Ubiboot

Contents

Introduction

Ubiboot is a boot manager for N9(50) devices. Useing the example configuration it is fairly easy to triple-boot the device between Harmattan/Nitdroid/Nemo Operating Systems, and change kernels at will.

Ubiboot is mainly aimed at developers and advanced users, so be warned. The procedures in this guide require understanding of the structure of an *nix filesystem and knowledge to work on a shell prompt (i.e. Terminal/Command Line).

Benefits of Ubiboot N9

  1. You can have multiple boot Operating Systems, each with multiple optional kernels on the device.
  2. Selecting the boot kernel is quick and easy with the graphical touchscreen menus.
  3. You will not need to flash the device to install and test a new kernel, just copying the kernel and modules to the device is enough.
  4. You have integrated repair/maintanance mode on the device, where you can export all partitions for backup/restore to a PC automatically.
  5. You can telnet to the device in maintanance mode, to do any desired repair operations.

Download Needed Files

Ubiboot Files: find the latest versions at http://www.swagman.org/juice/ubiboot/

  1. preinits.tar: this is a compressed file, like Zip (Windows users: use 7zip application). We will extract this later on once this is copied to the device.
  2. zImage_2.6.32.54-openmode_l2fix: this is used for flashing your device to “Open-Mode”. Windows users: save this in the same location as your flasher application and files...usually C:\Program Files\Nokia\Flasher)
  3. zImage-2.6.32.54-dfl61-20121301 from http://maemo.cloud-7.de/HARM/N9/1.3/openmode-kernel/: this is the “default” or “plain Open-Mode” kernel. Including this to your ubiboot-02 setup is optional.
  4. ubiboot-02_040613.tar: this is a compressed file, like Zip. After downloading, extract the contents of this file (Windows users: use 7zip application). This compressed file contains 2 files that you will need to copy to the “MyDocs” folder of your device.
  • ubiboot.conf
  • ubiboot-02.menus.cpio
  1. zImage_2.6.32.54-ubiboot-02_040613: this is used for flashing ubiboot to your device (Windows users: save this in the same location as your flasher application and files...usually C:\Program Files\Nokia\Flasher).

NITDroid Files: find the latest versions at http://downloads.nitdroid.com/e-yes/n9/

  1. nitdroid_n9_jellybean_alpha5.tar.bz2: latest “Jelly Bean” version available as of this writing.
  2. zImage.pr13: (Optional) this was the latest zImage being used for dual-booting or multi-booting NITDroid before Ubiboot was published.
  3. zImage: this is the “new version” of zImage.pr13, which is tailored for use with ubiboot. IMPORTANT: Rename this to “zImage_e-yes_nitdroid+l2fix” (without the quotes).
  4. apps2sd_fix_alpha5.tar.bz2: not sure if there is still required at this time for JellyBean.

Nemo Files: find the latest versions at http://releases.nemomobile.org/snapshots/images/

  1. nemo-armv7hl-n950-0.20130411.1.NEMO.2013-04-26.1.tar.bz2: this contains the actual Nemo OS image.
  2. moslo-0.0.13.2-1.5.Nemo.Adaptation.N9xx.armv7hl.rpm from http://releases.nemomobile.org/snapshots/repos/hw/ti/omap3/n950-n9/latest/armv7hl/armv7hl: this is the MOSLO file needed for flashing when installing Nemo.
  • In the official Nemo Wiki, getting/downloading this file is done by a command in the Terminal, which is:
wget -r -l1 -nd --no-parent -Amoslo-0.*.rpm http://releases.nemomobile.org/snapshots/repos/hw/ti/omap3/n950-n9/latest/armv7hl/armv7hl/