Re: Bringing Mobian closer to Debian

[Arnaud Ferraris <arnaud.ferraris@gmail.com>]

Hi Paul,

Le 09/09/2021 à 23:44, Paul Wise a écrit :
> On Thu, Sep 9, 2021 at 12:38 PM Arnaud Ferraris wrote:
>> Le 09/09/2021 à 06:29, Paul Wise a écrit :
>>>> - initramfs scripts & hooks
>>>
>>> Any examples?
>>
>> Oh, I forgot that point! Here's the nastiest example I have:
>> https://gitlab.com/mobian1/devices/oneplus6-tweaks/-/blob/master/tweaks/initramfs-tools/scripts/init-premount/mobian
>>
>> This one is a workaround to the Android bootloader (at least on OnePlus
>> 6) appending `root=...` and `ro` cmdline parameters to our own cmdline,
>> effectively shadowing our chosen values for those and causing Mobian's
>> boot process to fail.
> 
> Other options would be to:
> 
>  * reconfigure the Android bootloader to not do that for Debian
>  * replace the Android bootloader with a Debian one
>  * chainload from the Android bootloader to a Debian one
> 

Unfortunately the first 2 options aren't possible due to bootloaders
being signed (and secure boot being enabled) on most devices (if not all).

A 2nd stage bootloader is WIP, but we're not there yet (no support in
u-boot for this SoC, and using linux+kexec isn't currently possible due
to issues with the dtb). I'm confident this will end up working
eventually, but a workaround is still required in the meantime.

(but that's just one example, there are more such workarounds which
we'll likely have to carry around for a while).

Cheers,
Arnaud