Docs update - Boot from SSD

Can we please get an update or note on the “Booting Turris Omnia from mSATA SSD” docs page under “Preparation of SSD”, step 5 where it says “partition table GPT is recommended”.

The eMMC on my kickstarter-era Omnia has finally died, so I have converted over to boot directly from the mSATA drive. I was broadly following the guide steps which was working fine, but I could not get the Omnia to boot directly from the mSATA at all.

It kept stalling at “Waiting for root device PARTUUID=<uuid>” - which was using the uuid of the mSATA, but it never progressed. On a hunch, I reverted the partition type with fdisk in a rescue shell to regular type 83 (Linux) and wrote that back out to the disk and it immediately booted.

This page is labelled as for the Omnia 2019+, but I wasn’t sure if that was referring to the the older uboot versions (I have 2022.10) or a hardware variation between the older and newer Omnia’s, but it would help to be documented.

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Would be better that you either create a pull request for the documentation repo: Turris / user-docs · GitLab

Or if you don’t have the info or unsure, create a issue for the docu repo: Issues · Turris / user-docs · GitLab

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Hi Ramon, thank you for letting us know. We appreciate your suggestion to improve our documentation. Best regards Marcela Turris Support Team

Actually, it looks like some confusion / conflict between Omnia versions might exist over the correct type to use here.

Referring to Issue #198 / Merge #332 where it was changed from “DOS” to “GPT” as the correct one to use. The DOS partition type would be limited to 2TB, so it makes sense to allow for larger ones.

The issue doesn’t appear to clarify what hardware version “GPT” applied to, so perhaps some internal Turris knowledge is needed to verify.

Perhaps it’s more correct to state it as this?

  • Original v1 Omnias = Linux (83)
  • 2019+ Omnias = GPT (ee)
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Hello Ramon,
could you please tell me which U-Boot version your Omnia has?
You can get the information by running this command:

cat /dev/mtd0 | grep 'U-Boot SPL'

Hi, I mentioned it in the first post - 2022.10, but the full version string is:
U-Boot SPL 2022.10-rc4-OpenWrt-r16653+119-44ce70f0e2 (Sep 15 2022 - 18:21:35 +0000).

I’m fully up to date with all automatic upgrades, and as far as I know, nothing preventing any updates, so I assume this is the current one.

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Thank you for the information! I will have a look at it, and see what can be done with the documentation.

Am I guessing, correctly that you have the first revision of Omnia?
e.g. CZ11NIC13

Ahh, I didnt know there was a hardware versions page. Yes, I have the CZ11NIC13 with 2GB RAM as I was one of the backers on Indiegogo. I still have the t-shirt :smiley:

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Could you please generate diagnostics form your Omnia and send it to me via tech.support@turris.cz?

Hi,

is it recommendable to get the newest firmware through OpenWrt Firmware Selector and is the only way install uboot on an SSD with a serial connection? I am not clear, if the eMMC uboot is only deactivated or deleted (might come handy as a fallback)

Thanks,
Vienna

The process I followed per the docs page was simply to insert the SSD as the first entry in the boot order. The eMMC is (now) second in my case, so if I removed the SSD, theoretically it would/could boot from that if the SSD was removed or failed to boot.

(My eMMC has failed, so this isn’t an option for me anyway).

Also, just technically, you don’t install uboot on the SSD. You configure uboot to point at the SSD to boot from instead of the eMMC. uboot is the software that your device runs first at power on to do very basic hardware device initialisation & detection - just enough to be able to identify that a storage device exists and read a (linux) kernel boot file from it in order to initalise the actual (turris, openwrt, etc) operating system.

The uboot configuration is written to a tiny little flash chip (kind of like a PC’s BIOS configuration) that’s separate from any actual storage you’re reading the linux kernel from.

Hi @Vienna .you are mixing up stuff. The link you provided is for Vanilla OpenWRT not TurrisOS as a fork. You should avoid that. Unless you want to switch to OpenWRT

Thanks for your information.

Doesnt TurrisOS just allow migrating to an external drive from the reForis GUI? You plug it in, it gets formatted, and you migrate.

Nope. That just migrates the data partition, not the system.

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