Boot drive selection

#1

I have the Ubuntu from the Rock 5b downloads page installed on the eMMC module and armbian desktop on a sd card. So far have been able to boot both, but if both media is installed at the same time is there a default boot manager to control which is selected?

#2

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I see this on the Armbian docs, is a boot manager like this native on the rock 5b or is it something that has to do with armbian? I want to know the expected procedure when there are multiple boot devices.

#3

This is screen from script that moves system to selected media and updates spi or boot partition if needed.
This don’t allow to choose drive on boot.
and yes - that’s armbian script inside booted OS

#4

So what happens if there are multiple boot media present, is there a way to know which will be chosen between sd, emmc and m.2 ssd?

#5

Now we can’t choose boot order

#6

Boot priority is probably SPI <- eMMC <- SD, those are supported straight from factory on plain board (spi should be empty). If You flash spi with u-boot - You will also get boot script with own boot sequence and maybe nvme and usb support (in future maybe network boot). Then it depends on SPI contents.

#7

The UEFI/EDK2 bootloader available in another thread here has a boot menu, but for now, it’s only accessible via serial console, not on screen, because HDMI support is still being worked on.

#8

I multi-boot by simply changing the uuid in armbianEnv.txt or extlinux.conf I will try the efi/edk2 image when hdmi is working.

#9

After flashing the SPI using the files from https://wiki.radxa.com/Rock5/install/spi, (rk3588_spl_loader_v1.08.111.bin and rock-5b-spi-image-g49da44e116d.img) I installed the Ubuntu server image on an SD card, eMMC and M.2 SSD. What I found was that the priority was SD Card, eMMC, M.2 SSD. Ran through all my testing here: https://www.learningtopi.com/sbc/radxa-rock-5b-setup/

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#10

The device boots from SD first and from eMMC later. You can therefore “dual boot” by having one OS on the eMMC and another (more ‘volatile’) on an SD card.

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#11

Great nice read! So changing the SPI is booting first from the NVME and when putting a bootable SD with OS it’s booting from the SD card? :heart_eyes: