Multiple Distro's..
Al Johnson
openmoko at mazikeen.demon.co.uk
Sat Oct 24 20:12:53 CEST 2009
On Saturday 24 October 2009, Marc Bantle wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Aditya Gandhi schrieb:
> > Hi guys, I'm expecting my Free Runner in a day or two....
> > I wish to know as to how many distributions can I Run side by side ,
>
> I think the maximum is seven without extra efforts.
> A possible setup could look like this:
>
> Device
> Number Media /dev Partition Type Content
> 31, 6 NAND mtdblock6 Dist1
> 179, 0 SD-Card mmcblk0 (raw device)
> 179, 1 SD-Card mmcblk0p1 primary partition Dist2
> 179, 2 SD-Card mmcblk0p2 primary partition Dist3
> 179, 3 SD-Card mmcblk0p3 primary partition Dist4
> 179, 4 SD-Card mmcblk0p4 extended partition logical partitions
> 179, 5 SD-Card mmcblk0p5 logical partition Dist5
> 179, 6 SD-Card mmcblk0p6 logical partition Dist6
> 179, 7 SD-Card mmcblk0p7 logical partition Dist7
>
> Off course you can choose a different
> primary/logical ratio.
This is correct for uboot, though there are a few possible complications:
* Android will want to use 2 partitions, by default the first two, plus the
NAND. Then again it will (by default) install a forked Qi too, which doesn't
multiboot well anyway.
* Certain ext3 formatting options prevent uboot reading the partition, but I
haven't checked which ones. My gentoo box makes unreadable ones by default,
but fedora makes readable ones.
>
> > Is there a guide to multiple OS on freerunner?
>
> http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Booting_from_SD
>
> I just had a look. A lot of the information
> is just wrong or at least outdated. I now
> understand why most users install qi ;-)
>
> Various efforts have been made to supply a
> bootmenu for qi (e.g. by using kexec).
> I don't know whether they where successful.
>
> I still stay with u-boot for my multi dist
> setup, cause it has a boot menu. It's only
> constraint is that the kernel need's to be
> within the first 2G of the SD-Card (I just
> prepared a special subdirectory on the first
> partition). Booting kernels >2M need special
> boot parameters, but has been reported to
> work on this list.
This is itself wrong, as I'm booting kernels from beyond the first 2G, and
probably beyond 4G.
>
> > Eg:- an external small GSM antenna to enhance reception.... etc.
>
> I use one to have a signal on my Desk (antenna
> outside the window).
>
> Cheers,
> Marc
>
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