boot from sd-card
asked 2015-11-16 23:48:55 +0200
Would it be possible to boot the Jolla directly from SD-card? It would open up the possibility to boot other OS'es, or try the more daring hacks on SailfishOS itself before flashing it the main storage.
Also, assuming the bootloader still works, it would be able to unbrick or clean-install the Jolla. Download an image, put it on an SD-card using pc (or tablet!), put SD-card in Jolla, start recovery on device and flash a pristine installation of the current SailfishOS. Bonus points if such downloader is part of the recovery console itself :)
As an extra benefit, being able to install a clean version frees up quite a bit of storage, as the btrfs-snapshot of original 1.0.0.x version of the OS would be unneeded.
Unfortunately Jolla are not permitted to distribute some of the binaries for the Phone. Corporate greed of the chipset manufacturer. Obviously the blobs can't be used in another device, and they are already on the device, but hinder they will. So Jolla can not redistribute a recovery image legally. Nor can anyone else. Don't know how legal it would be if we all to took a disk image of our own phones.
GD ( 2015-11-17 00:04:30 +0200 )editI know, but afaik these blobs are on a different flash block, and wouldn't need to be in the image. Also, the recovery process could (try to) copy it beforehand. Also... third party images might ignore this limitation completely, or use FOSS drivers.
Fuzzillogic ( 2015-11-17 00:28:34 +0200 )edit