Build appears good but card won't boot

[Ronny Nilsson]

Hi Chris
When you copy files from the good card to you "bad", is it enough to 
copy only initramfs.cpio.gz? No need for "zImage"? In that case the 
kernel probably starts but fails to recognize the filesystem. The 
console messages one might see in the HDMI output of other distributions 
at boot are disabled by default in Nard, however they are still 
available in the serial port for diagnostics. Would it be possible for 
you to get a USB-UART converter and connect it to the expansion pin 
header? The kernel will likely print the errors there. (Remember to get 
the 3.3V version).
/Ronny

---------------------------------------------------------
> Hi there,
>
> I've run the 'make skeleton' build process in a Fedora 20 32bit VM
> and all appears to go fine (apart from many many _warnings _about
> comparing signed with unsigned, no fatal _errors_), and I get the
> image files such as sdcard.img.gz in nard/images.
>
> My SD card reader comes up as sdd sdd1 sdd2 rather than mmcblk0
>
> If I use the downloaded image nard-sdcard.img.gz in the command
> zcat nard-sdcard.img.gz >/dev/dd
> sync
> I can boot the resulting SD card in a R-Pi: ethernet comes up, and I
> can log in via ssh.
>
> However, if I use the home-built one, the zcat command appears to
> work, and I can then mount the SD card and see the expected list of
> files on the SD card - almost identical to a card made from
> nard-sdcard.img.gz. But on power up, the raspberry pi gives one green
> flash on the sd card activity light (presumably attempting to load
> bootcode.bin), then nothing further happens on LEDs,  ethernet or
> (HDMI-attached) screen.  I am using the same physical SD card for
> both loads.
>
> I can "mend" the broken card by copying initramfs.cpip.gz and
> initramfs.cpio.gz.md5sum from a "good" card to the "broken" card, so
> it seems likely that the build process is not working correctly.
>
> uname -a returns:
> Linux localhost.localdomain 3.15.10-200.fc20.i686+PAE #1 SMP Thu Aug
> 14 15:58:37 UTC 2014 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
>
> Where should I start to look for my mistake?
>
> Thanks in advance for your suggestions,
>
> Chris Miller