New Life in Openmoko Phones

[Dave Ball]

Max wrote:
> Are there plans to change uSD placeholder?

No - changing uSD holder isn't part of the GTA02-core plans. 

In GTA02-core the intention is that the uSD card contains the full OS 
image including kernel.  The NAND will only contain QI, and the 
expectation is that QI won't need to be re-flashed regularly.  
GTA02-core can't start if the card is missing, and there's no 
possibility of swapping out the card while the phone is switched on.

Thus the uSD is rather like a standard PC's OS hard drive, and rather 
unlike 'removable' media types.

This is how some folk are using the uSD at the moment, with one or 
multiple distro images on an uSD card.  Upgrading a distribution, or 
fixing a broken install is then possible by removing the uSD and 
mounting it in a regular PC, without necessarily re-flashing through 
dfu.  With GTA02-core, each distro can have a kernel (& modules etc) 
it's matched to, because the kernel is part of the distro's filesystem 
image.  This also means that our "internal storage" is upgradable, as 
new uSD devices become economical etc.

One thought is that future phones should include two uSD cards - one 
'internal' for OS/kernel etc. and one that is 'removable' for data 
storage/exchange - although this is out of scope for GTA02-core.



All the best,

Dave