Can't boot Marvel Sheevaplug from USB

[James Butler]

Maks Verver wrote:
> James Butler wrote:
> > Sounds similar to:
> > http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=138798
> > Apparently Scott Long is working on a fix.
>
> Interesting! Is there any way I can help debug/solve this?

Test the fix when it arrives? Scott seems to have some idea what the
problem is, and a lot of people have been bitten by it, so I'm hoping
for a fix soon(TM).

> As for running FreeBSD on the SheevaPlug: I think I will stick with
> Ubuntu for now, as I haven't been able to get FreeBSD to recognize the
> NAND storage nor the SDIO controller, and FreeBSD doesn't seem to have a
>  wear-leveling filesystem (or GEOM layer) anyway.

Well, it's debatable how necessary a special filesystem is for flash
media, although recognising the hardware would be nice I guess :-) Do
mmc(4)/sdhci(4) not support the controller?

I've seen it suggested that UFS+softupdates is about as good as a
conventional filesystem gets for flash media, because it's good at
minimising transient writes.

-James Butler
(please CC me, I'm off-list)