Multiboot

[markus625]

Any guys know of the best way to multiboot into either Vix or openatv.
I've read there is open multiboot from openatv and there's NFR4XBoot from opennfr which appears to multiboot Vix and other images looking at the youtube clip.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KhWzx0Pyh0M

[rossi2000]

at the moment i use openmultiboot.

i have atm, vix-hd as main image, and openxta and openvixhd and openvix test builds.

i know not everyone likes the multiboot way but for a dev i find it excellent. i can switch between other images and test images quickly. without affecting my main image. :)

[markus625]

What about settings and plugins do these stay with the image you restore.
This is what I intend to do.
Have my main image as openvix hd and also run the openatv image or hopfully the E2bmc image when its available.
But not sure how settings or plugins will work and if the main image could get corrupted from loading a image off a usb drive etc with omb.

[rossi2000]

its just like another fresh image install,

settings/plugins wont be on the new image you put in openmultiboot. you'll be started with the FIW of the new image and carry on like its a fresh install, i think it will pick up settings backup but i never do this so im not sure.

[birdman]

Isn't openmultiboot currently limited to only a few boxes (as it's new and untested/unbuilt for the others)?

[rossi2000]

it was added to some more but not sure which ones, as it already works on my xtrend

[Rob van der Does]

Be aware that (any) multiboot environment will always be experimental. So it's not advisable to use it for the main household box.
Apart form other issues you can expect (external and internal) mounts to be lost or mounted otherwise than expected.

Whatever you do: it's your box in your environment, but we as ViX-team do not support multiboot.

[maxben]

Be aware that multiboot on the HD2400 has issues see my thread here (http://www.world-of-satellite.com/showthread.php?42247-SOLVED-Serious-device-mounting-issues) with my first attempt at multiboot.

Multiboot needs access to the HDD early in the boot process, unfortunately the HDD on the HD2400 is too slow initialising.

If a USB stick is plugged in at boot it is always initialised first as the HDD sdax.

Even when the entries are added to the fstab and the HDD and USB are booted and named correctly it is stll too late for the multiboot.

The solution it seems is to accept the issue and use a USB stick as the HDD and mount the internal HDD as for instance HDD2.

Of course this presents more issues and so we would need to adjust settings for the movies and anything else you use on the internal HDD., whether this adjustment would need applying on all installed images I'm not sure yet.

Even though the HD2400 has tuner issues with other than normal DVB-S2 LNB configurations I love this box with VIX so would would like to keep it as my daily use image so would probably install VIX on multiboot.

I'll update my experiences here with multiboot and perhaps others will too.

[Rob van der Does]

I change images quite frequently (mostly for testing purposes) and I must say: nothing beats a simple and quick image backup system, especially when used in conjunction with 'couch flashing'. Never ever any issue.

[Sicilian]

If anyone can post logs of multiboot failing please post them so I can forward to OpenMB dev's.

[birdman]

If a USB stick is plugged in at boot it is always initialised first as the HDD sdax.That might be a result of which order the controllers are polled in.

It's also why OpenViX mounts by UUID - not physical location. Hence, in my /etc/fstab:
...
UUID=9C44-07B8 /media/usb vfat defaults 0 0
UUID=75a26202-818f-441f-bfd2-b94134d0eef0 /media/hdd auto defaults0 0

I'd expect any boot system to let you specify what to boot from - not make assumptions.
And to have some way of specifying a wait period before looking, if it can't handle things itself.

[maxben]

Total success using OpenNFR image their NFR4X multiboot. All installed to USB without touching HDD.

NFR4X client menu on NFR image:
38818


NFR4X client menu on Vix HD image:
38819

[Rob van der Does]

Please read our rules again: you only just accepted them.
External live links are not allowed. You can attach pictures without any problem. I corrected it for you.

[maxben]

Actually at the time of posting pictures wouldn't upload but point taken, I should know better, I'll slap my own wrist.

[markus625]

Does this include links to YouTube.

[Rob van der Does]

Yep. I changed post #1 accordingly :)

[markus625]

I know you can create a backup image which you can restore but can you create a clone of your working image with settings and plugins included but not like a fresh install where it applies your settings backup and fetches the plugins from the feeds.

It would be like a instant restore, similar to cloning a PC with ghost.