Trouble booting linux

[alecnotalex]

I recently received my A13 Olinuxino WiFi and have gotten it to boot Android just fine. I cannot seem to get it to boot Linux though. I formatted my SD card to ext4, and used dd to put the Debian with gui R18 (from wiki) onto the card. I put the card into the slot and power on the board, but it just boots to Android. Android tells me that it is a damaged SD card, but the same thing happened when I tried a different card. I was hoping you could help me out.

Any ideas?

[JohnS]

You didn't need to format the cards - but it also does not matter.

What does matter is how you used dd.  You need to dd to the raw entire card so such as /dev/sdb not /dev/sdb1
(or /dev/sdc etc - make sure you choose the right one!)

Can you connect to the WiFi's uart1?  You'll see debug messages if you can.  You need such as a USB to RS232 device (cheap ones on ebay use PL2303).

John

[alecnotalex]

Thanks for responding. I did dd to mmcblk0p1 not just mmcblk0. I'll try that and say how it does, but a suspect that that was what the problem was.

Update:
After making that change it works great!
Thank you so much!

[JohnS]

No worries - it's easily done.

Do try to connect via uart1 as you get both kernel messages and later a login prompt (though not on Android, by default - you can use adb instead, via the OTG port)

Connect with putty or the like at 115200 8N1

John

[vinifr]

hi, try this: https://www.olimex.com/wiki/Build_Bootable_SD_Card_with_Debian or
http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/a10_mmc_boot/

Take a image of file system or mount from scratch: http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/hacking_the_mele_a1000/Building_Debian_From_Source_Code_for_Mele/

[alecnotalex]

Thanks for responding, but I already got it working.