Has anyone else been having issues with dualbooting after getting the Diablo kernel update?

I was excited to see the large list of updates for Diablo that appeared a few weeks ago and rushed in to update all packages except initfs-flasher and diablo-kernel-flasher. I saved these for last weekend when I had time encase things got chewed. I hit "Update All" for those last two update packages and thought they'd both installed before the reboot; after a quick initfs_flash, it ran perfectly until today.

I noticed that diablo-kernel had not updated on the weekend when initfs did so I updated it today. On the reboot, I chose the internal storage boot and got all the updates on that partition to keep it as an up to date "System Rescue" install. When I rebooted selecting my external media partition 2; the system froze after the boot meter bar crossed the screen but before the audio gingle.

I can boot the internal flash cleanly but the external media partition2 consistantly freezes now.

If this is simply due to the current version of Fanoush's flasher not yet being updated to the latest Diablo kernel then everything is ok and I can leave the N810 in a drawer. (ok, I'll suffer a little withdrawal not having it with me but I can be patient.)

The question is; is this a known issue? Is it version incompatability between the new Diablo kernel/initfs and the older dualboot menu? Is there something else chewing my primary boot?

Anyone out there have an idea of what the issue is or what I can look at to confirm? I'll mount the partition and pull boot logs off it if someone thinks it will help (I've never seen a log in /var/logs though).

Update,

On boot, the menu seems to be trying or at least displays "booting from mmcblk0p2". If I understand correctly, this worked because the first Diablo version saw the external SD as mmcblk0. After the "boot bar" crosses the screen it simply hangs and the battery has to be removed to reset it.

I've tried a quick test to confirm and simply selecting the "internal flash partition 2 ext2" option fails. I'll try modifying the bootmenu.sh directly and see if specifying the external SD partition 2 as (blk1p2) works though I don't see why it would be different.

Is this possibly due to that glitch that causing the MMC devices to swap numbers (eg, blk0 seen as blk1 until after boot)?

Has anyone out there an idea what the issue may be or can someone point me to an active thread already discussing the issue if one exists?

I have the same problem on my N800. The status bar crosses the screen and then everything freezes, the only thing I can do is remove the battery. The internal flash boot works just fine. Is there any way to get a boot log to see what stalls? I really hope somebody can help with this problem since my latest backup really isn't up to date..

Did you use the latest initfs_flasher?

I have both N800 and N810 dual booting w/o any problem.

For the N800, mmcblk0p2 is the second partition of the internal card !

Yes.. the initfs_flasher worked fine and for some time (a couple of reboots) everything seemed to be ok. I guess I just have to face it and do a reinstall on my SD-card.

The answer may not be what was hoped for but here it is; try a bigger hammer.

Re-clone. That's the bad news for those like me with a huge install. The good news is that you'll be booting clean off the external SD agian.

I've been checking Fanoush's site regularly since the night of my first post when I chewed the dualboot. The jump too Diablo required getting the latest initfs package after which it worked perfectly; S.U.E I believe is the correct technical term when one, such as myself, does not check for the latest version first.

With the last updates to Diablo's initfs-flasher and kernel-flasher, the initfs_flash simply needed to be rerun to rebuild the boot menu. Thinks broke when I updated the kernel-flasher.

In the end, I had to re-clone the system. I bought another (and larger ;D ) microSD and used that to keep my original Diablo build image untouched on the original. It means much more leg room on the fat32 (type "c" in sfdisk, I just spend an hour remembering how important that is versus type "b").

Now I'm going to go mount the old SD on another machine and copy over my home directory and previous fat32 partition.

Figuring out a way to update initfs-flash and *-kernel-flash without having to do a clean re-cloning would be fantastic. The script that automates the process is nice and I hear rumours of a repository package that now automates the process but I keep my mounts under /mnt and both use different default mount locations so for now, I stick to ye' old manual process.

I love that Nokia is running Maemo more like a rolling distro. it's much less disruptive having only the two packages that break the dual boot. I just have to figure out a better way to deal with those two packages; not updating those two packages to the latest available would drive me nutts but rebuilding my install and config each time isn't much better.

(Now, to find out if the battery indicator is still not reading the power level once I get my old system iso'd off the smaller SD. I also want to investigate the SD slot hidden under the N810's plastic covering, it looks like there may actually be a removable SD hidden under there still.)

Fanoush, thank you. Your dual-boot menu is what makes the Nokia a truly usable device.

Beldin,

With previous upgrades (had my N800 tripple booting; internal, ext p2 2007, ext p3 2008 and N810 through original 2008 to the first, and now, second Diablo), I found the rebuild went pretty quick. Not sure if it helps any but here's how I cut the card up:

p1, fat32 - 6 gig - general storage of all personal data file, images, music.. anything that would fall under the various document folders off your /home/user plus maemo mapper data since the GPS was a primary reason for my upgrading to the N810. Now I can fit the complete 2.3 gigs worth of HOPE2008 talks in high quality on there without removing anything else to make room.

p2, ext2 - 1.5 gig - cloned install plus everything I'm going to be reinstalling over the next few days. In my /home/user I keep only the various config files that get dumped there. I have a few personal scripts stored in /home/user/bin and some other non-maemo binary apps in respective directories under /home/user/lib. Other than those two additional directories, only what has to go under my home directory goes here. Anything else I can store outside of /home/user goes to applicable directories under the fat32 partition 1.

Internal SD remains reserved for the maximized swap file and Maps related data which ships with the N810.

Internal Flash remains reserved as a factory+updates fresh build and "SystemRescue" for the exact type of issues that led me to post here originally.

It may make your rebuilding a little more present if you've not already got a similar setup.

(gah.. I have my pocket pentest box and PDA back. Damn that was a long week blocked from all my GPE data.)