Estel | # 841 | 2011-07-16, 14:46 | Report

Maybe your OptFS is just bigger than before?

x-lette | # 842 | 2011-07-16, 17:43 | Report

No, just uninstalled a few huge games and optfs is actually 150MB smaller than last one.

RobbieThe1st | # 843 | 2011-07-16, 21:06 | Report

Yes. But the Kernel's not on the Rootfs. It's on a seperate ~2mb partition. This is why kernel-power-flasher is needed; It has to actually write the partition at a low level, not just copy a file somewhere.

That's exactly what I said - whenever you boot /something else/. Ah well, perhaps I wasn't clear enough there.


Nope, no changes. I've no clue why it'd be slower, unless you chose the "compressed" option.

Estel | # 844 | 2011-07-17, 01:35 | Report

Hey, that's why i said "some claims (not Robbie)". So probably I wasn't clear enough

Still, thanks for useful info. I suppose kernel partition is still on same physical NAND, just different partition? If that, hardware wear lvl should still apply, even if written @ low lvl by flasher. I would be very surprised, if N900 NAND lack hardware wear-leveling. Will try to check that.

RobbieThe1st | # 845 | 2011-07-17, 04:45 | Report

eMMC/SD cards have HW wear levelling. the raw NAND flash, however, has wear-levelling in the software layer - in ubifs.
This is why it's perfectly fine to simply copy/restore images of your flash drive, SD card etc. with DD - and copy it to another device without issue, but with ubifs that copies the bad-blocks/wear leveling bits as well... which can be a problem.
It's why I had to go to tar backups instead of raw images...

stlpaul | # 846 | 2011-07-17, 05:54 | Report

To be fair, I think it's not that they aren't willing to change, the multiboot process actually does some setup/initializing prior to android's boot sequence that nitdroid depends on. uBoot doesn't do that setup, so the nitdroid kernel/bootup process would need to be adapted to work in that state. And probably I would guess working on that adaptation, when multiboot already works and is user-friendly, is not as important right now as working on things like making phone calls work...

x-lette | # 847 | 2011-07-17, 09:20 | Report

No, I'm always backing up uncompressed. So I guess it's something on my device that really gets broken. There are already so many little glitches that I'm currently considering doing a complete reflash.

One question about that space-saving reflashing: does it work with own backups only or can I do that magic with official images or with your provided image too? I mean, can I use your image for example to free up disk space and then fill that with my own backup? Or will this occupy the original size again?

batarawatson | # 848 | 2011-07-17, 09:32 | Report

I cannot reboot into power kernel 47 after i reflash and restore my opt and rootfs please help me to fix it..

mr_jrt | # 849 | 2011-07-17, 13:23 | Report

Hey RobbieThe1st, as I mentioned a few pages back, I can't get the networking to work unless I load the 'g_ether' module instead of the 'g_nokia' one as I am running on Windows. Please could you add menu options that use that module so I don't have to keep patching backupmenu every time it gets an update?

ivyking | # 850 | 2011-07-17, 17:51 | Report

I agree on backup menu running directly from u-boot, that may be acheived by installing a min-base debian system on an sdcard, and running backup menu from there instead from maemo ?

also,
about multi-boot flashing the kernel each time the OS is changed, well you can stop that..
using u-boot along with multiboot , you can change the OS and the kernel without flashing a single time, this requires some manual work when "switching" though.

assuming you already have u-boot, install multiboot, kernel-power-bootimg from the repository, edit the file /sbin/multiboot , and comment out the line
flasher --local -f -k $1
now multiboot will not be able to flash any kernels, that won't be needed anyways..

normally, when you select an item in multiboot, it checks if the correct kernel is loaded, if it is it will load the OS, if not it flashes the kernel and reboots..

so the idea is to always have the correct kernel before selecting an OS, this is achieved through u-boot, incase you disable the flasher line, and select an OS with a kernel that is not loaded, it will reboot without flashing.

and since you only need multiboot to switch between maemo and nitdroid, it will be fairly simple to setup things, other systems can be loaded directly from u-boot.

install nitdroid manually to wherever you like, create the item file for multiboot manually, get the nitdroid kernel, convert it to u-Image and put it on the first partition of your sd-card.

for the boot.scr file it should be created from something like
the most important thing is that you need to use atags from nolo, as the nitdroid kernel will actually be starting multiboot from maemo..

u-boot should then correctly load nitdroid kernel, and multiboot will be started, selecting nitdroid from the list, it will start without flashing any kernel since it is already loaded(and you disabled flashing too)

if you need to start maemo, write : run noloboot at the u-boot prompt, and select maemo from multiboot's list..

some manual work will be needed if you want to boot other OS, you will have to manually rename their u-boot script file to boot.scr each time you want to switch.

I mean if you have something like this on your sd-card:
N12-uImage
N12.scr
debian-uInitrd
debian-uImage
debian.scr

and want to boot debian, you will have to copy and rename debian.scr to boot.scr either using pc, or from maemo.

another idea, is to have the flash_kernel() function of multiboot rename the correct boot script to boot.scr then reboot instead of flashing, this idea was present some time ago but no one implemented it yet..

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Last edited by ivyking; 2011-07-17 at 17:59.