step by step: boot menu for newbies
 

Re-install boot menu after 5.2008.43-7 upgrade:
1) Gainroot
AP manager>Browse installable app>All>rootsh
2) http://fanoush.wz.cz/maemo/, scroll down to "Modified initfs with onscreen...." and dl
http://fanoush.wz.cz/maemo/initfs_flasher.tgz and http://fanoush.wz.cz/maemo/kernel_flasher.tgz to default folder /home/user/Mydocs/.documents
3) sudo gainroot
cd /home/user/MyDocs/.documents/
tar zxvf initfs_flasher.tgz
cd initfs_flasher
You can customize bootmenu.conf.n8x0 to your likeness
mv bootmenu.conf.n8x0.example bootmenu.conf (or make your own one)

4) Close all applications, and disconnect from internet. Then type:
./initfs_flash
This will ask you several questions, here is what I recommend (type what's in bold):

backup? no
remove extra stuff? yes
found, do you want to add it to initfs? yes
ready for flashing this image? yes
Press enter to reboot device

Reboot
sudo gainroot
chroot /mnt/initfs cal-tool --set-root-device ask:mmc2 #pick your own choice

from PB:
mmc2 is partition 2 on internal
mmc3 is partition 3 on internal
mmc12 is partition 2 on external
mmc13 is partition 3 on external
You can also set the default to flash
chroot /mnt/initfs cal-tool --set-root-device ask:flash

Done.

What? Have not done your upgrade yet? Here is a step by step guide to 5.2008.43-7, http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...ad.php?t=25673.

bun
================================================== ===============

Directly copy from here, http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...t=8631&page=35, thread #347
===============================================
Bootmenu installation, http://examplified.net/guide/Nokia_7...ting_from_MMC/, perform steps 6,7,8,9 and then 13:
When the tablet restarts, connect to the internet and download, http://fanoush.wz.cz/maemo/initfs_flasher.tgz, to the documents folder.

If you have just did the Diablo upgrade (30-2), use this one, http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...tfs#post212301, thread #24

Type

sudo gainroot
cd /home/user/MyDocs/.documents/
tar zxvf initfs_flasher.tgz
cd initfs_flasher
mv bootmenu.conf.n8x0.example bootmenu.conf (or make your own one)


If you just did the diablo upgrade, and initfs_flasher is '...jffs2 not find...' then
xterm
sudo gainroot
ln -s initfs.2008-24.tgz initfs.2008-29.tgz
ln -s dropbear.osso-RX-34.2007-10.tgz dropbear.2008-29.tgz
ln -s utelnetd.osso-RX-34.2007-10.tgz utelnetd.2008-29.tgz

I just did the 1st line and ran fine.
Close all applications, and disconnect from internet. Then type:
./initfs_flash
This will ask you several questions, here is what I recommend (type what's in bold):

backup? no
remove extra stuff? yes
found, do you want to add it to initfs? yes
ready for flashing this image? yes
Press enter to reboot device

Press enter. Boot from internal flash as we haven't cloned the system yet on to the MMC.

Reboot
sudo gainroot
chroot /mnt/initfs cal-tool --set-root-device ask:mmc2 #pick your own choice

from PB:
mmc2 is partition 2 on internal
mmc3 is partition 3 on internal
mmc12 is partition 2 on external
mmc13 is partition 3 on external
You can also set the default to flash
chroot /mnt/initfs cal-tool --set-root-device ask:flash



Some other good links,
http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...ad.php?t=25673
http://examplified.net/guide/Nokia_7...ting_from_MMC/
http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...ad.php?t=21448
http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...light=bootmenu
http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...bootmenu+clone
http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...bootmenu+clone

enjoy,

bun

Re: step by step: boot menu for newbies
 

http://wiki.maemo.org/Booting_from_a...stall_bootmenu

Feel free to add and improve that guide.

Re: step by step: boot menu for newbies
 

Yes, sir. Will do.

