[iPod] Dual boot...how about dual bootloaders?

[keeegan]

I know the rockbox team is not affiliated with ipodlinux nor do you support their loader. I am just wondering if this is possible, and I thought I'd ask here first.
That being said, how about the ability to have the bootloader function normally when hold isn't activated (booting straight to rockbox with no delay), but when the hold switch is activated, bringing up ipl2 instead of booting the apple OS. I personally use rockbox 90% of the time and ipodlinux and apple firmware 10% of the time. I think this feature would be neat and others possibly might too.

[saratoga]

We don't support (or have anything at all to do with) ipl2 here, but you can use it with rockbox last I heard.  Is what you're suggesting any different?

[keeegan]

It's a little different I guess. I'm wanting the ipod to boot into rockbox like normal, but when the hold switch is on, have it load ipl2 instead of the apple firmware. Is this more clear?

[saratoga]

So basically you want ipl2 to load rockbox by default, and only give you a choice if you don't have hold selected?

Have you tried asking the ipl2 developers?  We don't really have any control over ipl2 here, so theres not much we can do about how it works.

[keeegan]

No, I'm wanting to modify your bootloader to load ipl2 instead of the apple firmware.

[saratoga]

Hmm I don't think running two bootloaders makes much sense, although its probably possible.

Either way, hacking up our bootloader to work with ipl isn't on topic here.

[AlexP]

The Rockbox bootloader is already capable of booting ipl by holding another button (although I forget which).

edit:  I'm struggling to find any information on this, but I could have sworn it was possible.

edit 2:  From http://ipodlinux.org/irc/reader/2009-11-14

14:25   amiconn   The rockbox bootloader supports triple boot on ipods
14:26   amiconn   Hold switch selects OF, Play selects ipl. No button will try to boot rockbox
14:26   amiconn   In order to boot ipl with the rockbox bootloader, the ipl kernel must be put on the fat32 partition, named "linux.bin"

*amiconn is a core Rockbox dev.

[keeegan]

That worked perfectly! Thanks AlexP for actually comprehending what I said and unlocking the thread to help me.

For anyone else wanting to do this, don't be confused by the wording. It's not the actual linux kernel, but the ipl bootloader, usually called loader.bin
Just rename it to linux.bin and drop it in the root of your iPod's drive, reboot and hold play.

[GodEater]

Although you can actually use the linux kernel too. Your method of using loader.bin is probably more flexible though since our bootloader does not allow parameters to be parsed to the kernel on load, whereas iPL's does.

[keeegan]

Ahh, thanks for clarifying that. I'm not using ipodlinux from the main development tree, since i didn't want to repartition, so my linux root runs off the fat32. That could explain why I had problems not being able to pass any parameters to my kernel.