Boot from microSD?

[oesf@kenny.cat]

Hi there,

I'm currently trying to make the Gemini boot Debian from a microSD card, however I cannot seem to be able to figure out how the initramfs chooses the root partition and where I would need to make changes to allow the device to boot from the microSD.
Does anyone have any pointers?

Thanks a lot!

Best,
kenny

[Adam Boardman]

Assuming your wanting to boot the gemian from a microSD card then its actually all setup for that:

You either need to create a volume group named planetlinux or sailfishos on your microSD card*.

Then flash/dd linux-boot-lvm-gemian.img to one of your bootX partitions.

You then either need to have also unpacked a gemian system image to a gemian logical volume, or have the relevant config (after removing the to shrink volume name if you don't have sailfish on the same volume group) and system img on a usb stick that is plugged in on first boot, if the lv has no os-release file then it will attempt to create the gemian lv and install.

Kernel updates should create the relevant kernel image going forwards (assuming your using the patched lk), if not then you can always manually create a lvm-gemian image for the lvm setup on the device:

mkbootimg --kernel /usr/share/kernel/Image.gz-dtb --ramdisk /usr/share/kernel/initrd.img-gemini.cpio.gz --base 0x40080000 --second_offset 0x00e80000 --cmdline "bootopt=64S3,32N2,64N2 log_buf_len=4M root_lv=gemian" --kernel_offset 0x00000000 --ramdisk_offset 0x04f80000 --tags_offset 0x03f80000 --pagesize 2048 -o linux-boot-lvm-gemian.img

[oesf@kenny.cat]

Thanks a lot! I have gotten it working.

[oesf@kenny.cat]

Kernel updates should create the relevant kernel image going forwards (assuming your using the patched lk), if not then you can always manually create a lvm-gemian image for the lvm setup on the device:

Could you give me a pointer on how to install the patched lk? I've found two GitHub repositories but I've failed to successfully build them:

https://github.com/gemian/gemini-lk
https://github.com/sparklespdx/gemini-x27-lk-experimental

[Adam Boardman]

https://github.com/gemian/gemian/wiki/Debia...-the-bootloader