Boot from external USB stick / drive?

[Stephane80]

Hello
it's possible to boot from an external USB stick / drive ?
thanks

[Stephane80]

I found process tu boot from usb hdd on a raspberry
http://www.framboise314.fr/booter-le-raspberry-pi-sur-un-disque-dur-usb/
Any ideas for A13 ?

[jwischka]

I found process tu boot from usb hdd on a raspberry
http://www.framboise314.fr/booter-le-raspberry-pi-sur-un-disque-dur-usb/
Any ideas for A13 ?

I don't think the support is there in uBoot, which is what would be required to make this work on any number of these boards which use uBoot for their bootloader (which the RPi does not).

[Stephane80]

I think I managed to make it work

I have formated an usb external hdd in ext4
in the a13 this drive is /dev/uba

copy root file system :

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sudo   dd   if=/dev/mmcblk0p2   of=/dev/uba   bs=512

created a uEnv.txt file on the sd card in the dir with script.bin
uEnv.txt content :

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root=/dev/uba rootwait

And modified /etc/fstab :
added

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/dev/uba    /    ext4    defaults,noatime    0    1

[drspastic]

this thread should be stickied.   
especially now my sdcard is held in with hot melt glue!

[anra]

Hi
What are the advantages of a usb stick?

[granite_crusher]

I guess speed, and reliability (well I wish I could put my PATRIOT RAGE USB2 stick which uses full speed of USB 2.0 (something as 30MB/s? or 480Mbs?, I still am wondering how does booting works, but do not want to burn my stick with experimenting (nowadays is impossible to get such, all sticks in market are USB3 specification what I guess makes it impossible to boot from USB 2.0 hardware; at least I had such problems on PC which have just USB 2.0)))
I am not sure but USB probably is more prone to power failure during read/write where SD gets easy corrupted.
However SD cards nowadays present in market beats USB 2.0 devices present in market in speed. there is no more fast USB 2.0 in production as best brands focuses on USB3.0.
through USB it is possible to add hdd not only usb sticks.
Is it possible to boot from USB3.0 on olimex A13?   

[JohnS]

You have to boot initially from a device supported by the Allwinner cpu.  USB is not.  You can boot from (say) SD and then continue from USB when the kernel is up.  Unless Allwinner change their cpu you simply cannot boot from USB.

John

[granite_crusher]

I thought that it is enough to have just u-boot in sd, but kernel can be in USB?

[JohnS]

Maybe - try it.

I don't think uboot supports Allwinner USB.

John