Dingoo A320 forum

Yeah, I mean, this is great, but I also think a comprehensive/clearer set of installation instructions would really help -- especially regarding preparation of the miniSD card.

I personally don't have a problem using the command line shell, but I think that most windows users never touch the thing. Just sayin'!

...please don't hate!

Fennster wrote:Yeah, I mean, this is great, but I also think a comprehensive/clearer set of installation instructions would really help -- especially regarding preparation of the miniSD card.

I personally don't have a problem using the command line shell, but I think that most windows users never touch the thing. Just sayin'!

...please don't hate!

well theres this :
http://translate.google.com/translate?p ... ry_state0=

but its still no use to me since i only have windows.

My Dingoo still hang in a blank screen after the boot 0 command... it could be that I'm using a 4GB microSDHC in a minisd adaptor?

@welshmouse: where is the problem with downloading a copy of ubuntu, burning it to a dvd and run the live-os from it? no need to struggle with the installation-progress because this way there is none.

trash wrote:@welshmouse: where is the problem with downloading a copy of ubuntu, burning it to a dvd and run the live-os from it? no need to struggle with the installation-progress because this way there is none.

i have a netbook, which means no disk drive.

Ok, this makes things a bit more difficult but shouldn't stop you. There are some linux-distros around that run from an usb-stick. So maybe you can try them.
There is even a special gparted live distro only for partion purpose.

One thing that can be done once there's a "end-user" ready version of linux available (ie, boots into an auto-configuring menu like dMenu, has the ability to read from a fat32 partition for apps, etc), is to make a disk image. There's lots of apps out there, and it'd be trivial to make a disk image for each main SD card size - 2g, 4g, 8g, and 16g. Then it's just run installer, and use dd (which has an xp port) to build the SD card.

Right now, I'm making a disk image for a 4G card (since that's all I have). Pretty easy under ubuntu:

Code: Select all

dd if=/dev/sdb | gzip -c > 4g_dingux.img.gz


It's basically a "clean" filesystem, with the 9331 kernel (change this if you need to), and the ulibc rootfs off the opendingoo site, configured to login automatically. I'll edit this post with instructions on how to write to an SD card in windows once I've got the image made.

trash wrote:Ok, this makes things a bit more difficult but shouldn't stop you. There are some linux-distros around that run from an usb-stick. So maybe you can try them.
There is even a special gparted live distro only for partion purpose.

thats just too much hastle for me. i dont have a spare partition, and im not giong to reformat my drive for this. after all, dingux right now is pretty much an OS without any software.

okay! I've tested making an image, then removing all partitions from the SD card entirely, and using dd for windows to put the image back on.

And it works perfectly! And the image file compressed from 4G down to 39g.

So, the process for making a distributable image that can be easily set up in windows is:

1) under linux, run: dd if=/dev/sdb of=dingux.img bs=1M
change the underlined portion to the actual SD card, of course.
2) compress dingux.img for transfer: tar -cvzf dingux.tgz dingux.img
3) upload image somewhere. Done!

For installing the image onto the SD card:

1) under windows, grab DD for Windows. Unpack it, and rename dd.exe to dd-removable.exe. This makes it ONLY work on removable drives.
2) Uncompress dingux.tgz with WinRar or similar into the same directory as dd-removable.exe.
3) open a command prompt in this directory.
4) type: dd-removable.exe --list
You will get a list similar to this:

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C:\a320\test\dd>dd-removable --list
rawwrite dd for windows version 0.5.
Written by John Newbigin <jn@it.swin.edu.au>
This program is covered by the GPL.  See copying.txt for details

NT Block Device Objects
\\?\Device\Harddisk3\Partition0
  link to \\?\Device\Harddisk3\DR226
  Removable media other than floppy. Block size = 512
  size is 3963617280 bytes


See that \\?\Device\Harddisk3\Partition0 entry? That's my 4G SD card. It's the only removable device plugged in, and the size is correct.

5) to write the dingux image to the SD card, the command is this:
dd-removable if=dingux.img of=\\?\Device\Harddisk3\Partition0 bs=1M --progress
You'll see a number counting up. When it completes, you'll see something like this:

Code: Select all

C:\a320\test\dd>dd-removable if=dingux.img of=\\?\Device\Harddisk3\Partition0 bs=1M --progress
rawwrite dd for windows version 0.5.
Written by John Newbigin <jn@it.swin.edu.au>
This program is covered by the GPL.  See copying.txt for details
3,963,617,280
3780+0 records in
3780+0 records out


And that's it! Inspecting the SD card under Ubuntu shows that everything's in place, and my A320 still boots to linux correctly.

So, once we have a menu system, and Dingux is actually end-user ready, it's pretty easy to make a distributable file.

Hi
I've managed to get the dual boot installed and set up the partitions on my sd card. When I try and boot up dingux it seems to all be going fine, but stops with 'Warning: unable to open an initial console.'

Anyone got any idea what could be wrong, because its unusable for me at the moment because I can't give it any commands, not even through a serial console on my computer.

Cheers

Bobob