Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

Yes, pretty easy to do. All you have to do, is first boot the alive device with ubiboot, note down the partition layout, and "tar -cvf" the partitions to external mount or network drive.
Then ubiboot the broken device, create partitions and restore the data from tarfiles.
There's just one caveat; the dead device must not have broken CAL or boot partitions on the mtd NAND, since there is no way you can safely rewrite those areas under Open Mode.


That's even easier, with ubiboot you do not need harmattan at all if you choose not to use it.
You can even have your own partition layout, even delete all partitions and create just one to hold your SailfishOS, to get easy access to full filesystem :D

Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

Wow!
Many thanks for your answer.
Do you know how can I check the CAL and mtd NAND part ?. Does it mean that there are two copies of the boot partition in the device ?
Sorry if it has been answered before.
Regards.

Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

Hi.
One more question.
Regarding the 'alive' device:
Will it be back to 'normal' if I reflash it with the stock kernel image (I suppose that I can extract it before from the file sistem) after flashing the ubiboot image, or do I have to take something else into account ?
Regards.

Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

Yes, alive device will be fully functional as before. With one differemce: it will be in OpenMode (no write acccess to CAL ?: no device lock code possible! But even for that there is a solution) as flashing an OpenMode (ubiboot) kernel will bring the device to that stage. No return (other than full reflash).
To bring your alive device back to normal just flash the FW image with option --flash-only=kernel.

Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

I've been tinkering with the 2nd option, following the wiki and a youtube video. I have also used the special ubiboot version for dual-boot with sailfish.... still not working.
When booting with ubiboot I can see the initial animation with two options: Meego and Sailfish.
When I tap in the Info option, the credits are showed and tapping on 'back' the main menu is shown, but whenever I tap on Sailfish (or Meego) icons, the screen turns to black and nothing happens. Only once it showed the text message:
I'm starting to think there's a problem between bootmanager and actual OS/Kernel loading since it is happening the same with Sailfish and Harmattan, or even a hardware problem...
The weird thing is that I can boot/telnet/tinker into the device with ubiboot (i.e: when connected to usb cable), and all files/partitions, etc. look ok. I've even been able to see the logs/dmesg files generated by ubiboot.
Can this be related to the CAL or mtd NAND mentioned for the first option?

Thank you very much for your suggestions juiceme (and for peterleinchen too)

Regards.

Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

Whenever there's a boot problem, you should look at the ubiboot log file which will detail what the actual problem is.

Now boot back to ubiboot, and do one of these things; Either look at the exported folders on your PC for the place you have your ubiboot.config file or mount it to ubiboot filesyftem while telnetted in the device. (the default location is mmcblk0p1:/boot/ubiboot.log unless you have changed it yourself)

Please post the logfile, so I can see what is your problem.


No, fortunately this is not the case here.
If you can boot with ubiboot up to the stage where you see the icons, then it means your device is well bootable up to SailfishOS or Nemo. It most probably is also bootable to Harmattan, at least you know now that the bootchain is healthy.


No, if you can flash ubiboot kernel and boot up with it, your device is healthy.

Just post the log, let's see what's wrong with it.

Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

Hi.

Here's what I did to generate the log files:

1.- Boot the device connected to usb
2.- Disconnect from USB, boot menu appears.
3.- Select Sailfish OS
3.- Black screen..... waith 2 minutes and turn-off via power button
4.- Reconnect USB. Device boots again
5.- Copy logs from mmcblk0p1:/boot/ (Nokia N9 partition)

And this is all :)

The tar file in the attachment contains both ubiboot.dmesg and ubiboot.log

Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

Okay, according to the logfiles, your system does find both SailfishOS and Harmattan kernels correctly, which is a nice thing.
However, this version of ubiboot you have does not make further checks on whether your init files are reachable, so that is a potential problem;

Please check that you have /sbin/preinit_harmattan on your mmcblk0p2 and that it is readable and executable by root, and similarily that you have /sbin/init on mmcblk0p4, also readable and executable by root.

I assume here that you have your Harmattan on p2 and SailfisOS on p4, right?

Also, please can you post your ubiboot.conf.

There is one thing also which caugth my eye, which might be relevant or not; The HW revision of your device is 1507 which is fairly rare AFAIK and as I checked my logs, there were previously some reports that some people could not boot 2nd-level kernel with it.
At least Hurrian, valdur55 and Max9 have had problems with 1507 but I do not remember if the issues were resolved at some point.

Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

Hi.
Yes, the preinit* files had read/exec permission in both cases, and the distribution of OS/partitions is the one you mentioned. I changed all permissions to 777 for both files, just in case :P

In one of the attempts I made, the message of 'Maintenance boot' was displayed, afterwards I saw some modified files (depmod,insmod, modprobe, lsmod and others according to their modification/access dates) at /sbin in Sailfish partition. I was trying something I've read Coderus wrote: tapping several times after selecting the sailfish icon.

Regarding the HW revision I think there's not much to add, but would explain the fact that none of the OSs is booting in 2nd stage (i.e: after ubiboot kernel)

The ubiboot.conf file I think is the original one, without modifications.

Regards.

Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

Okay, as you have the default installation those things should be in order.

Basically there are 2 different cases here, booting Harmattan and booting SailfishOS.

Booting Harmattan is usually the trickier one, even Harmattan in Open Mode has some ties to the device's securety framework and problems accessing either the chipset internal functions or the mtd CAL partition will prevent booting. Also there might be something with the HW version that affect things.
One thing you could try, is to set the device in developer mode and disable the life-saver watchdogs. In some cases that has helped.

Booting SailfishOS should be easier in theory. At least booting Nemo works in cases that Harmattan won't boot and Sailfish base is built on top of Nemo.
Now, problems with Nemo/Sailfish usually are caused by incorrect extraction of the FS tarfile, which needs to be done with the --numeric-owner option to recreate the correct permissions to all files.

What is your SailfishOs version, and how did you extract it to partition 4?