We tried the Multiboot approach but that was problematic. Please correct me if this is incorrect. It seems that we can't burn an image to an SD drive partition from another SD drive partition because we would be on the SD card trying to burn to it. So, we would have to boot to another drive and I think you can see we've come full circle on that.
Is this in fact the case? Or is there a way to use multiboot and burn to another set of root/boot partitions on the same SD card? I could use either SD or USB for this but I'd prefer to stick with just 1 drive.
With MultiBoot, you start out with a normal installation consisting of a single Raspberry Pi OS image written to a storage device (SD card, USB device, or NVME device). Then, while briefly booted from an alternate storage device, you run the MultiBoot script in configuration mode to add additional installations of Raspberry Pi OS to the original storage device. You do not attempt to write the additional installations to the original storage device using image writing software such as Etcher, Imager, etc. The MultiBoot script in configuration mode handles the partitioning and writing of the additional installations to the original storage device. You only need to boot an alternate device and run the MultiBoot script in configuration mode for maintenance purposes such as inserting a new installation, removing an existing installation, resizing an existing installation, etc. When booted from the original storage device, the MultiBoot script (in non-configuration mode) allows you to select a different installation and reboot into it.
The simplest way to accomplish this is to set boot order to 0xf41 (SD card first, USB device second). With the SD card slot empty, you will boot the USB device containing multiple installations of Raspberry Pi OS. On those rare occasions when you need to do maintenance, you insert and boot from an SD card and run the MultiBoot script in configuration mode. When the maintenance is complete, shutdown, remove the SD card, and reboot the USB device. No changing of boot order is ever required.
Statistics: Posted by RonR — Thu Apr 25, 2024 3:38 am