[PLUG] Partitioning an SD Card

["Eric H. Johnson" <ejohnson@camalytics.com>]

Hi all,

I have just started playing with a device similar to a Raspberry Pi or
Beaglebone called an Olinuxino. More information can be found here:
https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/A13/

While waiting for my hardware to arrive I decided to take a shot at rolling
my own kernel since I will need to modify it shortly to add real-time
support (xenomai). I was able to successfully make uboot and the kernel and
am now ready to write it to an SD card, which is where I am encountering a
problem. The complete instructions are here:
https://www.olimex.com/wiki/Build_Bootable_SD_Card_with_Debian

These instructions are for Ubuntu, although no version is specified. I am
running Ubuntu 12.04.

I am at the section "Format and Setup the SD card":
https://www.olimex.com/wiki/Build_Bootable_SD_Card_with_Debian#Format_and_se
tup_the_SD-card

The abbreviated commands are:

# ls /dev/sd 
# fdisk -u=sectors /dev/sdb1 

Within fdisk:

1. p           <list partitions> 
2. d 1       <if any partitions exist> 
3. n p 1   <create first partition as primary, ordinal 1, sectors
2048-34815> 
5. n p 2   <Create second partition primary, ordinal 2, sectors 34916 to all
remaining> 
6. p 
7. w 

Exit fdisk

# mkfs.vfat /dev/sdb1
# mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb2


The first problem was with the command ls/dev/sd, I assume it should be ls
/dev/sd*. Suffice it to say, when I insert the SD card, sdb and sdb1 appear.
My machine also automatically mounts the SD card, so I unmounted it to run
fdisk.

FDisk runs fine up to the write, where I get "Re-reading the partition table
failed with error 22: invalid argument. The kernel still uses the old table.
The new table will be used at the next reboot or after you run partprobe(8)
or kpartx(8). I run partprobe which just drops back to the command prompt
with no errors. If I go back into fdisk, my partitions are still there.
Note, they are names sdb1p1 and sdb1p2.

Running mkfs.vfat /dev/sdb1 appears to run successfully.

Running mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb2 gives and error "No such file or directory".
This agrees with an ls of /dev, only sdb1 is listed. I also tried sdb1p1 and
sdb1p2, but get the same no such file error. Also, after doing this if I go
back into fdisk and list the partitions, no partitions are listed any more.

Any idea what I am doing wrong?

BTW, for anyone interested, I have just stared a blog to document my
progress on this here:
http://lcncolinuxino.blogspot.com/

Thanks,
Eric


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