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

[megous]

Thanks for the great work. It's one of the most convenient way to showcase how much freedom we get from having a device we truly own.

I discovered just earlier today via Pinephone first steps https://scattered-thoughts.net/writing/p...rst-steps/ that there is also Mobile NixOS dedicated for the pinephone https://mobile.nixos.org/devices/pine64-pinephone.html with builds couple of weeks old https://hydra.nixos.org/job/mobile-nixos...6_64-linux

It could be interesting to make it available too.

I can only conveniently add systems that have either rootfs tarball or SD card image available. Adding pmOS variants is already a pita, and I looked at NixOS, and it seems even more complicated than that. If someone can provide/point me to a tarball/image of NixOS, I'll hapilly add it. I don't see a way on that page to download the build output.

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Hi megous. Thank you very much for making this valuable project available to us. I look forward to the next version of your work.

Would it be possible to include an option that allows to reinitialize the "multi-boot image" eliminating all the changes introduced by the user ?.

PS: I hope you consider including Glodroid in your OS list.

Yep, one of the things I'd like to add is a "management" OS with a GUI/TUI for these kinds of tasks. (reverting to original snapshots, resizing to SD card's size, etc.)

I excluded glodroid, because I expect it will not run with a non-android partitioning scheme.

[bb010g]

I discovered just earlier today via Pinephone first steps https://scattered-thoughts.net/writing/p...rst-steps/ that there is also Mobile NixOS dedicated for the pinephone https://mobile.nixos.org/devices/pine64-pinephone.html with builds couple of weeks old https://hydra.nixos.org/job/mobile-nixos...6_64-linux

It could be interesting to make it available too.

I can only conveniently add systems that have either rootfs tarball or SD card image available. Adding pmOS variants is already a pita, and I looked at NixOS, and it seems even more complicated than that. If someone can provide/point me to a tarball/image of NixOS, I'll hapilly add it. I don't see a way on that page to download the build output.

Making NixOS share a kernel with its sibling distros would be possible, but also pretty inconvenient, and it'd be fighting most of NixOS's boot.kernel* options (they'd have to be locked down to whatever your non–Nixpkgs-built kernel binary was built with, and it'd generally be a huge pain & potentially result in users having to rebuild kernel-adjacent packages from source). As someone typing this message from a desktop NixOS install, I wouldn't recommend trying to mix NixOS into your multi-boot pack.

[Avisando]

I get it. However, it will always be possible to install Anbox. Thanks for your answer.

[axel]

Hey guys,
I'm trying to get multi-boot running too so I can easily play around with different distros.

I got the image flashed to SD card and looks like I got the file system extended.

However I got this message:

Code:

The partition table has been altered.
Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Re-reading the partition table failed.: Device or resource busy
The kernel still uses the old table. The new table will be used at the next reboot or after you run partprobe(8) or partx(8).
Syncing disks.

I ran `partprobe` after and now the disk shows at full size.

And now I'm stuck trying to mount the partition to extend it as well

Code:

$ lsblk
NAME        MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
mmcblk2      179:0    0  58.2G  0 disk
├─mmcblk2p1  179:1    0 213.6M  0 part /boot
└─mmcblk2p2  179:2    0    58G  0 part /
mmcblk2boot0 179:32  0    4M  1 disk
mmcblk2boot1 179:64  0    4M  1 disk
mmcblk1      179:96  0  29.7G  0 disk
├─mmcblk1p1  179:97  0  124M  0 part
└─mmcblk1p2  179:98  0  29.6G  0 part
zram0        252:0    0  5.6G  0 disk [SWAP]

But according to instructions I need to mount the partition, not the while disk

Code:

$ sudo mount /dev/mmcblk1p2 /mnt
NTFS signature is missing.
Failed to mount '/dev/mmcblk1p2': Invalid argument
The device '/dev/mmcblk1p2' doesn't seem to have a valid NTFS.
Maybe the wrong device is used? Or the whole disk instead of a
partition (e.g. /dev/sda, not /dev/sda1)? Or the other way around?

Not sure if this is a good sign either:

Code:

$ sudo btrfs check /dev/mmcblk1p2
Opening filesystem to check...
Csum didn't match
ERROR: could not setup extent tree
ERROR: cannot open file system

Thanks for putting this together!

[megous]

There's gonna be a new multi-boot release soon: https://megous.com/dl/tmp/p-boot.png

[axel]

@megous that's awesome, looking forward to it.

I assume the process stays the same - any ideas what went wrong with my partition resizing (or should I not bother next time and see if it boots first)

Also is it expected that I had to run `partprobe`? Maybe worth adding to the instructions if so

[Avisando]

There's gonna be a new multi-boot release soon: https://megous.com/dl/tmp/p-boot.png

Thanks in advance.

[p1trson]

@megous that's awesome, looking forward to it.

I assume the process stays the same - any ideas what went wrong with my partition resizing (or should I not bother next time and see if it boots first)

Also is it expected that I had to run `partprobe`? Maybe worth adding to the instructions if so

I did follow the instructions as per https://xnux.eu/log/#toc-resizing-the-pa...-the-image and had no problems and didn't have to do anything else in addition.

[megous]

New version is now available. https://xnux.eu/p-boot-demo/

News:
- more distros (Manjaro, Arch dreemurrs, Jumpdrive, pmOS / plasma desktop)
- removed PureOS
- all distros updated to the latest versions
- p-boot has more features, auto-repeat for volume keys, scrolling menu, reboot to eMMC OS, air-gapped boot mode, battery indicator
- newer kernel (5.10-rc5) with 60fps fix

Build tool was also updated, and can generate the zstd compressed and deduplicated btrfs filesystem from the source rootfs tarballs in about 2 minutes by running decompression/deduplication in 16 parallel threads. Or in 8 minutes when maxing out zstd compression level in btrfs.

[p1trson]

cool stuff! will test and report, donation on its way

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