AmigaOne XE multi-boot

A forum for AmigaOne XE and MicroA1-C specific issues.
Post Reply
User avatar
Valiant
Beta Tester
Beta Tester
Posts: 36
Joined: Tue Dec 21, 2010 6:12 am
Location: USA, UT, West Jordan
Contact:

AmigaOne XE multi-boot

Post by Valiant »

Some weeks ago I was able to replace my dead primary drive with an SSD, and I installed AmigaOS 4.1 FE upate 2 on it. At that time Uboot would show me the three bootable 4.1 partitions that I have plus one for Linux, and I would select one and the XE would appear to boot into it. Sometime later I had to reinstall the OS to my stable partition and I must have inadvertatly changed one of the Uboot settings so that now all I get is the highest priority partition and no other. Is there anyone out there still using the XE that is able to multi-boot it?

Thanks,
A1-XE, 800Mhz G4, 512Mb
Sam440ep, 666Mhz, 512Mb
A1-X1000, 1.6Ghz PA6T, 4Gb
User avatar
sailorMH
Posts: 230
Joined: Wed Aug 28, 2013 6:01 pm
Location: Czech republic

Re: AmigaOne XE multi-boot

Post by sailorMH »

I don't have AmigaOne XE, only Micro A1-C and Sam440ep-flex, both with U-Boot.

Uboot reads SLB from 1st level booting disk (selected by U-boot settings), SLB search for bootable partitions on disk (i.e. bootable partitions with /kikstart directory). I am not sure, if SLB search for bootable partitions on this 1st level booting disk only, or on all disks visible to SLB - you have to check it.
Then SLB shows you all kickstart configurations he found.
If you see only one configuration, and you have three in real, it means, that your other partitions are not bootable, have no or corrupted kickstart ( for example no kicklayout ) or SLB don't see them.

Then you select one of kickstarts, load his kernel and run loader. Now you can press both mouse buttons to select AmigaOS system boot disk. This feature is the same like on original Amigas.
You can also set default bootable system volume this way:
in KickLayout file put somewhere line: MODULE Kickstart/BootDevice
And made the file Kickstart/BootDevice with text with device name - for exmple DH4.
echo >Kickstart/BootDevice "DH4"
This way you made default system booting disk DH4:, which have no highest priority.

I know that is not exact anwer for your question, but maybe it helps.
Micro A1-C (G3/1.2 GHz), AmigaOne XE (G4/1.4 GHz), Pegasos II (G4/1.33 GHz), Sam440ep, Sam440ep-flex, AmigaOne X1000
Efika 5200b, Pegasos I, Powerbook, Mac Mini (1.83 GHz), iMac, Powermac Quad

AmigaOS, MorphOS, linux, MacOS X
User avatar
nbache
Beta Tester
Beta Tester
Posts: 1714
Joined: Mon Dec 20, 2010 7:25 pm
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
Contact:

Re: AmigaOne XE multi-boot

Post by nbache »

I also don't have any XE machine working, but I used to have both a G3 and a G4, and I'm pretty sure I did it as follows, because I think those machines couldn't find/load Kickstarts on other volumes than the one they booted from (it's much easier on the newer models).

On the volume where you are booting at the moment, make a new subdirectory inside the Kickstart directory for each of the other volumes you want to boot.

Copy the files from each other volume's Kickstart directory into the corresponding subdirectory.

In the Kicklayout file on your primary boot volume, add a new configuration for each of the other volumes by copying the text from that volume's Kicklayout and amending the paths in all the copied lines to point to the files down in the subdirectory.

Make absolutely sure you leave one and only one completely empty line after each configuration.

Then follow sailorMH's advice above about the BootDevice file/line for each of the other volumes.

Finally, on each of the other volumes, rename Kickstart to e.g. KickstartX and make a link called Kickstart, pointing to the subdir on the primary boot volume. This is so that e.g. using AmiUpdate to update Kickstart on such a volume automatically finds your actual Kickstart in the subdir on the primary boot volume.

Hope I got this right ...

Best regards,

Niels
User avatar
Valiant
Beta Tester
Beta Tester
Posts: 36
Joined: Tue Dec 21, 2010 6:12 am
Location: USA, UT, West Jordan
Contact:

Re: AmigaOne XE multi-boot

Post by Valiant »

Thanks, sailorMH and Niels

Niels, I found your precise instructions in the mail-list archive and by following them exactly was able to set up my stable, backup and beta partitions and choose the one I want to boot into. Now the only thing I'm missing is the Linux partition.
A1-XE, 800Mhz G4, 512Mb
Sam440ep, 666Mhz, 512Mb
A1-X1000, 1.6Ghz PA6T, 4Gb
Post Reply