[Avila] recover entire flash image

[devel]

Well, I've just had a chance to come back to this over the past few days. I 
was trying just the simple JTAG method to upload the image to a USB stick. I 
burned that image then to a cd and attempted to write the image to flash on 
another board. However, the attempt failed. The verify of the flash.exe came 
back with no errors but when I rebooted the board I got no response from it. 
I tried this twice with the same outcome.

I'm not sure what I would have done wrong during the process. So if anyone 
has any thoughts, I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

BTW, I should mention that the orginal image is modified in some ways. I 
modified redboot so I "could" upload a kernel/ramdisk image to a Redboot MTD 
partition from linux and I also created a 3rd Redboot partition for config 
files.

Travis

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Loft" <Loft at nc.rr.com>
To: "Avila" <avila at lists.unixstudios.net>
Sent: Friday, June 09, 2006 11:48 AM
Subject: Re: [Avila] recover entire flash image
Subject: [Avila] > devel wrote:
>
> Travis,
>
> Smiles are good!
>
> Tim's right about JTAG speeds.
>
> Even thoug I'm a JTAG lover, I very rarely use it because it's really 
> slow.  Flashing Redboot and debugging hw/sw are great uses of JTAG.
> Restoring the flash is simple IMHO. Here are a couple easy ways (assuming 
> you've got a working Redboot, if not JTAG is the answer):
>
> 1) Have a CF with a Linux kernel, rootfs, and images. Just load the kernel 
> from Redboot and boot to Linux on the CF.  At the point you can overwrite 
> the entire flash.
>
> 2) Do the same thing loading the kernel and rootfs over the network.
>
> 3) If you've got a GW2348 with USB, load a kernel which boots directly to 
> the rootfs on the USB stick/drive.
>
> #3 is the way I've been running 99% of the time as USB disk performance is 
> nearly  30X the CF access.  CF is around .6-.8MBs and USB to as decent 
> disk does 15MB+.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Tom
>
>> Excellent. Yes, all of this brings a smile to my face. For one, its 
>> Friday, and, this whole process working with the on-board flash and 
>> building the ramdisk image and so forth has been very enjoyable.
>>
>> I would like to try Tom's method at some point so I can get a feel for 
>> that, sounds interesting.
>>
>> My idea I had was to get it using the J-tag, just like Tim mentioned. 
>> Pulling that image to a floppy wouldn't work obviously, so my idea was to 
>> use a USB stick with the startup disk on that to obtain the image. I 
>> don't have any PCs here that is a non-NTFS Windows machine so I can't 
>> write it to a hard drive. So I would need a PC that can boot off a USB 
>> drive and a USB drive that is bootable. I understand that some are not 
>> capable of being a boot device.
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>>
>> Travis
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tim Harvey" <tim_harvey at yahoo.com>
>> To: "Avila" <avila at lists.unixstudios.net>
>> Sent: Friday, June 09, 2006 10:29 AM
>> Subject: Re: [Avila] recover entire flash image
>>
>>
>>> You can also use jtag to pull off the entire image, although be prepared 
>>> to let
>>> it run overnight (very slow).  That's by far the simplest method.
>>>
>>> Another method possibly requiring a little more work would be to use 
>>> Tom's
>>> method or a variation by booting a kernel/rfs via tftp that was setup to
>>> configure the entire flash as a single mtd partition thus eliminating 
>>> the need
>>> to figure out where to pad the image.  You can do this by including 
>>> certain mtd
>>> modules and passing specific commandlines.  If this is too much for you 
>>> resort
>>> to the jtag method.
>>>
>>> Tim
>>>
>>> --- Loft <Loft at nc.rr.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> devel wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Travis,
>>>>
>>>> I'm glad I could bring a smile to your face. The world can use more of
>>>> those.
>>>>
>>>> I may not have been crystal clear in my last post, but here goes.
>>>>
>>>> My capturing and concatenating the mtdblock0, mtdblock1, mtdblock2 and
>>>> the last block (usually 128K) with padding of 0xFF in between you'd 
>>>> have
>>>> a full image that you could JTAG on any compatible Avila board.
>>>>
>>>> With the proper kernel configuration and tools you could actually write
>>>> the whole-shebang from Linux.
>>>>
>>>> Hope this helps and puts an even bigger smile on your face.
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>>
>>>> Tom
>>>> > Well, I'm quite serious actually lol. I would like the ability to
>>>> > reproduce this image on another board with one shot, so I wouldn't
>>>> > have to keep re-entering all the redboot commands and such to get a
>>>> > duplicate system up and running. Thanks.
>>>> >
>>>> > Travis
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Loft" <Loft at nc.rr.com>
>>>> > To: "Avila" <avila at lists.unixstudios.net>
>>>> > Sent: Thursday, June 08, 2006 6:55 PM
>>>> > Subject: Re: [Avila] recover entire flash image
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> >> devel wrote:
>>>> >>> Hey list,
>>>> >>>
>>>> >>> Anyone have any tricks to obtain the entire flash image from an
>>>> >>> Avila board? Redboot, kernel, ramdisk, all of it in one image.
>>>> >>> Obviously the image wouldn't fit on a floppy, at least mine (12MB
>>>> >>> used) won't lol. Thanks.
>>>> >>>
>>>> >>>
>>>> >>> Travis
>>>> >>>
>>>> >> Last I check (a while ago) the first three partitions had that
>>>> >> (Redboot, kernel, ramdisk).  I think the whole thing was around
>>>> >> 4-5MB.  All you need to do is "dd" /dev/mtdblock0 1 and 2.
>>>> >>
>>>> >> You could then tarball up the binary images.
>>>> >>
>>>> >> You'd just be missing the information in the eeprom.
>>>> >>
>>>> >> It really depends on how serious you are about capturing all the
>>>> >> state data.  There's also a partition at the end of flash that has
>>>> >> the Redboot partition information and command line stuff.
>>>> >>
>>>> >> Cheers,
>>>> >>
>>>> >> Tom
>>>> >>
>>>> >>
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>>>> >>
>>>> >
>>>> >
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>>>>
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>>>
>>>
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