Anyone can program a boot manager like GRUB for N900 ?
 

Just want a boot manager like GRUB to choose which OS to boot. Maemo 5 PR1.3 or MeeGo 1.1

U-boot is not that perfect. Anyone can help to improve U-boot or program a new boot manager like GRUB ?

Thx.

Re: Anyone can program a boot mamger like GRUB for N900 ?
 

how about boot-menu?

Re: Anyone can program a boot mamger like GRUB for N900 ?
 

- Edit -
This post is wrong: when reading it, assume I am saying multiboot, rather than bootmenu.
- End Edit -

Bootmenu is worse than uboot. It flashes the NAND every time you change OSs. What I don't get is, what actual features do you have in GRUB or (insert other bootloader of preference) that UBoot fails to provide?

Re: Anyone can program a boot mamger like GRUB for N900 ?
 

In what way, ie what features are you missing?

Re: Anyone can program a boot mamger like GRUB for N900 ?
 

@Mentalist Traceur:
That's multiboot you are thinking of. Bootmenu doesn't flash anything, but I'm not sure how good it is for booting extra OS's, either.

Re: Anyone can program a boot mamger like GRUB for N900 ?
 

Thanks for the correction RobbieThe1st. I need to pay more attention to these things.

Re: Anyone can program a boot mamger like GRUB for N900 ?
 

Burg would be an intresting alternative.. if ported. Not sure if it would be possible.

Re: Anyone can program a boot manager like GRUB for N900 ?
 

U-boot is a good boot manager, I used it for years on the OpenMoko freerunner. It has a menu and is configurable: settings, scripts, environments are saved to a nand partition.

I think that u-boot for the n900 will receive more love in the next months, and hope it will become complete and mature to replace nolo entirely.

In the mean time you may replace boot.scr to switch between several OS, or (better) rebuild u-boot to change your default OS and provide scripts to boot meego, debian, ubuntu and so on.

For example my u-boot boots maemo as default os and debian if I interrupt it and type "run debian".

Having a "run meego" or a "run nitroid" is trivial.

Re: Anyone can program a boot manager like GRUB for N900 ?
 

so, we need to wait U-boot get improved.

But till now, I can still not see a multi boot menu for me to choose which OS to boot from.

Re: Anyone can program a boot manager like GRUB for N900 ?
 

uBoot more than fine. Just because you can't use it doesn't mean it's not the best solution to the problem.

Learn to use it.

Re: Anyone can program a boot manager like GRUB for N900 ?
 

The best solution would be a simple, multiboot style gui without multiboot's problems surely. Less keypresses, no chance of forgetting commands and a default boot into the most useful operating system!

Re: Anyone can program a boot manager like GRUB for N900 ?
 

in my dreams, i want a touch UI on bootscreen with big iconified buttons for differents OSes (Maemo 5, MeeGo 1.1, Android 2.1 ...), or at least a text UI with a list, without le need of removing/inserting the SD card.

Re: Anyone can program a boot manager like GRUB for N900 ?
 

plus the boot manager that can handles most OSes without the need of multiboot+uboot..

Boot manager - Maemo5, Meego, NITDroid, Ubuntu... = Perfect..

i guess that the boot manager you've been dreaming on will eventually exists someday... =) hopefully...hopefully...hopefully...

Re: Anyone can program a boot manager like GRUB for N900 ?
 

U-boot is a boot manager that can handle most OSes. I still don't get it, what do people think is missing exactly?

Re: Anyone can program a boot manager like GRUB for N900 ?
 

lol sorry my bad.. =) sorry again :(

Re: Anyone can program a boot manager like GRUB for N900 ?
 

Menus and touchable eye candy, I think. As I understand it, u-boot can do this (at least, it can do menus controlled by keyboard if not by the touchscreen), but I haven't found any instructions on this yet.

Re: Anyone can program a boot manager like GRUB for N900 ?
 

good luck with u-boot in the current form : http://www.denx.de/wiki/DULG/Manual

This is NOT easy, user friendly software as-is. This is the archetype of very flexible, multi-OS, multi-language, completely user un-friendly software that was soo common in the early Unix/Linux days. And it was originally targeted towards embedded systems, even more hardcore than your typical end-user Linux box.

Unfortunately there is still a hardcore group of geeks insisting that the only truth is in learning all the details & doing it the hard way and that end-user acceptance and easy-of-use is for wimps only.

It's that 'knowledge is everything, simple end-users don't count' attitude that has stalled user acceptance and progress in a lot of unix / linux related areas.

As long as (all kinds of) people don't realize that UI does count to increase uptake and buy-in, to attract users and funds, these technically very good, 'pure' solutions will stay for the happy few.

As u-boot (the basis) is free and open software, everybody is free to enhance and create better (nicer) versions of it. I'll be following this area closely to see these versions appear.

Maybe when Meego 1.2 is out or NITdroid 1.0, in 6 months or so, we'll have a user-friendly multi-boot environment (general term, not the multiboot product) to allow non-hardcore users to easily install, maintain and switch between the different OS's and allow proper low level backups (think BackupMenu) to be integrated. I do realize that a bit of command line and partitioning knowledge might still be needed but that's the price of playing this low-level.

If only all people people involved in Maemo/Meego/NITdroid kernel building (think people like Matan, JoergRW, MohammadAG, Paul Fertser, Titan, stskeeps, e-yes, DJ-Steve, Nokia & Intel themselves and others) would work together on making everything u-boot compatible, to make it easy.

It will take time but I hope people will get there. I still strongly believe in the 'open & free' ideas, already since Linux kernel 0.8. On the other hand I also want to pay for good software, as I do think that money can be a good motivator for some to create real value for others. To each it's own.

Amen.

Re: Anyone can program a boot manager like GRUB for N900 ?
 

AIUI "vanilla" u-boot doesn't, but others have implemented menus and such in their board definitions (eg openmoko).

Re: Anyone can program a boot manager like GRUB for N900 ?
 

It's a boot loader, not a twitter app. It's not aimed at end users in the first place. By definition it does some pretty low-level stuff (in some respects even lower than the kernel) and thus isn't meant to be friendly. People who are not intimately familiar with their device's boot process should stay away from the bootloader (any device, any bootloader).

No one's forcing people who find NOLO "friendlier" to switch either.

Everything is u-boot compatible, that's the whole point of having a "very flexible, multi-OS" as you put it solution.

Re: Anyone can program a boot manager like GRUB for N900 ?
 

why did they not prepare to work with powerkernel??? if not it should uninstall powerkernel before... then whis would not happend to me...

Re: Anyone can program a boot manager like GRUB for N900 ?
 

That's not their responsibility. If you aren't sure if it will work, you should revert to the default kernel before trying anything.