On Sun, 2009-08-02 at 18:55 -0700, Bazooka Joe wrote:
On Sun, Aug 2, 2009 at 6:01 PM, Patrick
O'Callaghan<pocallaghan(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 2009-08-02 at 20:49 -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
>> >/dev/sdb is not a directory. Unless your setup is *very* nonstandard,
>> >it's a device, in fact a disk drive. In the worst case the app might
>> >want to seek on it, but there's no reason it shouldn't be able to
do
>> >that.
>>
>> Another item that has blown on by is that /dev/sdb is the whole
>> device. One
>> must have at least one mountable partition setup on the device, and
>> the
>> filesystem suitably initialized and mounted before the file can be
>> written.
>> There are some exceptions to that rule, generally involving either
>> an .iso
>> image, or 'dd' which can make an identical image on any writable
>> device at
>> least big enough to hold the image.
>
> I was assuming the latter, given that the OP's version uses dd. However
> it's starting to look like he may not be entirely sure of what he's
> doing.
>
What I am doing is: installing an os (first fedora but gave up because
of bugs then cent) in Virtualbox tweeking cpu settings. Getting it
configured to run headless + amd geode processor + other things. then
once it is ready I run
VBoxManage internalcommands converttoraw
.VirtualBox/HardDisks/cent.vdi cent.raw
which converts the Vbox image to a raw image readable by dd. Then w/
dd i write it to the cf card. put the cf card in my embedded appliance
and see if it works. I have been tweaking and reinstalling for the
last day or two. I got cent working today on this board.
http://www.pcengines.ch/alix2d2.htm
I'm slightly surprised you can get the VM to match your hardware closely
enough, but interesting nonetheless.
With a 4G image it took about 45 min to convert to raw then write to
cf card. Because I kept redoing it I was looking to shorten that
conversion time.
on current ubuntu if I just type VBoxManager i am given a list of
option one of which is converttoraw.
% VBoxManage |grep convert
VBoxManage convertfromraw <filename> <outputfile>
VBoxManage convertfromraw stdin <outputfile> <bytes>
%
So no "converttoraw" here, using
VirtualBox-3.0.2_49928_fedora11-1.x86_64
poc