Booting Puppy Linux on a MK-802

One more thought, although this seems unlikely:

I’ve got an older laptop that won’t boot from an SD card bigger than 4GB. I would think that a current device wouldn’t have that problem, but who knows.

Your trials and tribulations remind me of putting Cyanogenmod firmware on my B&N Nook Color, trying to make a cheap tablet. I did finally beat it into submission, but it was a frustrating process.

I have been using Win32ImageWriter which I have used successfully in the past for other things. I know it can boot off of SD as that is how it was made, it checks the SD card slot for a OS first and then if there isn't one it boots into Android. I doubt it is a hardware problem as I can see files/save files to SD cards if I put them in there. I'll try to find another copy of Win32ImageWriter though.

Scaru, have you tried unetbootin ?
I’ve done several distros to USB with it.

give bodhi linux a try.

Head over to rikomagic. He has lubuntu that is optimised for the mk802. Ran well with the motorola lapdock until my 10 month old got his hands on it. Broke the hdmi connector. :_(

http://www.rikomagic.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=90&sid=fab181ea5241169931667dc6325b73cb

Enjoy.

Would be my recommendation too. Works like a charm with any bootable ISO I’ve thrown at it.

Does that work on an ARM-architecture device? I thought syslinux was x86 only, and unetbootins uses syslinux.

OK, let’s forget about problems with the Mk802 itself.

I downloaded one of the images (Puppy for the Mele) and wrote it to an SD card. The resulting card looks like a traditional MBR partitioned hard disk, with two partitions. The first is a 16MB FAT32 partition. It has a few *.bin files, and a uImage file that is probably the Linux kernel. The second partition is 3.7GB formatted as EXT4, and is a Linux root file system (directories /bin, /dev, /etc, /lib, /usr, and so forth).

If you have a Linux system, you could check your card to see if it resembles the above. If you have a Windows system, you would only be able to see the first partition.

Ok, I'm seeing similar files to what you say I should on a PC. If needed I can boot into Linux and tell you what I see.

Unetbootin uses an Iso rather than an img I think, but I'll give that a shot after I finish my current attempt. :)

Ok, just tried the suggestion from another forum which also didn't work so now Unetbootin is burning a copy of puppy linux onto it. After that I think I will try Lubuntu using Unetbootin.

Ok, just tried Puppy Linux when made via Unetbootin, that also did not work. It just booted straight into Android. Testing Lubuntu via Unetbootin right now.

Lubuntu via Unetbootin also didn't work, just booted straight into android. :(

If you could plug the card into a Linux box, I’d be interested to see the output of the following command:

sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdf

(You might have to change “sdf” to match the SD card reader on your system). Here’s the output for the image I burned:

Disk /dev/sdf: 8018 MB, 8018460672 bytes
247 heads, 62 sectors/track, 1022 cylinders, total 15661056 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000e41aa

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdf1 2048 34815 16384 83 Linux
/dev/sdf2 34816 7690239 3827712 83 Linux

I forgot to mention, that command would be useful for looking at the card after it is re-written with a Debian/Ubuntu/Puppy for ARM image.

I’m pretty sure that writing the card with unetbootin or using an ISO image will fail, because those methods will create a card that is bootable on a PC running the x86 architecture.

To get it bootable on the Mk802, you need the image built for the ARM platform. This is the image I’m experimenting with.

did you try the lubuntu from the rikomagic link I posted? It has wifi working and chromium installed. He also shows how to install using windows, mac and linux.

Yes, I have tried both. Right now I'm working on trying out Bodhi Linux. Either later tonight or tomorrow I'm gonna try out that command along with do something else suggested on the other forum.

http://www.rikomagic.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=461
https://www.miniand.com/forums/categories/mk802

i dont know if you have ran across either of those pages… may help

Ok, Bodhi linux booted up. :D Now I just need to get it on the wifi, install chrome, and then connect to my printer. Making progress!

Ok, I got Bohdi installed but the damn wifi won't work. :( So I posted here.

Yay, that’s progress :slight_smile:

I saw on a couple of pages that running the command “depmod -a” as root, then rebooting, was needed to get Wifi going.