Edit: Done, kind off, website still busy makes editing erratic....

bun

Re: step by step: boot menu for newbies
 

I can't explain this, but after many unsuccessful tries at chroot (trying to get it to boot from my internal card), I watched as my N800 booted after I manually selected the internal memory card. When I did, it said at the top of the page: "Booting from immc2"

Note that it said "immc2" and not "mmc2"

So I did chroot again inserting "--set-root-device ask:immc2" and guess what? Now it boots from my internal card just as it did before the Diablo update. :)

If I'm an idiot, I apologize, but I don't remember seeing immc2 in the wiki or postings. Is this part of the Diablo update?

Re: step by step: boot menu for newbies
 

So I updated my flash partition with the latest SSU without problems and when I tried it on the mmc2 partition, I got "update error" -yet i didn't do anything to fix this.
I then tried to update my bootmenu and did so successfully a couple of times yet each time I try to boot into mmc2, the tablet tries but then finaly boots into flash.

I think I messed up bad the first time I flashed the bootmenu as I tried to reflash a bootmenu.conf I saved from pre-SSU.

I do have a backup of the mmc2 partition but would really appreciate not having to reclone the Os.

Any ideas of what I can do?

Re: step by step: boot menu for newbies
 

The wiki is in a bit of a state after the server move. Give it a week or two and try again after the server upgrades take place.

Re: step by step: boot menu for newbies
 

I believe so. I do not want to write up something and cannot save it.....
I will take care of it, just give me some time.

bun

Re: step by step: boot menu for newbies
 

what is boot menu? newbie here sorry.

Re: step by step: boot menu for newbies
 

https://garage.maemo.org/projects/bootmenu/

It's a modified initfs image that makes booting from sources other than the internal flash (like an SD card) easier and allows you to boot into a recovery mode.

Re: step by step: boot menu for newbies
 

Did you ever make a bootmenu while NOT at flash, i.e., MMC boot and make a boot menu and then copy to to internal flash? In that case, you may have a 'ghost' copy of boot menu from internal flash. I think that is where your leter "i" coming from.

bun

Re: step by step: boot menu for newbies
 

Go to thread #1 for new ediition to re-make your boot menu.


bun

Re: step by step: boot menu for newbies
 

Thanks bun. installed without problem.

Re: step by step: boot menu for newbies
 

Ah! Good to know about this. My boot menu disappeared with the latest Nokia update; so, I will be trying this today to get everything back to normal.

THANKS!!!

Re: step by step: boot menu for newbies
 

What would we do without Bun's meticulous work!
Thanks, bro.

Re: step by step: boot menu for newbies
 

My WiMax tablet seemed to have a problem - the keyboard wasn't recognized so I couldn't either get to the menu, or if I forced the menu, get past it.

Re: step by step: boot menu for newbies
 

Okay, so I'm missing something (and I did read the README and search the forums).
I debootstrapped Jaunty onto a partition on my system and set it up with chroot from deblet. Everything seems to work great through chroot, but I can't get it to boot with bootmenu. The rootfs is on mmcblk0p1 (external MMC first partition) and I've set up fstab but I'm not sure if it needs to say /dev/mtdblock4 or /dev/mtdblock3 for the rootfs (I think it ought to be mtdblock4) as well as setting up a swap.
I tried the original bootmenu.d setting from the deblet bootmenu install as well as the new pb tools...deblet is still working fine, but I'm pretty sure I'm missing something... Do I need to setup /mnt/initfs on the Jaunty partition to make this work?

Re: step by step: boot menu for newbies
 

The "ln -s" in the original post contain "RX-34" which is only valid for an n800. The n810 is RX-44, and the wimax is RX-48, and of course the version strings after that changed with 5.2008. The bootmenu will NOT install the dropbear or telnet if the links are wrong (however you can look at the script, remount initrd as rw and copy them later).

Re: step by step: boot menu for newbies
 

I suppose that it is not recommended to do that with an almost empty battery.

Re: step by step: boot menu for newbies
 

OK - I'm sort of following this but since I got the bootmenu installed by the console-tools I'm not following the step-by-step but coming in in the middle. My wimax is buggered if I try to use bootmenu at all. Any suggestions (and please be a little more explicit :-)

Thanks

Re: step by step: boot menu for newbies
 

Here is a suggestion.

