Manual Installation on SD Card

About a year ago I successfully built and installed Android cupcake on a 4GB SD 
card, with the following partitioning:

sdx1: FAT32 1GB android_dat -> EMPTY
sdx2: ext3 1GB android_system -> copied built filesystem as described at 
http://code.google.com/p/android-on-freerunner/wiki/AndroidOnSd#Copy_to_/_Update
_your_SD_installation
sdx3: ext2 8MB android_kernel -> copied kernel from /boot and renamed to 
uImage.bin

I used U-Boot to boot, from part3 and part2. Android would boot reliably though 
it was not really usable at that stage.

Now I decided to try and install the 
android-on-freerunner-cupcake-sd-stable-201101.tar.gz from the Downloads tab.

Meanwhile I use FR as my daily phone (mostly with Om or QtMoko) and did not 
want to touch the NAND or the boot loader. So I created on a new SD card 8GB 
the same partitioning as above (only with larger partitions), then extracted 
the build image there, set the permissions as above and placed the kernel in 
its own small partition.

Result: Kernel boots successfully from U-Boot, then the screen turns black (or 
rather grey) and the AUX button blinks quickly. Phone is stuck there.

My questions:
1. Is it ok to partition like that (kernel on separate partition)? In the wiki 
page it seems like everything is on a single partition, but to me it is not 
clear how that could work, since U-Boot expects the kernel in its own partition 
(see also my comment 
http://code.google.com/p/android-on-freerunner/issues/detail?id=7#c77)

2. Is this likely a HW/SD card issue? (AUX button blinking fast)

3. Any other parameters to adjust when copying a build to SD card?

I really would like to find a reliable way to install and test different AoF 
builds without having to use installation scripts which expect a particular 
configuration and/or Qi bootloader. I don't mind writing/updating a wiki page 
if I succeed.

Thanks a lot for any help.
Marco
Original issue reported on code.google.com by marcoj...@gmail.com on 9 Sep 2011 at 8:31
ghbolivar / android-on-freerunner

Manual Installation on SD Card #181
