[billingd]

Here is one way to set up an SD card from a windows PC. I prepared a linux rescue image on a USB stick then use it to format and write to an SD card.

Hardware requirements

1. A PC with at least two USB slots
2. An SD card reader. I used an el-cheapo USB device that cost AUD 4
3. An SD card. I used a 4 GB SDHC card, but a 256 MB card should be adequate
4. A USB stick of at least 512 MB capacity

Software requirements

1. A PC running Windows. I am running Windows XP SP3
2. Software to prepare a bootable USB stick from a linux ISO image. I used this one from pendrivelinux.com.
3. A linux rescue disk image. I used the Ubuntu Rescue Remix 10.04
   image ubuntu-rescue-remix-10-04.iso (177 MB)
4. A Kobo SD card image file. I used bordersau-full-1_4.tgz

Preparation

• Make sure you have the three files given above:
  1. Universal-USB-Installer
  2. ubuntu-rescue-remix-10-04.iso
  3. Kobo .tgz image
• Format the USB stick as FAT32.
• Run Universal-USB-Installer and install the Ubuntu Rescue Remix image on the USB stick
• Copy the Kobo .tgz file to the USB stick

There is plenty of help available on the web sites above.

Doing the linux stuff

The main issue users will have is working out what linux has called the USB stick and the SD card reader. This depends on both the hardware and the software.

These instruction use the conventions:

• the USB stick is file system /media/usb0 on device /dev/sdb1
• the SD card is file system /media/usb1 on device /dev/sdc1
• my Kobo image is bordersau-full-1_4.tgz

Your system may be different. Adjust the instructions accordingly.

1. Insert the USB stick in the PC
2. Restart the PC and boot from the USB stick. You may need to adjust your BIOS boot order settings to boot from the USB stick rather than the hard drive.
3. PC should boot to a linux command line
4. Now we need to work out where linux thinks your USB stick is.
5. Enter the command "mount".
6. There will be several lines of output. You want to find a vfat file system on a USB port. For me the file system is /media/usb0 on device /dev/sdb1.
7. Enter the command "ls /media/usb0" and confirm that the Kobo disk image is present
8. Insert the SD card into the card reader. PC should think for a few seconds and respond.
9. Enter the command "mount" and look at the output. It should have changed
10. You should see the SD card as a new USB device with a vfat file system. For me it was file system /media/usb1 on device /dev/sdc1
11. Unmount the SD card with the command "sudo umount /dev/sdc1"
12. Format the SD card with an ext3 file system using the command "sudo mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdc1". Be careful here. Do not make a mistake on the device name. You not want to format your hard drive.
13. Remount the SD card "sudo mount /dev/sdc1 /media/usb1"
14. Copy the Kobo files to the SD card with the command "sudo tar -C /media/usb1 -pzxvf /media/usb0/bordersau-full-1_4.tgz"
15. Have a look at the SD card: "ls /media/usb1"
16. Unmount the SD card "sudo umount /dev/sdc1"
17. Turn off the PC and remove the USB stick and the SD card.

You can reformat the USB stick and SD card under windows when finished.

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Notes

I could not get USB rescue creator from http://people.canonical.com/~evand/usb-creator/lucid/ to work.