Fast Restoring and Cloning Linux and WinCE via CF cards

I've had great success with the latest versions of the bootldr, 2.18.33
and later, in very quickly restoring (swapping) either WinCE or Linux
onto my iPaq's. For those with a CF card, this is a viable alternative
to loading over the serial console. This procedure takes under 5
minutes, far better than the hour of serial XMODEM download.

Be sure to, in WinCE, install bootblaster and do a CF-Backup before
trying this.

I tried this with a large CF memory card (128mb), and the current
bootldr (2.18.35) has trouble with reading the file directory. Hopefully
it will be fixed in later releases.

I have a 340mb IBM Microdrive, with the following files:
    BootBlaster_1.18.exe
    CompactFlashBackUp (as a result of WinCE's CF-Backup, pocketPC
2002)
    wince.img (gunzip'ed the wince_image.gz from bootlaster - 16mb)
    linux.jf2 (any of the available familiar boot.jffs2 files, or
                if cloning linux, a saved copy of my own configuration
(see below)

From the bootldr, you can restore either WinCE or Linux, and continue to
run without restoring the WinCE parrot loader. In WinCE, there is a
problem with bootldr, that doing a soft reset in WinCE with bootldr, you
will do a factory reset - you lose installed configuration, programs and
data. But you can do a CF-Restore if you have the file
CompactFlashBackup.

    Here is the procedure for restoring either WinCE or Linux, in the
bootldr.

    partition reset
    sleeve insert
    pcmcia insert
    vfat mount 0
    vfat read 0xc2000000 osfile.img (either wince.img or linux.jf2)
    program root 0xc2000000 0x00fc0000 (you can eject the CF card before
this step)
    Then, do soft reset. For WinCE, run CF-Backup and do a restore from
CF.

To save my own configuration of linux for cloning, I
    dd if=/dev/mtdblock/1 of= (some mounted partition, NFS or
microdrive)
    Soon, I think the bootldrs will be able to 'vfat write root' to CF
or other drives,
    allowing the clone copying to be all done in the bootldr.

Mark Lewis
Received on Mon Apr 01 2002 - 18:57:18 EST