The re-installation procedure seems poorly documented to the extent that it's useless to me.
For example step 3 of the instructions as dictated by /sheevaplug-installer-v1.0/README.txt says to edit /sheevaplug-installer/installer/uboot-custom.txt, which doesn't exist in /sheevaplug-installer-v1.0/installer.
Second example step 4 has me copying the entirity of /sheevaplug-installer-v1.0/installer into the root of the USB drive, while the step directly after, step 5 wants me to copy individual files to the root of the USB drive, and these files seem to only exist in the path I just copied there in the previous step. This leads me to believe step 5 must be referring to files that have yet to be copied to the destination and that I should make an effort to locate these files.
The instructions state the file(s) can be found at a said location, however I was unable to navigate to the specified location until I began randomly unzipping each & every file contained in the installer package. Actually, I had to re-download fresh copies to learn this because I was originally under the impression that I had been shipped an outdated CD, being that the first link right at the top of the index.html located in the root of the CD that comes with the plugs points to "Marvell: Page Not Found" (
http://www.marvell.com/products/embedded_processors/developer/kirkwood/sheevaplug.jsp).
Once I unzip something whose name seems similar to that which I've been directed to find something in, when I look there I don't see the file I expect to find, namely a .gz file, but rather a .bz2 file named similarly to the one I'm directed to locate by the README.txt file.
When the instructions say to locate a file called uimage, instead I find a file called something-uimage-somethingsomething.
I never found anything close to modules.tar.gz.
Rather than something called uImage.initrd, instead I was able to locate a few called something-rd-somethingsomething, or also some-rd-thingsomething, and yet another somewhere else called somethingsomethingsomething-rd-something.
With that, you already have my $40 US to re-flash the plug, I'll have it to the Post Office today providing I receive the address confirmation in my email- which I expect I will since staff replies have indeed been timely & responsive thus far, thank you.
------------------------------------
I've gone ahead & unboxed the second plug I ordered, the white one- and booted it from it's internally installed OS.
I missed the output of it's first boot because it was on a different COM port than the black one.
I had to power cycle to reboot it since when I pointed Putty.exe to the right port to connect, the console didn't respond to me pressing <Enter> in it.
I caught the output of it's second ever boot & I see the same error messages stream by as I see on the bricked one, except in this case it's not affected by them- it plows through & reaches a logon prompt.
This is the part that seems to stop the black one in it's tracks:
Hit any key to stop autoboot: 0
Error! cmd : 8, err : 0201
Error! cmd : 55, err : 0201
Error! cmd : 41, err : 0201
Error! cmd : 55, err : 0201
Error! cmd : 41, err : 0201
Error! cmd : 55, err : 0201
Error! cmd : 41, err : 0201
Error! cmd : 55, err : 0201
Error! cmd : 41, err : 0201
Error! cmd : 55, err : 0201
Error! cmd : 41, err : 0201
Error! cmd : 55, err : 0201
Error! cmd : 41, err : 0201
Error! cmd : 55, err : 0201
Error! cmd : 41, err : 0201
Error! cmd : 55, err : 0201
Error! cmd : 41, err : 0201
Error! cmd : 55, err : 0201
Error! cmd : 41, err : 0201
Error! cmd : 55, err : 0201
Error! cmd : 41, err : 0201
Error! cmd : 1, err : 0201
Error! cmd : 1, err : 0201
Error! cmd : 1, err : 0201
Error! cmd : 1, err : 0201
Error! cmd : 1, err : 0201
Error! cmd : 1, err : 0201
Error! cmd : 1, err : 0201
Error! cmd : 1, err : 0201
Error! cmd : 1, err : 0201
Error! cmd : 1, err : 0201
No MMC card found
** Bad partition 1 **
## Booting image at 00800000 ...
Bad Magic Number
NAND read: device 0 offset 0x100000, size 0x400000
Reading data from 0x4ff800 -- 100% complete.
4194304 bytes read: OK
-------------------------------------------------------------
My black SheevaPlug stops here, the white one continues past the following & reaches the logon prompt:
-------------------------------------------------------------
## Booting image at 00800000 ...
Image Name: Linux-2.6.32.7
Created: 2010-02-10 21:21:03 UTC
Image Type: ARM Linux Kernel Image (uncompressed)
Data Size: 2822164 Bytes = 2.7 MB
Load Address: 00008000
Entry Point: 00008000
Verifying Checksum ... OK
OK
Is this normal for when they're new?
--------------------
As for the NFS server I've installed to the card containing the pre-installed Debian, it's working happily after having edited /etc/fstab & /etc/exports accordingly while the card was mounted from the internally-installed OS.
For the sake of whoever may arrive to this thread by means of a query for fsck:
I had to add the line in fstab that defines the / mountpoint to boot past that error.
These are the first 2 lines from /etc/fstab on my pre-installed Debian card:
#UUID=bf3fee2c-b90b-481f-b202-ea0ad3fddd9e / ext3 defaults,noatime 0 1
/dev/mmcblk0p2 / ext3 defaults,noatime 0 1
If you can't boot to the OS on that card to edit /etc/fstab from, you ought to be able to boot into the OS that's present when that card's removed. This is what I did from there:
First I made a place I can make the card available from (at the root prompt):
#mkdir /mnt/mmcblk0p2
#
Then I mount it (make the card available):
#mount /dev/mmcblk0p2 /mnt/mmcblk0p2
#
At this point I can edit the OS on the card's fstab to add the missing lines to the file:
#vi /mnt/mmcblk0p2/etc/fstab
Press the <i> key to be able to type something new, then type the following (don't try to paste with Ctrl-V, vi is an editor just looking for an excuse to screw you up- type it):
/dev/mmcblk0p2 / ext3 defaults 0 1
Then press <Esc> then <:> then <w> then <q> then <Enter>, and you should see a line about having written a bunch of bytes to a file, and be back to the root prompt.
#
Notice the missing ,noatime from the part my instructions had you type into your /etc/fstab. You can have that there if you want to help you card live longer, but I can't say to put it there because it could cause problems for you later depending on what you use your plug for.
I figure if you need my help to do this, you're noob enough to not know better than to put that in there.
