Connecting to board through ssh failed - reformat SD card

Question

I am trying to connect to a FOX G20 V board through ssh by typing ssh dico@foxboard. However, there is a problem with the connection because the SD card is corrupt so I am not able to connect to the board (as specified by the manual). Therefore, I need to format my SD card, i.e, erase everything in it. I don't have an SD card adapater so I can't insert the card into my Linux machine. And since I can't connect to the board, I'm wondering how I can erase the SD card memory (through terminal perhaps?). I would appreciate any advice/help.

Answer 1

It is not because the card is corrupted you cannot access it; rather the card is corrupted, so the board won't boot so there is no OS to connect to or mount the card. It's a chicken-egg situation. The board boots from the SD card; even if you erased the card, you'd have nothing to boot and still would not be able to access the card! Erasing the card is not the solution to your problem; that would leave you no further forward than the corrupted card (if it is truly corrupted and not just blank!)

You will need to re-image the card or get a replacement card. An inexpensive card adapter will probably be simpler and lower cost, and you'll need it in the long run. The on-chip bootstrap probably has only minimal capability to load and run secondary bootstrap code from the card, it cannot perform card management such as formatting.

You can purchase replacement pre-loaded cards here and instructions for loading your own from Linux are here. You can get a simple card reader for less than the price of these cards however.