[IDEA] Boot XBian from USB

[Fred]

Okay that's cool. For people with the same problem and want to solve this now, here is how I fixed it. Like I already said I changed the time the init script waits for the root partition to come up, I did this by modifying the initramfs.gz that is located in /boot.

First make sure you are root:

Code:

sudo su

Create a temporarily folder where ever you want and unpack initramfs.gz into this new folder.

Code:

mkdir temp
cd temp
gunzip -c /boot/initramfs.gz | cpio -i

Now your folder should contain this;

Terminal

bin dev etc init init.save lib media proc rootfs sbin sys tmp

Now edit the init file

Code:

nano init

Search for this piece of code and change the value 10 in the while statement (the amount of seconds to wait for the root device to come up) to a value that is sufficient. For me changing it to 11 did the trick already but I changed it to 20 just to make sure (the while loop stops when the device is found so it will not affect boot performance).

Code:

# check if new root partition exists
X=0;
while [ ! -b "${ROOTDEV}" ] && [ ${X} -lt 10 ]; do   #change this value
        X=$(($X+1));
        mdev -s
        sleep 1;
done;

Now do the same for the init.save file (I honestly don't know what the difference is between these two but init.save also contains this piece of code).

After this is done we have to repack the files, you can overwrite the original initramfs.gz or create a new one to keep the old file as a backup.

Code:

find . | cpio -H newc -o | gzip -9 > /boot/initramfs-new.gz

If you have chosen to make a new initramfs file you have to change your /boot/config.txt file to point to this new file.

Code:

Old line:
initramfs initramfs.gz 0x00a00000

New line:
initramfs initramfs-new.gz 0x00a00000

This fixed the problem for me and I hope also for other people. If it does not fix your problem then I doubt your problem has the same cause, you could go back in this thread to follow the instructions of mk01 and see if your problem has the same cause. If it does you could try changing the time to wait to a even higher number.

I got the procedure of how to unpack and repack the initramfs from this site: http://backreference.org/2010/07/04/modifying-initrdinitramfs-files/