[Gta04-owner] QtMoko v49

[Radek Polak]

On Monday, November 19, 2012 08:21:08 AM Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller wrote:

> Hi Radek,
> great work!
> 
> Here are my experiences and recommendations:
> 
> I have installed it as described in [1] on a fresh SD card and
> tried to boot it on a GTA04A4 with the latest multiboot
> system in NAND.
> 
> Quite quickly the microSD/NAND/1.sh/2.sh screen appears.
> 
> But when choosing 1.sh or 2.sh nothing important happens.
> Choosing NAND makes the device reboot.
> 
> After pressing the microSD symbol, the Qt recalibration appears.
> Fine!
> 
> But there is no visual hint that QtMoko is hiding behind this
> microSD symbol...

Hmm there could be hidden e.g. SHR there :) But you are right, it could be 
more intuitive. I will try to do something with it...

> I think this is not really intuitive to use. And is this user interaction
> step and choice still useful for anything or can it be completely
> removed now with the multi-boot system in NAND?

Yes i am thinking about it. However the gta04-init has following advantages:

* you can select partition that you want to reboot to from QtMoko gui
* you can boot to subdir on partition (2 or more systems on one partition)
* it can autodetect rootfs type and it can boot e.g. from btrfs
* it can boot from extended partitions
* you can to write scripts (1.sh and 2.sh) to boot from network, squashfs or 
whatever

e.g. debian on PC is also using initramfs - it has many advantages against 
booting kernel with root=/dev/xxx rootfstype=yyy.

I am thinking what now - i really dont want to just remove it. I spent weeks 
on it and from my POV it would remove functionality that i daily use. E.g. i 
have like 4 partitions and i am rebooting between them and i dont want to wait 
for uboot, press AUX and select partition. I just want to click reboot to 
partition 6.

So i'd like these two system coexist. First thing - for next release i'd like 
to change default partition scheme for QtMoko like this:

p1 - FAT partition with uImage so that the current initramfs can work without 
changes

p2..p4 rootfs for QtMoko, SHR whatever

p5 - FAT for media
p6 - swap

This way you can have 3 rootfs paritions bootable with the new uboot system.

Maybe i could remove the need for FAT p1 partition later, but for now i'd keep 
it since it's a lot of coding and testing.


> Another observation:
> 
> with the uImage in /rootfs/boot/uImage it is not even required to copy
> the uImage to the first FAT partition any more (cp boot/uImage /mnt/p1).

Well this is gta04 initramfs feature. It copies the kernel from target 
partition (directory) and reboots with that kernel.

> A final observation - on this unit, the barometer reading was a
> little unstable. It did jump between 945 mbar (which is correct) to
> values like 750 or 796 mbar. After a while the reading was again ok.

It's known problem. IIRC kernel reports it sometimes wrongly...

> BTW: NeronGPS did work fine!
> 
> Finally, I have made a variant of 'makesd' that prepares a SD and
> installs QtMoko-v49:
> 
> <http://download.goldelico.com/gta04/20121119-GTA04-QtMoko-v49/>


Thanks!

Radek