How to install on soldered eMMC storage?

[Peter Boy]

Nowadays several SBC devices provide eMMC storage soldered and no longer removable. How to install on this?

My first idea was to first install on mSD card, boot, and from this repeat the installation with the eMMC target. But this doesn’t work at least with Server. It complains about duplicate UUID partition and  aborts.

Do we need an additional target, e.g. (configured)disk.img that we can push via OTG to the eMMC?

Or any other, better, easier idea?

--
Peter Boy
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Pboy
[e-mail]

Timezone: CET (UTC+1) / CEST (UTC+2)

Fedora Server Edition Working Group member
Fedora Docs team contributor and board member
Java developer and enthusiast

[Peter Robinson]

> Nowadays several SBC devices provide eMMC storage soldered and no longer removable. How to install on this?

This is not a new thing.
> My first idea was to first install on mSD card, boot, and from this repeat the installation with the eMMC target. But this doesn’t work at least with Server. It complains about duplicate UUID partition and  aborts.

What do you mean by "repeat the installation" in this context. I have
used this way in the past, but at times the way I deal with this on
weird devices I am boot strapping may not what we want to propose.
> Do we need an additional target, e.g. (configured)disk.img that we can push via OTG to the eMMC?

What do you mean by this?
> Or any other, better, easier idea?

This can be very device, or at the very least SoC specific.

There are some devices where you can put it into a mode where the eMMC
can be exported as a USB gadget storage device where you can just use
arm-image-installer to write directly to eMMC over USB.

There's others where you can use a special tool to basically dd
something to the storage using their special protocol over USB.

Because there's no one single way to do it I always just put it on the
back burner because I've never had the time to look at a holistic way
of making all the options available to users via a single tool front
end.

Peter

[Jesús Abelardo Saldívar Aguilar]

El vie,  9 de feb de 2024 a las 11:52:21 AM, Peter Boy 
 escribió:
> My first idea was to first install on mSD card, boot, and from this 
> repeat the installation with the eMMC target.

Which tool are you using to install the OS image to your media (mSD, 
eMMC)?
> But this doesn’t work at least with Server. It complains about 
> duplicate UUID partition and  aborts.

What you can do is: Install an OS image to the mSD different from the 
one that you want on the eMMC (maybe use Fedora Minimal, or even a 
different OS), then boot from your mSD, and write your desired image to 
the eMMC using something like `dd`. This way would not be a duplicated 
UUID.

That's how I did on my Pinebook Pro, which does have a removable eMMC, 
but I didn't want to disasemble the computer.

[Peter Boy]

> Am 09.02.2024 um 19:34 schrieb Jesús Abelardo Saldívar Aguilar :
>
> El vie,  9 de feb de 2024 a las 11:52:21 AM, Peter Boy  escribió:
> > My first idea was to first install on mSD card, boot, and from this repeat the installation with the eMMC target.
>
> Which tool are you using to install the OS image to your media (mSD, eMMC)?

arm-image-installer
> > But this doesn’t work at least with Server. It complains about duplicate UUID partition and  aborts.
>
> What you can do is: Install an OS image to the mSD different from the one that you want on the eMMC (maybe use Fedora Minimal, or even a different OS), then boot from your mSD, and write your desired image to the eMMC using something like `dd`. This way would not be a duplicated UUID.

Thanks, that worked. I used Minimal raw-xz which thankfully doesn’t start a graphical desktop and uses good old ext4 for everything (and different UUIDs of course).

--
Peter Boy
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Pboy
[e-mail]

Timezone: CET (UTC+1) / CEST (UTC+2)

Fedora Server Edition Working Group member
Fedora Docs team contributor and board member
Java developer and enthusiast

--
Peter Boy
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Pboy
[e-mail]

Timezone: CET (UTC+1) / CEST (UTC+2)

Fedora Server Edition Working Group member
Fedora Docs team contributor and board member
Java developer and enthusiast

[Dennis Gilmore]

On Fri, 9 Feb 2024, 04:52 Peter Boy,  wrote:
> Nowadays several SBC devices provide eMMC storage soldered and no longer
> removable. How to install on this?
>
> My first idea was to first install on mSD card, boot, and from this repeat
> the installation with the eMMC target. But this doesn’t work at least with
> Server. It complains about duplicate UUID partition and  aborts.

This should work. But you would need to remove the mSD card to boot from
the eMMC.
> Do we need an additional target, e.g. (configured)disk.img that we can
> push via OTG to the eMMC

Some boards have ways to do this. It would help if you mentioned the board
you are talking about. You can probably also just boot an installer image
and do an install onto the eMMC using anaconda. But to give any tips on
this we would need to know the board.

Dennis

Or any other, better, easier idea?
> --
> Peter Boy
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Pboy
> [e-mail]
>
> Timezone: CET (UTC+1) / CEST (UTC+2)
>
> Fedora Server Edition Working Group member
> Fedora Docs team contributor and board member
> Java developer and enthusiast
>
> --
> _______________________________________________
> arm mailing list -- [e-mail]
> To unsubscribe send an email to [e-mail]
> Fedora Code of Conduct:
> https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/
> List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
> List Archives:
> https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[e-mail]
> Do not reply to spam, report it:
> https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue