OpenWRT x86 Style Disks and Booting

For this experiment EXT 4 will be used (as opposed to SquashFS)

For Cloning a Drive

Copy the MBR (GRUB Stage 1 and Partition Table): dd if=/dev/sdX of=/dev/sdY bs=512 count=1

Copy the (GRUB Stage 1.5, containing the CORE.IMG file): dd if=/dev/sdX of=/dev/sdY bs=512 skip=1 count=511

Copy the First Partition (/boot Directory): dd if=/dev/sdX1 of=/dev/sdY1 bs=128M conv=noerror progress=status

Copy the Second Partition (/root equivalent): dd if=/dev/sdX2 of=/dev/sdY2 bs=128M conv=noerror progress=status

Flush any buffered information to disk: sync

Notes;

• if: Input File (or Device)
• of: Output File (or Device)
• bs: "How much to copy from one device to another at a time"
• conv=noerror: "Don't stop, just do what I told you to do, and don't give an excuse"
• progress = status: Show the progress of the copy process (only for a certain version of DD and up)
• sync: Write all buffered blocks to disk (just to be safe)
• If conv=sync is used an out of space error will occur.