
It took me a while to find a USB key that worked with my Mobile, but when I did, I just reinstalled the rootfs on the key and everything started working again.
(Note: 'reinstalling rootfs' was another one that was hard to find instructions for. I did it from a desktop Ubuntu box, using these instructions
Reinstallation, but using ext3 instead of ext4, and replacing the .gz with the one from the original install link).
So now everything is working. Time to screw it all up again!
SDCARD BOOTING:
I found this SD card booting tutorial:
[Pogoplug Series 4] Booting Debian with Arch Linux ARM uBoot
but it seem to focus on the Pogoplug v4, which makes me afraid it may not work correctly on the Mobile.
And it says I should go update to the new uBoot first:
2014.07 U-Boot for FDT and Non-FDT Kernel
and if I want Debian I should do this one:
Linux Kernel 3.16 Kirkwood package and rootfs
... but when I look at those threads I get a nosebleed and have to go lie down for a while.
Then I found this blog post on Qnology.com that targeted the Mobile:
http://blog.qnology.com/2014/07/hacking-pogoplug-v4-series-4-and-mobile.html
but when I try this command:
#remount '/' as read only
mount -o remount,ro /
I get an error "
mount: / is busy". I looked it up, and I guess that means there are still processes using files on "/".
The thread suggested trying "
fuser -v -m /" to identify the offending processes, but I get a list of several dozen.
I feel like that is probably an indication of something being very different in the expected setup, so I stopped there.
QUESTIONS:
1. Can I follow the Qnology blog post and just skip the 'remount' steps, or will that break something later on?
2. If the answer to #1 is "yes, it will break something", what work-around do I need to perform in order to do this from a working Arch Linux install?
Thanks!