Since the Wiki is aimed at users, and this thread is aimed at the less experienced, it might be worth giving some detail about the process of customizing the bootmenu, including a brief explanation of why the user could find it useful. (As an example of how useful, suppose you want to boot an ext2 file system from the partition where the default is ext3.) For reasons that appear below, this will be particularly important for N770 users who might be setting up OS2006 in one of their partitions and OS2008HE in another, and also for anyone who uses a Windows PC for updating the Tablet's internal flash.

CUSTOMIZING THE BOOTMENU

Chances are, you have read somewhere that the bootmenu is fully customizable. This may sound cryptic, but Fanoush has written initfs_flasher to be very user-friendly. If you can use the Notes application, you can edit the bootmenu (unless you are running an older OS such as OS2006). Most probably you don't have to edit it at all. Even if you have to, it involves nothing more than changing a "3" to a "2" in two locations on a page of Notes, and deleting a space and the three letters "jbd". It is important to follow Bunanson's instructions rather than the Wiki when you download and unpack initfs_flasher. Bunanson does it in home/user/MyDocs/.documents/ whereas the Wiki does it in home/user/bin/ , and that makes all the difference.

[By the way, looking at the Wiki, I don't understand how initfs_flasher moves itself from /home/user/bin/ to /home/user/local/bin/.]

First off, do you need to know about this? If you are only setting up one bootable partition on the MMC, the answer is no, you don't. The defaults will work. Just follow Bunanson's instructions. When it is all done and you turn on your Tablet again, a menu will open, giving you a choice of partitions where the boot could take effect. Use the hardware navigation keys to make your selection. The Tablet will open as you expect it to.

Some users find it handy to be able to run more than one OS on their Tablets. There may be features of an older distribution that you like better than the later ones. When you are going to have more than one bootable MMC partition on N770, or more than two on N8x0, you should consider whether to edit the bootmenu. If you need to read this guide, you are almost certainly dealing with an ext2 file system. The default menu puts ext3 in one possible partition, and you will have to change that.

After you have done the "cd initfs_flasher" and the subsequent "mv" command, the initfs_flasher folder will contain a text file called bootmenu.conf . So long as initfs_flasher is in a subfolder of /home/user/MyDocs/ , you can open it with File Manager. Double-click on "Documents" and then on "initfs_flasher". bootmenu.conf is the first non-folder item on the list of contents of initfs_flasher. (Sometimes it is preceded by a folder called "mnt", which for some reason is not always there.)

Double clicking on bootmenu.conf, you see a message that File Manager does not recognize the file type, but can search for an app to open it. Click on "OK", select "Notes", and bootmenu.conf will open. (This does not work in OS2006. Look five paragraphs below in this post.) You can edit and save bootmenu.conf just like any other document in Notes. The version you save will be the bootmenu you later see on rebooting after running initfs_flash. In fact, before running initfs_flash, it is a good idea to print out your edited bootmenu.conf and make sure it really says what you want it to say. The steps involved, starting from /home/user/MyDocs/.documents/initfs_flasher/ , are:

(1a) cp bootmenu.conf /media/mmc1/ ( for N770) or (1b) cp bootmenu.conf /media/mmc2/ (for N8x0)
(2) connect to PC or Mac
(3) open bootmenu.conf with WordPad or whatever you do with Linux or Mac
(4) print.

You might even like to print bootmenu.conf BEFORE editing it, to see what you will be working with and plan your changes.

Looking at the text of bootmenu.conf, the part you should examine starts about half-way down, at the line which reads
MENU_2_NAME="Internal MMC card, partition 2, ext2" [slightly different wording for N770]
followed by five more lines starting with MENU_2_ . Assuming that you are in fact going to have ext2 files in this partition, you don't have to make any changes to this paragraph. Optionally, you might want to change the wording in quotes on that MENU_2_NAME line at the top. This wording does not affect the operation of the Tablet; it appears on your screen as a line of the menu which comes up when you switch the Tablet on before booting. If you have more than one OS in your Tablet, you might want the menu to remind you which OS will boot when you select a particular partition. (!!On the N8x0 bootmenu.conf, there is another line beginning with MENU_2_NAME, at the bottom of the MENU_2 paragraph. DON'T CHANGE THAT ONE!!) The same applies to the MENU_y_NAME for any other partition that will be bootable.

