mobian installed to eMMC - how to install tow-boot
09-02-2023, 02:21 AM
Thanks for the answers. The issue was forced as an update in August stopped my PinePhone from booting. After backing up the data I installed tow-boot to the eMMC and then installed the latest version of Mobian.
After I posted my questions (and just before installing tow-boot) I finally found a web page that stated explicitly that a partition on the eMMC was reserved for the purpose of the boot loader and that Tow-boot would get installed there without affecting the partition where the OS was stored. That was what I needed clarifying.
The idea of putting tow-boot on an SD card is that it would allow for easy copying of the image using dd on a desktop computer and thus easy to have reserve emegency bootable images to hand. However, I was able to copy the contents of the eMMC by connecting the phone up to a Linux box. Although it is a bit more involved than putting in a new SD card after the OS gets borked by an update copying the eMMC is easy enough a process to use to save and restore images.
After I posted my questions (and just before installing tow-boot) I finally found a web page that stated explicitly that a partition on the eMMC was reserved for the purpose of the boot loader and that Tow-boot would get installed there without affecting the partition where the OS was stored. That was what I needed clarifying.
The idea of putting tow-boot on an SD card is that it would allow for easy copying of the image using dd on a desktop computer and thus easy to have reserve emegency bootable images to hand. However, I was able to copy the contents of the eMMC by connecting the phone up to a Linux box. Although it is a bit more involved than putting in a new SD card after the OS gets borked by an update copying the eMMC is easy enough a process to use to save and restore images.