Success: MicroSDCard boots Devuan on Jornada 720

Found a free program for Win 10 and made backup disk images of the Fat32 and Ext2 partitions... called DiskGenius

I have successfully restored/overwritten several defective or deficient ext2 partitions (it is vulnerable to corruption if improper shutdown/crashes).

I found most of 99% my wasted time involved the faulty cheap off-brand microSDcards which could not be formatted. Samsung sdcards were zippy, and sandisk a bit slower...32Gb for most part. So don't get a $5 card when a $8 card will bring you success.

I have restored to old and new brand name SDcards (not micro) with no difficulty ...older cards slower on restore but run fine on J720 32Mb ram or 64Mb ram. Going to do a restore on a CF card soon. Should work fine.

So my new plan is to upload the individual partition "DiskGenius" images to HPCFactor if C:Amie goes along with the idea. Those interested can download DiskGenius (free version) and easily create the partitions without monkeying around with Linux command line, etc.

If possible, to simplify things further, I will make a full drive image and you won't have any partition work to fool around with!

Interested Factorites should download the free program above and install it and get familiar with an old sdcard or such, making say 15Gb Fat32 primary partition1,
and a 16Gb Ext2 primary partition2, and a 0.5 Gb linuxswap file partition3. Very very easy to do with the drop down menu listing partition types... it willbe a breeze, IMHO.

My image files are less than 0.5Gb for ext2, less than 0.3Gb for Fat32 (I have alot of downloaded web articles and wince backups, etc... probably near 100Mb is my stuff is deleted). I hope that is easily available for download here as I don't recall the upload limit.

This will allow me to update the ext2 partition easily as I fix or add additional features. All I ask is a reasonable donation to support the HPCFactor... and I don't mean cans of soup!! (am I right about that C:Amie? How do I go about uploading disk images). And I will include a some basic instructions. Try to dig up a pcmcia type 1 ethernet card and of course a RasPi 3B+ or 4.

We're ready... lets get you going!

joval

posted via my J720/Devuan/ethernet/RasPi "hybrid"

Well, Great! Firefox does not shut down... stays online all day long. Which means that with Devian/RasPi symbiosis, the J720 can be a dedicated pseudo-instant-on mini-desktop (literal Laptop); available anywhere at home,etc.. Start reading or listening to a site and resume doing so days later if desired...running off less than 6 watts/hr. Save files and pickup where you left off, monitor weather, whatever.
Could this mean no more dark and lonely hours in the loo??

The screen turns off automatically, saving the backlight...but pops up pronto with keyboard input. Possibilities "possibly" endless. Come and get it

joval

brought to you on a J720/Devuan/RasPi/low power "hybrid"

Edited by joval 2021-05-10 10:29 PM

Raspberry Pi has a backup program which can make a disk copy or an entire disk image. Duh, I should have thought about trying this first!! This should make creating a J720 Devian sdcard a breeze if I can get it to work... no partition or configuration modifications necessary for the rest of you. Wish me luck, this could be the Holy Grail for J720 users!! Easy Peasy, or so I hope...

C:Amie... are you out there?? Calling C:Amie.... do you read?Calling C:Amie.... do you read?Calling C:Amie.... do you read?Calling C:Amie.... do you read?Calling C:Amie.... do you read?Calling C:Amie.... do you read? over...

joval (on his J720/Duvean/RasPi).

Ok just made a disk image file using "dd via RasPi terminal command line" on a 32Gb sdcard.... img is 8Gb. I will do a restore to check its integrity and then I will try making the image without all my personal webpage files and also will try a 4Gb or smaller card... this should yield something around 500Mb to 1GB file. Thus, any of you can use this with your RasPi to create your own Devian booting sdcard. I think we have finally arrived! Easy peasy. Off to the office now, more later!!

joval

Edited by joval 2021-05-11 4:44 PM