Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

Downgrading! hope 4.0.4 is smooth and less lag to 4.1.1

Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

wanna flash Sailfish 1.0.2.5 with http://www.swagman.org/juice/ubiboot/ubiboot-02/ Donno how to edit the cpio file. can someone pls edit cpio and conf for me? Just like there is separate cpio and conf for sailfish

Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

As some people have been unable to reach the ubiboot home page due to tight abuse filtering of our administration, I have requested opening of a non-blocked port for the site.

(For example, most of mainland China addresses are blocked by our sysadmin...)

Now, all locations on the world should be able to use http://www.swagman.org:8008/juice/ubiboot/

black screen problem with ubiboot
 

I've got 4 partitions successfully on my n950 by moslo.
I've put sailfish(vgrade-sailfish_r5.1.tar.bz2) on the 4th partiton
I've installed ubiboot (I used ubiboot-02_0.3.5_131213_SFOS.tar).
ubiboot showed me 3 choices(Hamarattan, Sailfish and Information).
When I selected Hamarattan or Sailfish icon, the screen turned black and stopped working.
ubiboot.log and ubiboot.dmesg showed kernel is loaded and partitions are mounted.

Is there anyone with the same problem?

Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

As you did not mention and it is one of the most happened mistakes (to miss those preinit_harmattan file or not them not having executable flag), I guess you missed to put the proper preinit files on harmattans '/sbin/' directory.

Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

Thank you.

Both preinit and preinit_harmattan has executable flags. permissions are 755. Both are in /sbin directory of the 2nd partition.
and still same problem.

Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

didnt put harmattan kernel and unpacked sailfish tar with no --numeric-owner option? :)

Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

Thank you.

I sure I used the option --numeric-owner.
Please give me some hints.


** ubiboot.dmesg **
** ubiboot.log **

Re: black screen problem with ubiboot
 

I think that's the thing, you have Sailfish on /dev/mmcblk0p4, however, in your log I can see:

What this means, is that your Sailfish kernel, when booting, is trying to find the OS on the partition 2.

How to fix that; check your ubiboot.conf, and find the line that defines the OS location, "G_OS<x>_PARTITION=2" in the SailfishOS section, and change the "2" to "4" :)

Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

Hi.
I have a bricked device I can flash without problems,but is not booting in any way. However I have been able to boot the ubiboot kernel and see the exported partitions.
Is it possible to either:
1. Install the backup from another device (including the filesystem, partitions, all )
or
2.- Boot the device on Sailfish without Harmattan installed in the device ?

Sorry if this a repeated issue.

Regards.

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?

Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

Hi.

Thank you again.

Regarding the Sailfish version & extract command:

sailfish.tar.bz2 is a file renamed from file vgrade-jolla-1.0.3.7.tar.bz2 (downloaded from http://images.formeego.org/n950/sailfish/ )

Regards.

P.S: I don't think I can put the device in developer mode: it won't boot Harmattan even after a fresh reflash. Bought it as 'for parts' :(

Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

@pasko
Development (not the developer) equal to R&D mode ;) (done via flasher)

About sailfish OS you should use older release not higher than 1.0.2.5 (r5.1). Higher releases will need (atm) N9-unsupported kernels...

--
but as you bought for spare parts, dont you think too something could be borked up?

Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

Hi.

I'm starting to loose my faith. Can't activate R&D mode:

Also, I found a post in this forum from someone I think was the previous owner :D
I think we're duplicating efforts....
Also tried Sailfish 1.0.2.5 (r5), nothing. Will try now r5.1
Regards.

Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

Of course, R&D mode is what I meant, mistakenly wrote "developer mode" :D

Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

Yeah, it looks like the device is so borked it will not run Harmattan.

However, as long as you can start ubiboot, you can use it with Nemo or SailfishOS.

Regarding your untar command, if I remember correctly the order of the flags matters, you need to put the "double-dash" options after the -f option, like this:

sudo tar -xvzf sailfish.tar.bz2 --numeric-owner -C /media/Alt_OS/

(of course it might depend on implementation/version...)

And moreover, I'd recommend you bunzip2 the file on your linux box, copy the resulting tarfile to forex. your partition 1, unmount partitions, go to ubiboot console, mount partitions 1 & 4, and then untar the archive on device itself with:

tar -xvf /mnt/1/sailfish.tar --numeric-owner -C /mnt/4/

Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

Hi.

I made everything as you specified and it's just the same. I get your point sayin' that if it can boot ubiboot, it should also boot sailfish. However I've seen that the 2nd kernel is loaded via kexec_load().

The point is:
Are there any chances to boot directly from scratch the Sailfish kernel? That way we would eliminate the intermediate kexec_load call and hopefully solve the problem.

Or maybe I can resell it for parts again...

Regards.

Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

Hello again.

I finally managed to put the device in R&D mode.
I made it using the flasher-3.5 tool.

Now it shows a wrench in the screen :confused:

Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

Hi.
Now that I have R&D mode active: How do I disable the live-saver watchdogs?

Regards.

Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

The answer to this is, of course both yes and no, just as to any question really... :D

Yes, you can easily check whether yuor device can boot directly to SailfishOS, you just need to extract your FS image to partition 2.
It doess not matter what size or how many partitions you have (unless it is at least two...), just extract the tarfile to mmcblk0p2.

