[Gta04-owner] QtMoko v49

[Radek Polak]

On Thursday, November 22, 2012 12:57:52 PM Neil Jerram wrote:

> I'm inclined to prefer more simplicity here.  I'd like:
> 
> p1: distro 1 e.g. QtMoko
> p2: distro 2 e.g. SHR
> p3: distro 3 e.g. Replicant
> p4: media, maps, docs
> NAND: bootloader, Debian/LXDE
> 
> Demonstrating multiple OSes is important for me as part of showing off how
> cool the GTA04 is.  (And also when there are specific applications only
> provided by one OS.)

With the gta04 init you can demonstrate booting between 10 oses.

> For rescue I'm happy to use a separate SD card, so I don't need an initial
> FAT partition in my main card.

Right, then you need 2 sdcards and i have to completely rewrite the gta04 init 
code which uses config file in FAT on p1.

> If the bootloader already allows me to choose between the distros, I don't
> think I need gta04-init anymore - Radek, does gta04-init have other
> benefits that I'm missing?

Yes, i have written this like 3 times. E.g. copy paste from this [1]

* 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

i could add few more like using rootsf which is compiled as module... but it 
seems no one now wants it.

I spent a lot of time on it and i am regullary using it. Until now it was only 
solution for multiboot.

The uboot menu is nice but it cant alone do what i am daily using. Currently i 
have installed qtmoko-v48, qtmoko-v49, qtmoko with qt 4.9, qtmoko on armhf 
rootfs, SHR and media partition. It's simply not possible with uboot.

I can completely remove gta04-init from QtMoko and try to live with with just 
2 rootfses.

I can finish gta04-init changes to play nice with uboot. Please note that your 
partition where qtmoko is on p1 will work in this case too, but you will loose 
gta04-init abilities.

Regards

Radek

[1] http://lists.goldelico.com/pipermail/gta04-owner/2012-November/003370.html