Multiple OS on SD card

[dpower]

I *thought* I submitted this question already this morning but it seems to have vanished! I'm excitedly waiting on my Pinephone to arrive (US here) like most folks. I figured I'd set up an SD card today and have a 64Gb card set aside for this. 

Unlike most folks here, I'm a very casual linux user, I loooove playing with different OSes and seeing different UI styles - for this very reason, I want to be able to put all the available OSes on a single SD card and if possible, choose to boot between them but I can't find a guide outlining how someone would do this. As a relatively inexperienced linux dude (know enough to be dangerous), I'm not quite sure how to go about the configuration of the SD card. I *assume* I am creating a number of partitions, one for each OS with a partition for the boot manager (u-boot seems to be the first boot manager enabling this) - but I'm not sure how to go about this from my windows laptop as this is the only machine that I have an SD reader available to me.

Does anyone have a guide or set of guides they could point me at to get somewhere?

thanks!

[vinnie]

https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?...light=boot

[bcnaz]

I *thought* I submitted this question already this morning but it seems to have vanished! I'm excitedly waiting on my Pinephone to arrive (US here) like most folks. I figured I'd set up an SD card today and have a 64Gb card set aside for this. 

Unlike most folks here, I'm a very casual linux user, I loooove playing with different OSes and seeing different UI styles - for this very reason, I want to be able to put all the available OSes on a single SD card and if possible, choose to boot between them but I can't find a guide outlining how someone would do this. As a relatively inexperienced linux dude (know enough to be dangerous), I'm not quite sure how to go about the configuration of the SD card. I *assume* I am creating a number of partitions, one for each OS with a partition for the boot manager (u-boot seems to be the first boot manager enabling this) - but I'm not sure how to go about this from my windows laptop as this is the only machine that I have an SD reader available to me.

Does anyone have a guide or set of guides they could point me at to get somewhere?

thanks!

I believe I did see something about the multiple OS booting from a single SD card here elsewhere on this forum,
   but that I think was referring to a YouTube video ???

As far as what computer to use to build your SD card, 
    the USB to SD card adapters are fairly cheap,   a few SD cards do come with an adapter included.

The Pine phone is pretty new, so a lot of these ideas have not actually become finished products as of yet.

I myself have a pile of SD cards I bought in anticipation of my new Brave Heart phone.

[vinnie]

Someone said that he prefers to keep the environments separate even physically on the sd, I thought about it and I think I prefer to have all the systems on different partitions on the same sd because:
1) I don't want to change the sd every time, if I remember correctly you have to remove the battery.
2) it's not the "internal" memory of the phone, so I'm not afraid to mess it up, bad if I break it I can change it easily.

Only if I understand correctly (and maybe I'm wrong) that software to make multiboot is not or not yet opensource.

Anyway let's see, I also remembered this post just under a comment of yours that recommends a program to test memories, it's the case:
https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?...7#pid55887
So today I got myself a big sandisk sd and now I was thinking of testing it.

[z4v4l]

Only if I understand correctly (and maybe I'm wrong) that software to make multiboot is not or not yet opensource.

scary. how dared they not to open sauce! sometimes it looks like people need only opensource. not the functionality, utility, usefulness, just opensource for the sake of open source. if I'm wrong, then why are there such exclamation notes like the quoted.
anyway, the guy in question, said the GUI part of that thing won't be opensauce.
and btw, keep in mind, that making more than one, non-FAT partition on an SD card, you break the compliance with the specification, the card may or may not work properly after such modificattions. also, even operating properly, at the first glance, it may degrade its wear protection mechanisms, since the internal controller assumes and relies on the specified layout for the card (single FAT partition, whose internal structures are instrumental for it in its decisions).

[bcnaz]

EFIFY

GOOD Point,
....and blame the SD card when something does not work properly ?

[vinnie]

I think if there wasn't an open-source trend in this community, pinephone wouldn't have much reason to be.
Anyway, I didn't know about this compliance problem, maybe I'll try it anyway if I had the chance.

p.s. So we have to install our distros on fat32 filesystem?
p.p.s https://www.silabs.com/documents/public/...AN0030.pdf page 2
"SD cards are plain block devices and do not in any way imply any specific partition layout or file systemthus partition schemes other than MBR partitioning and the FAT file systems can be used. Under Unix-like operating systems such as Linux or FreeBSD, SD cards can be formatted using, for example, theUFS, EXT3 or the ReiserFS file systems; under Mac OS X, SD cards can be partitioned as GUID devicesand formatted with the HFS+ file system. Under Windows and some Unix systems, SD cards can beformatted using the NTFS and on later versions exFAT file system. However most consumer productswill expect MBR partitioning and FAT16/FAT32 filesystem"
I don't know, it's the first information I've found. I don't know the source reliability.

[z4v4l]

SD cards being "plain block devices" don't preclude the internal controller of relying on presence of the specific layout. the requirement of having it specifically formatted is part of the spec (SD Specifications Part 2 File System Specification), it's not available openly, but it is there, and thus noone can certainly claim, that any vendor don't use this reliance when creating their firmware. "users can format with anything blablabla" becomes a try-and-see*. of course, not every hang you encounter on these "tinkering" platforms, running, let's be honest, suboptimal and rough software should be attributed to SD card malfunction due to the incompliant layout, but it could be one of candidates. no, you can't use FAT for linux boot/install target volume, since it doesn't support that, you just need to keep in mind, that using SD cards this way is unsafe and if you want stable system, you'd better to migrate to internal storage ASAP. SD cards are removable storages, optimized for that scenario.


for me, the value of things like Pinephone firstly is being open platforms. that is, platforms letting you do with them much more, compared to locked down counterparts. it's not aligned with being fanatically 100% opensourced, open documentation and its quality is much more important. for example, that modem thing, it's not opensourced at all, so what? but if interaction with it, programming model for the host is documented, it's the thing, what is really needed. if some guy made a nice system, letting users do multibooting, but decided, that parts of that system cannot be opensourced, is this a stop factor for the users to not use that system? why? after all, they need multiboot capability from that system, not its opensourceness. the latter could really be of interest for those willing to join the effort in making that system. they should contact the creator and clarify about it. turning opensources in a self goal looks like an irrational thing, something religious-like. that's not cool.

* - neither Windows nor Android won't format an SD card with anything other than FAT and I think the same applies to iOS.

[bcnaz]

1)  NONE of the OSes are ready for just plug and play on the Pine phone.

2) You cannot just flash a 'bunch'  of OSes onto an SD card and expect anything to "Boot"

***  Perhaps, in the future,  if you had a mini OS that you could "Boot" into first,

  you could maybe,  use that to select a 'Working' OS to run from ?

[z4v4l]

*** Perhaps, in the future, if you had a mini OS that you could "Boot" into first,

you could maybe, use that to select a 'Working' OS to run from ?

this "mini OS" is already devised, it's a firmware. the most appropriate would be UEFI. it lets boot from as many OSes as your storage can fit. the problem is that edk2 (a mature UEFI implementation from big players, that serves as a base for the final FW going into PCs) hasn't been yet ported to Rockchip SoCs.