The reason for this is that the N9 boot loader starts the kernel with command line parameter telling it to mount the partition 2 as the root filesystem.

The "no" part comes from the thing that even as you can boot SFOS that way, it is not very usable to you as it is :D
For correct operation of Wayland you need to set up the framebuffer a bit differently than wht is default, or your screen will be messed up.

The device will be fully functional, you will be able for ecample to ssh in and do everything from the console, just the graphical UI will be messed up.

Then there is the correct solution, of course, but it requires a bit more work, and of course it is the most rewarding experience for you, since it will also hopefully teach you new things :)

To make it fully functional, you need to patch the kernel configuration so that it will use built-in command line instead of the one given by boot loader. This is one of the things ubiboot normally does for you.

Just set the following options:

Code:

---

CONFIG_CMDLINE_OVERRIDE=y

CONFIG_CMDLINE="init=/sbin/init root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootwait rootflags=errors=remount-ro rootfstype=ext4 rw console=ttyS0,115200n8 vram=6m omapfb.vram=0:6M mtdparts=omap2-onenand:1024k(bootloader),2816k@1024k(config),16384k@3840k(kernel),2048k@20224k(log),469248k@22272k(var),32768k@491520k(moslo) gpio=cmt_apeslpx:93:sysfs:output,cmt_en:23:sysfs:init_active:output,cmt_rst_rq:88:sysfs:init_active:output,sleep_ind:92:sysfs:output"

---

The magic here is the bit saying vram=6m omapfb.vram=0:6M, that will tell kernel to use just one large framebuffer device instead of two smaller ones.
Of course at this point you can also define whatever you want as the rootFS device by changing the parameter root=/dev/mmcblk0p2

Then, just rebuild the kernel and flash it as your regular kernel.
The nice thing here is that you do not need to use scratchbox for building like with Harmattan kernels, you can use for example the regular Linero gnueabi toolchain that you can install in any linux box.

Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

sudo flasher --set-rd-flags=no-omap-wd,no-ext-wd,no-lifeguard-reset

Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

Hi.
O.K. I think I got it all.:)

I'll try first disabling the watchdogs and if it doesn't work I'll go for the compile option.
I remember recompiling some years ago the software for my WiFi router....
From what you explained, the kernel for sailfish is OpenSource?

Regards.

Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

Yes, all that you need is open source. What you need is the kernel sources, I'd have to check what is the latest version of the Nemo kernel build tree and what is the correct config to use.

To compile, you'll need to install gcc-arm-linux-gnueabi package to your distribution (I use version 4.6.3)
Then, just patch your configuration, and configure and make the kernel (and also make the modules if you are building another version that what you already have on your FS image...):

ARCH=arm make n9_mer_defconfig // <-- if that is the correct config file...
ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabi- make
ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabi- make modules
ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabi- INSTALL_MOD_PATH=. make modules_install

And finally, copy the modules to your FS (if you needed to make them) and flash the kernel just as you would flash any normal Open Mode kernel for Harmattan, and you are ready to go :D

Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

Hi.

I've spent all night just to be at the same point I was yesterday (I screwed something and had to start from scratch) and then being able to enable the R&D mode..... and nothing happened.
This means we'll have to go via the compiling option, but this will be next week.

I'm going to spend a few days with spare internet access for Easter Holiday.

Thank you.
Regards.

Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

Hi.
Before I go to sleep I would like to ask:

1.- Which Linaro packages do I need to install in Ubuntu 12.04 just to be able to build the kernel?
2.- Where can I get the sources for the Sailfish kernel?

Regards.

Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

gcc-arm-linux-gnueabi and build-essential are enough.


Well, the kernel is some Mer/Nemo kernel, and I could not find the sources for the exact version. However, I got kernel-adaptation-n950-n9-mer-n9-2.6.32-20121301 and am now building that, to try if it works with SailfisOS.
I'll report back when I have tested it.

Hi.
Thank you again.
I will try it later when I'm back.
Regards.

Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

As it happens, kernel-adaptation-n950-n9-mer-n9-2.6.32-2012130 seems to work nice on my device.

Would you like me to build you a version that hardboots from partition 4? (that is capable to be flashed directly to device, no ubiboot required...)

Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

Damn, just noticed that this branch is a bit older, to does not have the option CONFIG_CMDLINE_OVERRIDE available...

What this means is I need to either update to more recent source tree or patch the command line selection code to the current tree.

Anyway I cannot finish it now, I'll have to continue later.

Hi.
Will this mean that the modules should be also recompiled? If so, the flashed image is no longer valid..
Regards.

Re: Introducing ubiboot N9 (multiboot OS loader)
 

Yes, you need both modules and the kernel.
However, nothing in the world is simpler than putting the new modules in, you just need to boot the device with ubiboot (just as you did when you untarred the FS originally there) and then copy the modules under the /lib/modules/<whatever_version>/ directory on your SailfishOS partition.

BTW, you do not need to flash ubiboot permanently to device, it it enough to use flasher to run it, just as you do when for example running maintanance kernel for malf-repairing.

Also, I just got near a computer, so when I get some time maybe today, I'll patch the CONFIG_CMDLINE_OVERRIDE option to my sources and recompile it (and modules) for you.