Librem5 sd and boot order

Hardware Librem 5
21

This. :smile:

22

It will be possible somehow to backup and restore the whole emmc system

Not from the bootloader, but Iā€™ve already done that with my device by booting Jumpdrive with uuu. It simply boots the Linux kernel from USB and then exports the eMMC and/or SD card via mass storage gadget with some simple scripts in initramfs.

23

It will be possible to have some noob friendly tool for doing it? a kind of image for usb that will do that automagically

24

ā€œImage for usbā€? No, I mean, booting from the kernel provided by PC via USB by using the flashing tool (but without actually flashing, just uploading to RAM).

I have a proof-of-concept fork of Jumpdrive: https://source.puri.sm/sebastian.krzyszkowiak/jumpdrive. All you need to do to build and boot it is:

make initramfs-purism-librem5.gz
uuu src/purism-librem5.txt

(you can boot the system with rootfs on an external USB drive and I did it once, but thatā€™s not what I meant here :))

2 Likes
25

Still too complex for my very low knowledge, i hope in the future you could make this tool noob-proof :slight_smile:

26

If you keep sensitive information on your L5, you could boot the phone from an external USB drive that has a low profile (just a few milimeters), while maintaining an Android operating system (something familiar to the person who does the search) in EMMC. If someone is about to search your phone, you would just pull out the USB drive and reboot the phone before they take it from you. Hide the USB drive in your pocket where no one would think to look for it. Then when you get your phone back, you re-insert the usb drive and boot in to it again.

27

or insert it into some body-cavity ā€¦ :joy:
look ā€¦ giving advice in PRIVATE is ONE thing ā€¦ but this is a PUBLIC thread ā€¦ might i remind you that we do NOT want to HELP criminal people have an EASIER time avoiding JUSTICE ā€¦

tools can be used for BOTH evil and useful things ā€¦ we should damn well remember that ā€¦ :sweat:

1 Like
28

There are a lot of people out there that will find a way if they want to break the law. They donā€™t need my help. On the other hand, the average guy has a right to privacy. There is nothing wrong with helping anyone who wants to maintain their privacy. If they break the law, itā€™s on them. In the meantime, most governments right now are abusing the hell out of peopleā€™s privacy rights. Maybe now, the cop that searches your L5 will know to search your pockets and find your USB drive too.

29

Thatā€™s the real issue with this being a public discussion.

1 Like
30

so what was the point in the first place if we just give PUBLIC advice to BOTH parties ? :rofl:

assuming that there ACTUALLY are TWO parties :crazy_face:

31

First we need someone to do a port of an AOSP-derivative (like LineageOS or Replicant) to the Librem 5. Hint, hint, nudge, nudge!

I think the PinePhone would work better, since it looks like a normal phone, so it wonā€™t arouse suspicion like the Librem 5, and there is now an AOSP-port (GloDroid) for the PinePhone. Plus, it can be easily booted from a microSD, which is easier to hide in body cavities than a USB Flash drive. :slight_smile:

The Librem 5 is going to arouse suspicion, because it is so thick and has all those switches on the side, that are going to make a security officer look twice at it and get curious enough to look up the model on the internet.

32

yes itā€™s definately gonna leave lasting marks if it getā€™s shoved in some body-cavity ā€¦

1 Like
33

I imagine it would be all based on whether or not there is a bios or other system menu that has a programable boot order .

My HDD on my laptop is last in line . Boot order goes.
USB
SD
DVD
HDD

So my system searches for bootable media on everything else before the HDD .

34

ok but having the HDD as last is not a good idea if you are NOT having anything boot-able in the first place.

my solution is to just enter the BIOS/UEFI/motherboard-firmware each time i insert a boot-able-medium and select from what EXACTLY i need ā€¦

this approach has the advantage that you can select what MODE you want to install something (UEFI or non-UEFI). thatā€™s not an issue with the PurismOS though because it doesnā€™t have any UEFI option (only other not-so-free-software-based mentality distros have that as an option)

1 Like
35

Why is that ? As I know its only downfall is a bit of latency .

36

depends. if you have a boat-load of devices that might end up being more significant ā€¦

37

Explain please ?

38

for people that manage systems which have many different internal/external storage devices this list could get PRETTY large ā€¦ for MOST people this shouldnā€™t be the case as this was about the L5 (i was thinking about workstations/servers)

2 Likes
39

What is the current state of this? Is there any way to boot Evergreen from SDCard?
If it is just a matter of selecting boot device, how to get to that screen on power on?

1 Like
40

Last I heard, no, it is not just a matter of selecting boot device, and there is no such screen at power on to get to (no boot disk menu) ā€¦ and actually uboot does not currently contain the necessary support to boot from a USB disk (and the uSD card is accessed via USB) ā€¦ but if you have a working eMMC drive (which is accessed via SD), you might be able to boot from the uSD card via a chain boot.

You can of course boot from USB if the phone is connected via USB to a host running uuu (which I guess means that if you are seriously into internals, you could boot from uSD card if the uSD card is on the host :slightly_smiling_face:).

1 Like