UPDATED (June 2021): 17-distro multi-boot image for Pinephone (incl. 3GiB variant)

[ryo]

Seems like xnux.eu is not accessible at this moment.
Anyone else having this issue?

[megous]

I've written a bit about "how to adapt multi-boot image to your needs".

https://xnux.eu/log/#046

You can do a bit more with this multi-boot image than just try the distros and throw it out.

[c3l@]

I've written a bit about "how to adapt multi-boot image to your needs".

https://xnux.eu/log/#046

You can do a bit more with this multi-boot image than just try the distros and throw it out.

Never tried the multiboot image before but I was wondering could I use p-boot to make an existing distro on SD multiboot, say Mobian, then choose from the p-boot menu to boot either Mobian or a 2nd distro I already have on the internal flash.

Also when plugging in a charger can the p-boot menu boot straight into charging mode without booting up the phone OS? I find it irritating that the
Pinephone boots up every time I plug a charger as i have to wait for it to boot up, then log in and shut down to save draining the battery
whilst the phone is charging.

Does this mean there now an easy way of doing all this with this new improved p-boot?

[megous]

I've written a bit about "how to adapt multi-boot image to your needs".

https://xnux.eu/log/#046

You can do a bit more with this multi-boot image than just try the distros and throw it out.

Never tried the multiboot image before but I was wondering could I use p-boot to make an existing distro on SD multiboot, say Mobian, then choose from the p-boot menu to boot either Mobian or a 2nd distro I already have on the internal flash.

Also when plugging in a charger can the p-boot menu boot straight into charging mode without booting up the phone OS? I find it irritating that the
Pinephone boots up every time I plug a charger as i have to wait for it to boot up, then log in and shut down to save draining the battery
whilst the phone is charging.

Does this mean there now an easy way of doing all this with this new improved p-boot?

Yes. That's what p-boot bootloader was made for from the beginning, and that's how users I know about are using it. This multi-distro image is [also] a demo for p-boot.

With regards to the charger: p-boot will show the boot menu half a second after you plug in the charger, menu contains the battery status. P-boot will then shut down after 10s. This behavior is independent of the distros installed.

Not sure what you mean by new and improved p-boot. You can use it like this for more than a year already.

[c3l@]

With regards to the charger: p-boot will show the boot menu half a second after you plug in the charger, menu contains the battery status. P-boot will then shut down after 10s. This behavior is independent of the distros installed.

Not sure what you mean by new and improved p-boot. You can use it like this for more than a year already.

Thanks for the reply, I was referring to p-boot-unconf and p-boot-conf which I guess are the new additions that make the process easier, anyway all good news I'm off to play  now.
Thanks again for all that you do.

[D34DP1X3L]

Sorry if there is a thread about this somewhere else. Currently using pboot with the Megi's latest kernel , I for the life of me can't figure out how to get sound to output properly ... If someone can point me to the right direction of what I'm missing any help would be greatly appricated.

created asound.conf file in arch. setting
defaluts.pcm.card 1
defaults.ctl.card 1

complied Megi's latest callaudio program , tried running it with
callaudio -s and callaudio s
all I'm getting is alot of stuff that is
is defined in state but not present on card ...
alsa mixer is showing pinephone is selected and I have lineout unmuted , tried speaker test ... still no sound. let me know of anything that might help or I have missed
Cheers. Also please let me know of the correct place to post to if this is the worng place. Love the Megi kernel btw it boots so fast... just want to get around this sound issue.

[megous]

Sorry if there is a thread about this somewhere else. Currently using pboot with the Megi's latest kernel , I for the life of me can't figure out how to get sound to output properly ... If someone can point me to the right direction of what I'm missing any help would be greatly appricated.

created asound.conf file in arch. setting
defaluts.pcm.card 1
defaults.ctl.card 1

complied Megi's latest callaudio program , tried running it with
callaudio -s and callaudio s
all I'm getting is alot of stuff that is
is defined in state but not present on card ...
alsa mixer is showing pinephone is selected and I have lineout unmuted , tried speaker test ... still no sound. let me know of anything that might help or I have missed
Cheers. Also please let me know of the correct place to post to if this is the worng place. Love the Megi kernel btw it boots so fast... just want to get around this sound issue.

Call audio always uses /dev/snd/controlC0 and that may not be the right "audio card" if you have more than one.

