Install to SD without JTAG?

[elsalvador]

Hi Guys,

Finally got the guru - very noisy, but it;s here now, so v.pleased.
I'm looking to do a fair number of things, and I don't think the NAND at 512meg is going to be big enough.
Is it poss to install an OS without the JTAG? Seems from all the docs, that it's necessary to get a console via the micro-usb, which is a big pain.
I'd like to use an SD card (or an ext HD) to load up a bigger filesystem for all the stuff...

(Also like to be able to refresh the OS after I've made an almighty cock-up and messed up the OS!!)

Open to suggestions (except "buy a JTAG" ;-)
I presume, however, that if the filesystem corrupts & it refuses to boot, then there's only one path....

Ta in advance
Elsalvador the beginner!

[NewIT_Marcus]

If you could get at the environment variables, you should be able to take a crack at booting from SD card. There is a package called env-tools IIRC that attempts to read and write environment variables, but last I checked it was broken. There has been some talk at the plug computer forum of a workaround. It would not be for the faint at heart, given that if the environment variables get messed up such that you can't boot, well, you can't get back in to fix them.

To update U-Boot, you would require JTAG.

[ayshf_m]

Get a JTAG.   I'd have locked myself out of mine without it three times already.

Any sort of network cockup or fstab cockup and it'll be unreachable without serial console.

I mounted my MMC card into the filesystem (/var/log) to ensure that growing stuff didn't use my valuable NAND space. 

[NewIT_Marcus]

The workaround package is uboot-envtools, see the second page of discussion here

[Confusticated]

If you followed the plugcomputer.org posts, there is some confusion in the parameters for /etc/fw_env.config.
The (one and only one) entry below should be correct for the standard guruplug server plus. Unfortunately I cannot test as I have
a custom uboot and environment. Could somebody with a standard guruplug server plus please confirm for other forum readers.

/dev/mtd0               0x40000         0x20000         0x20000