Should the Netconsole work after starting of the Kernel?

Hello,

I had a running debian install on one flash drive.
But as this showed some boot problems (it didn't reliably cold-boot), I opted to exchange it with another drive.
As the sizes of the drives were different, I copied the files with
cp -ax /source/ /dest/

Now, with the new flash plugged in, I can't get the system to boot.

Here's the output of the netconsole:

socat STDIO UDP-LISTEN:6666

U-Boot 2010.09 (Oct 23 2010 - 11:49:22)
Marvell-Dockstar/Pogoplug by Jeff Doozan
Hit any key to stop autoboot:  0
(Re)start USB...
USB:   Register 10011 NbrPorts 1
USB EHCI 1.00
scanning bus for devices... 3 USB Device(s) found
       scanning bus for storage devices... 1 Storage Device(s) found
Loading file "/rescueme" from usb device 0:1 (usbda1)
** File not found /rescueme
reading /rescueme.txt

** Unable to read "/rescueme.txt" from usb 0:1 **
Creating 1 MTD partitions on "nand0":
0x000002500000-0x000010000000 : "mtd=3"
UBI: attaching mtd1 to ubi0
UBI: physical eraseblock size:   131072 bytes (128 KiB)
UBI: logical eraseblock size:    129024 bytes
UBI: smallest flash I/O unit:    2048
UBI: sub-page size:              512
UBI: VID header offset:          512 (aligned 512)
UBI: data offset:                2048
UBI: attached mtd1 to ubi0
UBI: MTD device name:            "mtd=3"
UBI: MTD device size:            219 MiB
UBI: number of good PEBs:        1752
UBI: number of bad PEBs:         0
UBI: max. allowed volumes:       128
UBI: wear-leveling threshold:    4096
UBI: number of internal volumes: 1
UBI: number of user volumes:     0
UBI: available PEBs:             1731
UBI: total number of reserved PEBs: 21
UBI: number of PEBs reserved for bad PEB handling: 17
UBI: max/mean erase counter: 1/1
UBIFS error (pid 0): ubifs_get_sb: cannot open "ubi:rootfs", error -19
Error reading superblock on volume 'ubi:rootfs'!
stopping USB..
(Re)start USB...
USB:   Register 10011 NbrPorts 1
USB EHCI 1.00
scanning bus for devices... 3 USB Device(s) found
       scanning bus for storage devices... 1 Storage Device(s) found
Loading file "/boot/uImage" from usb device 0:1 (usbda1)
1 bytes read
Found bootable drive on usb 0:1
Loading file "/boot/uImage" from usb device 0:1 (usbda1)
1431460 bytes read
Loading file "/boot/uInitrd" from usb device 0:1 (usbda1)
4884595 bytes read
## Booting kernel from Legacy Image at 00800000 ...
   Image Name:   Debian kernel 2.6.32-5-kirkwood
   Image Type:   ARM Linux Kernel Image (uncompressed)
   Data Size:    1431396 Bytes = 1.4 MiB
   Load Address: 00008000
   Entry Point:  00008000
   Verifying Checksum ... OK
## Loading init Ramdisk from Legacy Image at 01100000 ...
   Image Name:   Debian ramdisk 2.6.32-5-kirkwood
   Image Type:   ARM Linux RAMDisk Image (gzip compressed)
   Data Size:    4884531 Bytes = 4.7 MiB
   Load Address: 00000000
   Entry Point:  00000000
   Verifying Checksum ... OK
   Loading Kernel Image ... OK
OK

Starting kernel ...

Here it ends.

Is this expected, or should there be more?
Is there any way to further debug this without a serial connection? (The rescue system is working, if I unplug the flashdrive).

Or do you see my mistake? Was the cp -ax wrong?

Regards,
Hendrik

netconsole only works in uboot. a bootable disk has a bootsector, which you did not copy.

Boot sectors can (but don't have to) contain boot loaders. They have no other significance. On the Dockstar, UBoot is the boot loader, and it's not read from a partition boot sector, but from the first 500kB of Flash memory. UBoot doesn't care about partition flags either. It loads the kernel and optionally an initial ramdisk from a filesystem as specified in the boot scripts.

Netconsole can work in the kernel, but the kernel has to support it and it must be enabled with a kernel parameter that gives the kernel the source and target IP address and the target MAC address.