Booting from partition which isn't the 1st and/or in left sd slot

[badcloud]

I think this should be a feature in the R-Shoulder boot menu.

Also, is there some in depth page explaining autoboot.txt's intricacies?

...and lastly

I remember there being a program for openmoko phones which allowed the user to place an "once only" boot request from a choice of installed os', sort of a "hot boot menu". Is there something similar for the pandora, e.g. a pnd which loads a list of distros installed on nand/sds, etc.? I think this would be of much use, as swapping sd cards between slots can become tedious.

Lemme know what y'all think

 

[badcloud]

I apologize for the barrage of posts on my part lately

 

[urjaman]

I think this is about as much as there is documentation

http://blogs.distant-earth.com/wp/index.php/openpandora-booting-nand-layouts-and-general-firmware-fluff/#end

I think we have added to that the /boot/bootmenu.txt (not sure of that name, but something like that) in NAND which i think was just a list of  name|commands .

You could potentially put your boot-from-second-SD command there.

After this you'll need to just consult u-boot docs or sources.

Modifying the hard-coded behaviour (eg. making it automatically look from the second SD too, etc.) requires you to modify u-boot and re-build it and flash it to your NAND.

If somebody wants to hack u-boot i did some u-boot hacking here:

https://github.com/urjaman/pandora-u-boot

 

[levi]

My Pandora is currently booting from partiton 3 in the left slot (physically the first partition, but logically the third one created), which I achieved by putting a boot.txt there and R-shoulder booting from it. If I rename that to autoboot.txt, it doesn't find it though, so it seems rules for autoboot.txt are stricter than those for boot.txt.

 

[urjaman]

You just proved that you didnt even read what i linked to. I am disappoint.

 

[levi]

You've got me! I had the tab open from the previous night and didn't see your response.


That proves it. It's the logical partition order it's concerned with when loading autoboot.txt, not how they're laid out on flash. So even though my boot partition is the first one in terms of the space used, it's the third in the MBR/whatever, so it's not suitable for autobooting (but it can use a boot.txt fine).