If you have more /dev/snd/controlC# files you can try changing callaudio.c code to a different one.

EDIT: I've added card autodetection to the program: https://megous.com/git/pinephone-call-audio/ So maybe try the new code.

---

Anyway, that code is mostly useful for phone call audio setup. For normal playback/recording, you'd have to extend it a bit I guess.

The routing defined by that program is documented here https://xnux.eu/devices/feature/audio-pp.html

You can use that same diagram to configure your own routing using alsamixer. It's not enough to enable line out. You have to enable the digital audio paths from the digital audio interfaces (that's where aplay/arecord get data to/from) via digital mixer before the DAC, enable DAC by setting some gain on it, etc.

---

One such working setup: https://megous.com/dl/tmp/31d31f81781a31dc.png

[c3l@]

Creating custom Multi-boot Images for beginners.

Well I made my own custom Multi Boot image and it was surprisingly easy using the instructions from here:-

https://megous.com/git/pinephone-multi-boot/about/

To download the file structure you need in your home directory, in terminal type

Code:

git clone https://megous.com/git/p-boot
git clone https://megous.com/git/pinephone-multi-boot

and create a build directory in home and drop the latest kernel in.

Removed all the distros in pinephone-multi-boot/distros/ except Mobian and Jumpdrive and added my favorite Nemo instead of Manjaro.

updated the README and config files to refer to the latest Nemo distro and Bookworm for Mobian also ran the script in p-boot/theme/
to generate a new menu splash pic for Nemo

Noticed an issue with one of the scripts.

Needed to change references from /p-boot/.build/ to /p-boot/dist/ in mkimage-boot.sh or you get a file missing error.

Created the multi-boot image, flashed, booted up and it works fine didn't bother to expand the partition yet as there was quite a bit of spare
space, Nemo boots up nicely and is coming on well. Very happy I can now plug my Pinephone in and just leave it to charge.

Just follow the instruction on https://megous.com/git/pinephone-multi-boot/about/
and you too will soon be creating your own multi-boot image.

p.s. Like many I am a bit nervous about playing with partitions, the best guide to expanding the partition i could find is here:-

https://xnux.eu/log/#toc-resizing-the-pa...-the-image


 btw I am Endeavour OS and I used the SUSE Studio image writer tool to flash the image to a 16g micro sd .

[D34DP1X3L]

Sorry if there is a thread about this somewhere else. Currently using pboot with the Megi's latest kernel , I for the life of me can't figure out how to get sound to output properly ... If someone can point me to the right direction of what I'm missing any help would be greatly appricated.

created asound.conf file in arch. setting
defaluts.pcm.card 1
defaults.ctl.card 1

complied Megi's latest callaudio program , tried running it with
callaudio -s and callaudio s
all I'm getting is alot of stuff that is
is defined in state but not present on card ...
alsa mixer is showing pinephone is selected and I have lineout unmuted , tried speaker test ... still no sound. let me know of anything that might help or I have missed
Cheers. Also please let me know of the correct place to post to if this is the worng place. Love the Megi kernel btw it boots so fast... just want to get around this sound issue.

Call audio always uses /dev/snd/controlC0 and that may not be the right "audio card" if you have more than one.

If you have more /dev/snd/controlC# files you can try changing callaudio.c code to a different one.

EDIT: I've added card autodetection to the program: https://megous.com/git/pinephone-call-audio/ So maybe try the new code.

---

Anyway, that code is mostly useful for phone call audio setup. For normal playback/recording, you'd have to extend it a bit I guess.

The routing defined by that program is documented here https://xnux.eu/devices/feature/audio-pp.html

You can use that same diagram to configure your own routing using alsamixer. It's not enough to enable line out. You have to enable the digital audio paths from the digital audio interfaces (that's where aplay/arecord get data to/from) via digital mixer before the DAC, enable DAC by setting some gain on it, etc.

---

One such working setup: https://megous.com/dl/tmp/31d31f81781a31dc.png

This worked like a charm , Such a great starting point. Cheers for this.

[Fred Zyphal]

If you enlarge the partition/filesystem, you can update them the regular way.

Worked fine for me using the "gnome-disk-utility 41.0" in Ubuntu (it has a disk image writer), I just wanted to comment on this one thing ... some of the distros in the image are getting old enough that they simply won't allow you to update in the regular way.

Thanks ... it's a great tool.