Installation with heimdall-isorec method broken after https://gitlab.com/postmarketOS/boot-deploy/-/merge_requests/50

Hi, after !50 (merged) vmlinuz-dtb is no longer installed. This breaks the heimdall-isorec installation method, as that method uses that file. Only samsung-{i9100,i9100g,kiran} use this method at the moment.

I am not sure whether it would be best to fix this in boot-deploy or pmbootstrap, but I guess we can cat vmlinuz and the dtb somewhere in any case.

changed the description

By Henrik Grimler on 2024-02-25T18:44:07

is vmlinuz-dtb only used for flashing with heimdall and not used at any other point?

Also cc @calebccff

By clayton craft on 2024-02-26T18:34:28

Yes. And it is only these very old devices, that do not support a standard boot.img, that flash the vmlinuz-dtb file with the "heimdall-isorec" method.

We could also update the heimdall_flash_kernel.sh script to do the concatenation of vmlinuz and dtb there, but would be nice to be able to keep flashing with (different versions of) pmbootstrap, boot-deploy and heimdall as backward compatible as possible

By Henrik Grimler on 2024-02-26T18:34:28

vmlinuz-dtb could also be used for kernel upgrades on device (when deviceinfo_flash_kernel_on_update="true") for the heimdall-isorec devices. I don't think deviceinfo_flash_kernel_on_update has any effect for these devices at the moment though

By Henrik Grimler on 2024-02-26T18:37:12

could boot-deploy copy vmlinuz-dtb to the boot partition when flash_heimdall_partition_kernel is set? Is that a good indicator for "this device uses heimdall, and thus pmb and the flash upgrade script need vmlinuz-dtb" ?

By clayton craft on 2024-02-26T19:26:53

deviceinfo_flash_method="heimdall-isorec" is a better indicator, most heimdall-using devices (the ones woth deviceinfo_flash_method="heimdall-bootimg") do not need vmlinuz-dtb, only heimdall-isorec devices do

By Henrik Grimler on 2024-02-26T19:33:28

oh ok, thank you! yeah this would be pretty trivial to patch boot-deploy to handle. just conditionally re-add the bit removed in !50 (merged) if deviceinfo_flash_method == "heimdall-isorec"

By clayton craft on 2024-02-26T19:36:04

@craftyguy that sounds great, thanks!

By Henrik Grimler on 2024-02-26T19:42:57

I'm thinking a bit more about why !50 (merged) was done. adding the patch I just mentioned above to boot-deploy would re-add vmlinuz-dtb to /boot. It's technically not used for booting, but it needs to live somewhere, where other scripts/tools can find it. Traditionally this has been /boot/vmlinuz-dtb, so they are all looking for it there. If we try to preserve the intention of !50 (merged) by only having files used during boot in /boot, then we would need to 1) have boot-deploy take some new option for a path outside of /boot, 2) save vmlinuz-dtb in that special path, 3) update all of those tools to look in the new path and their packages have to have an constrained dependency on a specific boot-deploy version that uses the new path for writing out vmlinuz-dtb.

tl;dr: you're right about wanting to fix it only in boot-deploy, even though it would have been nicer to keep vmlinux-dtb out of /boot... at least on most devices, that file will continue to be kept out of /boot, and I think that still makes @calebccff happy (right?)

still tl;dr: too much tech debt, so I think this fix idea is best: #26 (comment 1790066005)

I'm not sure when I'll get around to making the patch, would you (or anyone) like to have a shot at it?

By clayton craft on 2024-02-26T19:46:01

Sure, I can think about it and investigate what best fix might be (not sure when I'll get around to it either but hopefully soon :D)

Let's see also if @calebccff has some additional thoughts!

By Henrik Grimler on 2024-02-26T19:53:22

I have samsung-n7000 and it uses isorec, which requires vmlinuz-dtb as well. Patching boot-deploy-functions.sh makes it working again.

By Raymond Hackley on 2024-03-16T06:38:05

added status::confirmed type::bug labels

mentioned in merge request !55 (merged)

By Newbyte on 2024-04-17T16:02:13

mentioned in issue #33 (closed)

By Raymond Hackley on 2024-06-22T10:32:44

closed