The crucial lines that you might have to change are the ones starting with MENU_y_MODULES and MENU_y_FSTYPE, where y=4 for N8x0 and y=3 for N770. The parts in quotes must be changed for an ext2 file system. If you look at the comparable lines of the MENU_2 paragraph, you will see what should be in the quotes. Delete " jbd" and change "ext3" to "ext2" on the MODULES line. Change "ext3" to "ext2" on the FSTYPE line.

There it is: change a "3" to a "2" in two locations on a Notes page, delete " jbd", and you're done.

Running OS2006, it is not so easy to customize the bootmenu. File Manager does not let you search for Notes to open it. You will have to use a Linux text editor. If this is the first time you have ever used vi, it can be scary. RESIST THE TEMPTATION to edit the menu in WordPad on your Windows PC and copy it back to initfs_flasher via /media/mmc/ ; from experience, I can tell you it will cause a major mess.

Careful planning can get around this problem. For a start, assuming at least one of your boot partitions will be for ext2 files, don't use mmcblk0p2 for anything else (such as swap). That way, you can leave MENU_2 in Fanoush's original form and save yourself the trouble of editing it. If you want two Linux partitions plus swap on the MMC, put the swap in mmcblk0p4.

If you are going to clone OS2006 (or earlier), do that one first and clone it to mmcblk0p2. That way, you can boot it up from the default bootmenu after running initfs_flash. [It appears to be necessary to boot up the newly cloned partition before executing any further commands in X-Term. My apologies to anyone who tried to clone two OS's to MMC before ever running initfs_flash. I have edited out that suggestion on March 29, 2009.] You will have to run initfs_flash again to install a customized bootmenu, i.e. customized in Notes while running OS2007+.

Windows users must run initfs_flash again every time they run the Nokia Wizard, because the Wizard wipes out the modified initfs created in any previous run of initfs_flash. The nice features of ./flasher and 0xFFFF are for Linux and Mac users only.

[It's a little off the topic, but Windows users might take a look at http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...49&postcount=6 . I think the reference to Fanoush might be http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...46&postcount=2 ; nhanquy has added the "-t jffs2", without which the "mount" won't work. Those posts offer a way to back up a clean rootfs and restore it as needed, without disturbing the kernel or initfs. If you are setting up the MMC boot, and plan to have more than one OS on your Tablet, it would be a good time to do this backup. The internal flash can not be a complete backup, since it can only hold one OS.]

Re: step by step: boot menu for newbies
 

scaler: That is quite a master piece! Bootmenu to the tablet is like holding someone's ball (sorry, do not know how to translate to the ladies :( ). Thanks.

bun

Re: step by step: boot menu for newbies
 

Would it be possible to restore it will a single operation that whould find previous installs and set it up back...

Btw where is project upstream repo ?

Re: step by step: boot menu for newbies
 

That depends on what the "it" is that you want to restore, and it also depends on what you mean by "a single operation". Assuming that you want to be able to restore the original initfs, the answer is "Yes, sort of."

The initfs_flasher folder contains files called "flash_eraseall" and "nandwrite", which are programs that can restore a previously backed up initfs. (They can also restore a rootfs to the internal flash, among other things.) The restoration requires two command lines (or four, if you include a "cd" and a "sudo gainroot"). You could combine these in a script that you could run as a single operation to restore your initfs. I have not done it this way myself, so I shall leave it to you to research further details. "flash_eraseall" and "nandwrite" are two programs from a collection called "MTD Utilities".

I have used the 0xFFFF flasher to back up an existing initfs and to install another, including installation of one that had been previously backed up. (0xFFFF uses scripts involving MTD Utilities, and so it is more or less the same thing as the method described above.) 0xFFFF must run on a separate Linux computer from the one whose initfs you want to change. This second computer could be another Nokia Internet Tablet capable of acting as USB host. There is only one command line required, but there are various other steps, such as activating USB Host Mode, attaching the two computers, and switching on in "flashing" mode. You might or might not consider this a single operation.