Will It Be Posible To Boot From Usb Like A In Netbooks?

[darionapole]

Well, what the title says...

I was thinking that maybe the pandora could boot from a usb HDD/pendrive or CD/DVD drive, so one would be able to install or boot Ubuntu ARM (or whatever) without having to use a SD card.

Maybe add a "hold HOME at start up to display boot menu" to the boot loader

EDIT: even it could be posible to save the "default" boot device to the flash like BIOS do.

btw. why not have a bios to configure those things (speed at boot, RAM timmings, boot device,etc)?

 

[RajTakhar]

Theoretically this should be possible

But how you map the keys to function in this manner is up for debate

 

[lulzfish]

It hasn't shipped yet. For all we know, it does have a BIOS that lets you adjust every thing you possibly can.

:/

You can definitely boot from an SD card, USB devices shouldn't be much harder. Most modern x86 computers can do this, I don't expect ARM to magically be different.

 

[juniorm33]

You can definitely boot from an SD card, USB devices shouldn't be much harder. Most modern x86 computers can do this, I don't expect ARM to magically be different.

Not saying your wrong because I don't know, but I wouldn't say that it will magically work the same as most modern x86 computers either. Depends on the bios, 1st and foremost they where designed for low power embedded type devices (mobiles etc) so that functionality may not have been very high on the list of priorities. (plus we're talking about a hand held portable device here)
I wont be surprised either way personally.

 

[aq21]

You can definitely boot from an SD card, USB devices shouldn't be much harder. Most modern x86 computers can do this, I don't expect ARM to magically be different.

Actually USB is much harder than SD. U-boot does support USB host, but not on the OMAP3, so it is not currently possible. Until support is added, the other option is kexec.

 

[darionapole]

but with kexec you can't load anything other than a linux kernel, can you?

 

[Squidge]

It does support booting from USB, but it's not what you think it is. You have to connect it to a PC and run application software on that PC which transmits a boot file to the unit in the same way as UART boot works. It also depends on the boot configuration configured on the PCB. I don't know if Michael allows for this (I think there is a special key sequence to activate it, but that may configure only for UART boot).

Booting from a USB stick would depend on X-Loader (The BIOS which loads U-Boot) or U-Boot itself, neither of which supports OMAP3 USB booting as of yet as far as I'm aware.

 

[Pleng]

I was thinking that maybe the pandora could boot from a usb HDD/pendrive or CD/DVD drive, so one would be able to install or boot Ubuntu ARM (or whatever) without having to use a SD card.

Of course the USB booting would be a welcome feature, were it easy to implement, but it's not like using an SD card is particularly a chore.

 

[aq21]

If you must boot from USB, and do not wish to do the necessary development work, there is always Mobiadapter:

http://www.elandigitalsystems.com/adapter/mobidapter.php

 

[Aninhumer]

Surely you could just put GRUB on your primary SD, and do whatever you want with that?

 

[dflemstr]

Surely you could just put GRUB on your primary SD, and do whatever you want with that?

GRUB is x86 only.

 

[Aninhumer]

Surely you could just put GRUB on your primary SD, and do whatever you want with that?

GRUB is x86 only.

Ah, I'd assumed it was C or something.
Is there something equivalent for ARM?

 

[dflemstr]

Surely you could just put GRUB on your primary SD, and do whatever you want with that?

GRUB is x86 only.

Ah, I'd assumed it was C or something.
Is there something equivalent for ARM?

Well, there's U-Boot but it's kinda less advanced. Anyways, that's what's already used on the Pandora but as said, it can't boot from USB directly and I don't even know how easy it is to configure a menu for it, so the only way that you'd be able to boot from USB would be to bootstrap through a small Linux kernel that then boots from USB for you.