Dual booting

[usagi]

Hey,
Got multi user on mobian os. Now looking I way to dual or multi boot. Looked at what could find. Megis seems the
best option but not sure what it means "My modem power management driver is used for safe and reliable handling of modem power, except on distributions that use the new eg25-manager program.". The other one was pineloader but not sure how the os images are loaded. One
option would be to write a simple boot my self but not sure where to begin. Wouldnt need to be anything complex just the option
to choose between to os on boot.

[usagi]

Does someone know is it possible to multiboot from sd card with tow-boot?

[wibble]

I think it depends what you mean by multi-boot. With tow-boot on eMMC and no boodloader on uSD you can use volume-down to boot the OS on the uSD. To go beyond that I think p-boot is the most practical option as it can show you your options on the display, which u-boot doesn't support on the PinePhone. It might be possible to make a u-boot config that indicates the selected boot option by LED colour but I'm not certain, and it seems impractical. The comment about modem power handling is regarding the ~30s between telling the modem to shut down and removing the power. That's needed by the Quectel firmware because it has a filesystem mounted read-write, so needs to shut down correctly to avoid potential filesystem corruption. The open firmware doesn't have this limitation. Megi took a kernel driver approach to managing this, while eg25-manager does it in userspace.

[usagi]

So then you cant use ex. the stock mobian os installer with p-boot?

[wibble]

It depends on exactly what you want to do with it, which you haven't explained.

[usagi]

It depends on exactly what you want to do with it, which you haven't explained.

Sorry forgot about it. I would like to be able to use one os for normal daily usage and other one which would have less installed programs to be used for example for banking. One possibility would be to install the other on the emmc but I would like the ability to boot form the sd card.

[wibble]

Easiest would be tow-boot and the daily usage OS on the eMMC, and the slimmed down OS on the uSD with the bootloader removed. That's more or less what the stock mobian and I think PmOS are heading for. Installing p-boot on the uSD should also work, but I think you would need to write your own config for it each kernel upgrade. p-boot seems like overkill if you just want to pick between eMMC and uSD though.

[shulamy]

I think it depends what you mean by multi-boot. With tow-boot on eMMC and no boodloader on uSD you can use volume-down to boot the OS on the uSD. To go beyond that I think p-boot is the most practical option as it can show you your options on the display, which u-boot doesn't support on the PinePhone. It might be possible to make a u-boot config that indicates the selected boot option by LED colour but I'm not certain, and it seems impractical. The comment about modem power handling is regarding the ~30s between telling the modem to shut down and removing the power. That's needed by the Quectel firmware because it has a filesystem mounted read-write, so needs to shut down correctly to avoid potential filesystem corruption. The open firmware doesn't have this limitation. Megi took a kernel driver approach to managing this, while eg25-manager does it in userspace.

 does tow-boot works for you? (to boot arch on sd from tow-boot on emmc)

 ezik