Problem Description
Since the Olimex Lime2 of the HSK has a SATA-port, and SD cards tend to break, and are rather slow, I was woundering, if I would install and boot the Freedombox image to a SSD.
Has anyone done this,
is there any documentation I didn’t see
what could possibly go wrong?
Expected Results
I hope it would run even more reliable, and maybe even faster.
Information
FreedomBox version: 20.7
Hardware: Freedombox HSK (OLIMEX Lime2)
How did you install FreedomBox?: Installed the stable branch from freedombox.org
I believe, having your main root file system on SSD/HDD is possible.
Background:
First there is a u-boot boot loader install in the SD card before and outside the first partition (boot partition). This is started by the firmware. After that u-boot will search for a u-boot script in /boot. This script is then has the commands for locating and running the kernel, initrd and a device tree file.
Possible approaches:
Just remove the SD card and have the extract contexts imaged to SSD/HDD and remove SD card. If the firmware has the ability to boot SATA disk, then everything should work as is. I doubt this will work.
Another approach is same as above but keep the SD card but without the ‘boot’ and ‘root’ partitions. I believe the u-boot will search for boot parition in SD card (wont find it) and then use the boot partition on SATA disk (which I believe it is able to access).
Simplest approach is to simply move the ‘root’ partition into SSD. The boot partition and u-boot boot loader will stay on the SD card.
Each approaches require understanding the the u-boot boot process and may require a change to u-boot boot script. Checkout https://linux-sunxi.org and Olimex forums for further information.