Petitboot on Odroid HC4 forgets Debian boot option

[Jeremy Kerr]

Hi Hubert,

> A little bit of success on creating an own grub.cfg in sda1 to show
> up in petitboot.
> 
> I have created the directory grub under /boot/grub (it did not
> exist). I have
> created the file grub.cfg with the following content
> 
> menuentry "Debian Parameters like ui" {
>         linux /boot/vmlinuz
>         initrd /boot/initrd.img
>         devicetree /boot/devicetree.dtb
>         root=/usr/var/petitboot/mnt/dev/sda1
> }

OK, a couple of notes on that:

 - you may have confused the root= grub variable with the kernel
   command-line parameter. At the moment, you're not passing any kernel
   command-line parameters, as they need to go on the linux statement.

   Something like:

      linux /boot/vmlinux root=/dev/sda1 debug

 - the grub syntax in petitboot doesn't support the 'devicetree'
   statement - unless the odroid folks have added it in their own tree.
   If there's a need for this, I can definitely add it to the petitboot
   code, but it might be a while before the odroid folks pick up those
   changes.

   However, it's not usually required to pass a devicetree - the process
   of booting into the new kernel will just use the device tree as-is
   from the already-running petitboot environment.


So, try something like this:

    menuentry "Debian Parameters like ui" {
            linux /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda1
            initrd /boot/initrd.img
    }

If you do need the custom device tree, you could also switch to a
different config file type - there's a 'native' format that allows
setting the devicetree. In /boot/petitboot.conf in your root filesystem:

    name Debian
    image /boot/vmlinux
    initrd /boot/initrd
    args root=/dev/sda1 debug
    dtb /boot/devicetree.dtb

but try without, you might find that the grub config with no
'devicetree' statement works fine.

> success. I have also tried to create several entries to test various
> options but found that Petitboot only goes for the first menuentry it
> finds in the grub.cfg and then stops parsing. Could this be the case?

Petitboot should definitely be parsing all of the menuentries; if you
can send the config file you've created, I can take a look.

Also, see if the pb-discover.log has any details. Depending on the
odroid setup, you may be able to do something like:

    nvram --update-config=petitboot,debug?=true

- this will make the log more verbose.

then if you want to disable:

    nvram --update-config=petitboot,debug?=

> ------------------------------------------------------------
> I have a question regarding the list of bootable entries. Just to
> understand
> it:
> You mentioned that petitboot itself does not hold any entries but
> takes them as it finds these in the various partitions. The thing is,
> my Odroid came with options to install Debian bullseye, Debian buster,
> Ubuntu and two more I think. So where were these entries stored? And
> after the installation of Debian all options were gone. Isnt this
> strange?
> -----------------------------------------------------------

Was there any storage device already present on the device as shipped?
It's definitely possible to create a mostly-empty filesystem with just a
config file that provides a couple of boot options that netboot various
installer images.

One the installer runs though, it may overwrite the block device(s),
erasing those default configs.

Cheers,


Jeremy