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

[walter1950]

Hello,
--
I have downloaded the multi-boot image and have now a .zst-file. How can I put it on a bootable sd-card?

Last year in December I downloaded an .img-file which I could put with etcher on an sd-card and it works.

On Ubuntu:



"sudo apt-get install zstd"



Then use your ordinary "Archive manager".



I was also searching a while for a Solution ;-)



Ciao

Walter

[Ralf]

Dear Walter, dear Avisando,

thank you, solution from Walter worked for me. Good to know that I am not the only one.

Ralf

[calinb]

Hello,

sorry to start my first post in this forum with a stupid question...
I have the pinephone since 7 months and because of no time and no SIM-card I have made only a few tests back in December.

I have downloaded the multi-boot image and have now a .zst-file. How can I put it on a bootable sd-card?

It can be a little challenging to find Megi's installation instructions.

Scroll down a bit here:
https://xnux.eu/p-boot-demo/

Resizing the btrfs file system is very much recommended.

Also see README here:
http://dl.xnux.eu/p-boot-multi-2021-06-02/

[calinb]

The latest multi-distro image was working great on my SD card until recently. For unknown reasons, multi-distro now always boots to Arch Linux ARM 2021-06-02 (terminal only) when I power it up with the power button. The only way I can access the multi-distro menu and boot something else is by unplugging and re-plugging the USB power cable or wall wort power supply. When I toggle power in this manner, I get the usual multi-distro menu with the Arch Linux ARM  2021-06-02 menu selection highlighted but the text is green, instead of white like the other OS selections. I don't remember it being green in the past but I don't recall the previous color with high confidence.

Does anyone know what caused this change in multi-distro behavior and how it might be corrected, other than re-flashing my SD card with the multi-distro image?

Also, it is a bit of a problem to have Arch Linux ARM 2021-06-02 as the default highlighted selection in multi-boot, because it's too easy to unintentionally boot it by accidentally pressing the single power button instead of pressing rocker button to highlight the desired selection. (It often happens to me when I'm trying to remove the back cover on the phone.) I'd prefer a windowed Linux selection as the default highlighted selection or maybe "Power-off." (Actually, I'd most prefer the default highlighted selection to be the eMMC boot, but perhaps not everyone has an OS installed on their eMMC). Given the Arch terminal CLI only, it is necessary to either power off the phone with the power button (hold it down) or hook up a USB keyboard to logon and "sudo poweroff" or "sudo reboot" to cleanly shut down Arch.

[lordnahte2]

The latest multi-distro image was working great on my SD card until recently. For unknown reasons, multi-distro now always boots to Arch Linux ARM 2021-06-02 (terminal only) when I power it up with the power button. The only way I can access the multi-distro menu and boot something else is by unplugging and re-plugging the USB power cable or wall wort power supply. When I toggle power in this manner, I get the usual multi-distro menu with the Arch Linux ARM  2021-06-02 menu selection highlighted but the text is green, instead of white like the other OS selections. I don't remember it being green in the past but I don't recall the previous color with high confidence.

Does anyone know what caused this change in multi-distro behavior and how it might be corrected, other than re-flashing my SD card with the multi-distro image?

Also, it is a bit of a problem to have Arch Linux ARM 2021-06-02 as the default highlighted selection in multi-boot, because it's too easy to unintentionally boot it by accidentally pressing the single power button instead of pressing rocker button to highlight the desired selection. (It often happens to me when I'm trying to remove the back cover on the phone.)  I'd prefer a windowed Linux selection as the default highlighted selection or maybe "Power-off." (Actually, I'd most prefer the default highlighted selection to be the eMMC boot, but perhaps not everyone has an OS installed on their eMMC). Given the Arch terminal CLI only, it is necessary to either power off the phone with the power button (hold it down) or hook up a USB keyboard to logon and "sudo poweroff" or "sudo reboot" to cleanly shut down Arch.

What probably happened was at some point the Arch Linux ARM distro was selected as the boot default, likely by accidentally holding the power button over it instead of just pushing it. Holding power will highlight that distro on the p-boot menu, indicating it will now default boot to this distro. To boot to the p-boot menu instead, hold the volume down button while you press the power button. In the menu, you can then hold the power button while over a distro you prefer as default, which will get highlighted and boot on power unless the volume down key is held. 

There's more boot configuration options and I would assume it's possible to unhighlight the default without selecting a new one, but I can't seem to find that info in the documentation. @megous, if you're able to clarify if that setting can be cleared and the other boot config options or point to where these are documented, that would be very useful info. This bootloader and multi-distro images have made the PinePhone much more rewarding to mess around with!

[aithal]

The multi boot sxmo image build doesn't have any audio. The audio defaults to none and changing it doesn't work. Is it same for all? I have even tried the sxmo on the arch phosh multi boot image and there is no audio there as well.

[calinb]

What probably happened was at some point the Arch Linux ARM distro was selected as the boot default, likely by accidentally holding the power button over it instead of just pushing it.  <snip>

Thanks so much for your help, lordnahte2! Yes--no doubt that is what happened. It's easy to accidentally press buttons when fumbling for a grip on the phone.

There's more boot configuration options and I would assume it's possible to unhighlight the default without selecting a new one, but I can't seem to find that info in the documentation.

I tried a bunch of things and the only method that I've discovered to unhighlight a selection (other than unhighlighting by highlighting a different selection) is to remove all power from the phone, including the battery. I tested the method a second time after reading your reply to my post and it worked to unhighlight again.

This bootloader and multi-distro images have made the PinePhone much more rewarding to mess around with!

For sure! I like having JumpDrive available, because it's actually more reliable and quicker for me to reboot and use JumpDrive for fire transfer than it is to use sftp or samba, which are very persnickity to achieve a connection sometimes. I have not had time to try to get mtp working on Mobian again, but it did work quickly and reliably before it was de-featured.

I also like having the ability to select a proven distro for phone use that I never update. My phone only works when I travel away from home and a broken phone is only one dist-update / dist-upgrade away! Yeah--multi-boot is a PinePhone must-have, I think!

[Anna]

Thank you so much for the update, @megous !

The multi distro image is really fantastic and I am very much looking forward to trying out the new versions of the distros.

This time, however, I could not manage to stretch the partition (which worked flawlessly with the old image). When entering

Code:

sudo echo ", +" | sfdisk -n -N 2 /dev/mmcblk0

I get

Code:

sfdisk: cannot open /dev/mmcblk0: Permission denied

(Translation from German, I hope the wording is sort of correct.)

Ideas anyone?

Best, Anna

[Maus]

I get

Code:

sfdisk: cannot open /dev/mmcblk0: Permission denied

(Translation from German, I hope the wording is sort of correct.)

Ideas anyone?

Best, Anna

To make your terminal emit messages readable by most of us, you can use this before using the commands that fail:

Code:

export LC_ALL=C

The error message indicates /dev/mmcblk0 is actually existing, and you're just not allowed to access it that way. Probably you didn't honor megi's advice:

Warning! You'll need to run all the commands as root.

[Anna]

Thank you, @Maus , that worked!
(And I've learnt that there's a difference between using sudo and running commands as root...)