ODroid HC1 How Do I CLONE DietPi SD cards? - Boots but no Network address
I am trying to prepare a disaster recovery plan for several ODroid HC1s running DietPi.
The plan was to burn DietPi on an SD card, boot, install all needed software, and then shutdown. Clone the SD card to an .img file so that I can keep them in case the SD card or the ODroid goes bad. Then, I could just buy another ODroid HC1 and insert the SD card and continue where I left off.
So:
Why can’t I burn an SD card, boot from it on ODroid #1 device, do all setup, and then shut down the ODroid #1 and disconnect it from the network.
Then, logic says that I should be able to unplug the SD card, and plug it into a SECOND identical ODroid #2, power up, and ODroid #2 should boot and have the identity of the first machine.
Problem:
Instead, what I see is ODroid #2 will boot, and flash all of its lights, spin up its hard drive, and do about 30 seconds of boot, and then show its blue “heartbeat” saying all is well and the OS is loaded. I also see periodic flashes on the network LED indicating that the ODroid is passing traffic.
However, Even though ODroid #2 is connected via GBit Ethernet to the router port, the ODroid #2 never shows up in any DHCP IP range that I can find.
Troubleshooting Steps:
I have checked the 192.168.0.x range (pinged every IP in that range).
Because the ODroid does not have any HDMI there is no way to connect a monitor and see what is happening. Since I don’t know the IP address of the ODroid #2, I can’t connect to it via ssh.
I wrote a shell script to ping every IP address in the 192.168.0.x range, and in the 169.254.x.y range (pinged all 65000+ addresses and no response).
I logged onto my router GUI, and the router does not show that there were any requests for a DHCP address from the ODroid #2.
It looks like ODroid #2 is booting correctly, and is talking on the network periodically, I just cannot find out what IP address it is using, and therefore cannot ssh to the machine.
Remember:
I tried this with ODroid #1 turned OFF and not connected to the network, so it is not possible that there is a CONFLICT of addresses or Device DNS name (which is still the default “DietPi”).
So, even though I have not yet “cloned” a card onto multiple devices, I do want to be able to do the cloning in the future because we have many identical devices.
What I do see is that I am not even able to place a working SD card installation into a second ODroid HC1 and make it visible on the network as a backup in case an ODroid HC1 fails and needs to be replaced.
I want to make ONE SD card with all the software I need, and then for disaster recovery save a .img of the card so that I can restore it easily later on.
This is not theoretical:
Since I already had one ODroid that had hardware problems, I want to ensure that I will be able to unplug the SD card from a failing ODroid and plug the SD card right into a second identical working ODroid as a substitute device, and be able to continue working immediately.
I can’t tell if I need to edit a config file to make the DietPi SD card work in a second identical machine. (maybe the SD card has some hardware-specific ID embedded in some configuration file?).
Hardware is:
Two (2) identical ODroid HC1 (Home Cloud 1) devices. These are basically the XU4 with the HDMI removed and a SATA connector and massive heatsink that acts as a 2.5 inch hard drive enclosure.
I want to use these devices as Samba and Docker. Both those services are working fine on DietPi, I just can’t make the switch over and use the already installed SD card from the ODroid that failed, and plug it into the second ODroid and get on the network.