How to enter bios interface

[liuyh-beep]

Hi,

I want to use LIVE USB to adjust hard disk partitions. Typically I guess I need to enter BIOS interface and boot using USB. So how can I enter BIOS?

Or can anybody tell me other ways to change disk partitions?

Thank you.

[blizzardfinnegan]

There isn't a BIOS. This is a RISC-V device, which doesn't use a BIOS and instead uses hardware to figure out what to boot to. It won't boot to USB, full stop. It will boot to SD card, but your typical ISO you download from the internet won't work because it needs a bunch of ROMA-II specific information in it.

[blizzardfinnegan]

Think of it less like a normal laptop, and more like a Raspberry Pi 400 with a battery and screen strapped to it.

[liuyh-beep]

Think of it less like a normal laptop, and more like a Raspberry Pi 400 with a battery and screen strapped to it.

Thank you for your quick answering!

So could you please tell me how I can adjust disk partitions? I really dont have too much experience on it.

Any word would be appreciated!

[blizzardfinnegan]

There's a couple other issues in this repo that list where to find disk images. Download one, and flash it to an SD card. Then, plug it into the SD card slot and reboot the device.

DO NOT modify partitions 1-4 on the storage drive. That's where your BIOS is, to put it simply, and removing those will make that drive unbootable.

If you're looking to install another operating system as well as what comes stock, in short... Don't. If you aren't familiar with this stuff you're going to have a lot of trouble and need to do a bunch of research into how to do things safely.

This device is nowhere near normal end-user ready. RISC-V is promising, but it's not ready for primetime yet, and the company isn't really even 100% on the same page as their community yet it seems like. Honestly, don't even try to update software because it might unintentionally cause your device to not boot properly anymore.

[pablo-quesada]

Regarding this issue, is possible copy the SD card shipped with DC ROMA 2 (ubuntu server in example) into partition 5 and 6?. I tried it but the system does not start.

If not is possible, what is the roadmap to use ubuntu server and the full SDD for root partition? Configure the /etc/fstab file on the SD card to mount the partition 6 on the SDD ?. Any advice?

Thanks in advance :)

[liuyh-beep]

Thank you a lot!

Is it not recommended to update kernel version? Because my purpose to extent /boot is to update kernel. And the current size of /boot is kind of small.

Anyway, do you suggest that I just get a disk img and reboot it, avoid updating other unnecessary software(or make it as it originally was), right?

Thanks again

There's a couple other issues in this repo that list where to find disk images. Download one, and flash it to an SD card. Then, plug it into the SD card slot and reboot the device.

DO NOT modify partitions 1-4 on the storage drive. That's where your BIOS is, to put it simply, and removing those will make that drive unbootable.

If you're looking to install another operating system as well as what comes stock, in short... Don't. If you aren't familiar with this stuff you're going to have a lot of trouble and need to do a bunch of research into how to do things safely.

This device is nowhere near normal end-user ready. RISC-V is promising, but it's not ready for primetime yet, and the company isn't really even 100% on the same page as their community yet it seems like. Honestly, don't even try to update software because it might unintentionally cause your device to not boot properly anymore.

[blizzardfinnegan]

Copy the partitions using dd, that's the only way I've gotten it to work

[blizzardfinnegan]

I personally got it to work by dding the entire disk over, from SD to NVMe

[blizzardfinnegan]

Thank you a lot!

Is it not recommended to update kernel version? Because my purpose to extent /boot is to update kernel. And the current size of /boot is kind of small.

Anyway, do you suggest that I just get a disk img and reboot it, avoid updating other unnecessary software(or make it as it originally was), right?

Thanks again

Speaking from experience, updating the kernel is atrocious. Can't recommend it at all.

/boot is big enough for multiple kernel versions, (again, speaking from experience), but getting it to correctly boot with your new kernel sucks. You will have to build it yourself most likely, and then find a guide for installing it manually. You don't have enough room for a .deb install, but you do have enough room for a manual install of everything.

[pablo-quesada]

I personally got it to work by dding the entire disk over, from SD to NVMe

Thanks for the feedback. This is how I did it, using dd for the two partitions (/boot and /), and then resized partition 6 to the maximum space but when I turned off, removed the SD card and turned on again, the system did not finish booting, so I'm not sure if there is an extra step or a mistake on my part.

[pablo-quesada]

I personally got it to work by dding the entire disk over, from SD to NVMe

Would you share the steps to test them on my DC-ROMA-2 laptop ? (in a week and a half when I return from vacation). After testing and reviewing it, the steps could be documented in the repository.

Thanks in advance.

[blizzardfinnegan]

@pablo-quesada I'm not familiar with Ubuntu server specifically. What I've done in the past is the following:

Boot to Debian Trixie SD card.
sudo dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=/dev/nvme0n1 status=progress.
Once the data transfer completes, power the device off, and remove the SD card.
Boot the device again, and it should boot to Debian Trixie.

I've also had success with the following for recovery situations:

sudo dd if=/dev/mmcblk0p6 of=/dev/nvme0n1p6 status=progress #for refreshing the root partition from a known-good state
sudo dd if=/dev/mmcblk0p5 of=/dev/nvme0n1p5 status=progress #for refreshing the boot partition from a known-good state

[pablo-quesada]

@blizzardfinnegan I did not consider cloning the entire SD card and I was cloning only the /dev/nvme0n1p5 and /dev/nvme0n1p6 partitions because I thought that partitions 1-4 were untouchable in the laptop. Your suggestion also works for Ubuntu server. Thank you so much.

ps: This issue could be closed because the original reason was about the BIOS and this secondary issue can be documented.

[blizzardfinnegan]

My reasoning was mostly "the entire SD card works right now, so if I move the entire thing to the NVME it should still work", honestly. Not 100% sure if it SHOULD have worked, but it did 😅

[pablo-quesada]

Trying to update to Ubuntu 24.04 we did

sudo dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=/dev/nvme0 status=progress instead of
sudo dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=/dev/nvme0n1 status=progress

Now, despite we can boot from the sdcard, and even we can complete the copy with sudo dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=/dev/nvme0n1 status=progress, when we remove the sdcard and boot from the nvme, the system do not boot neither show an error message. Just a blank screen.

Any workaround?.
Thanks in advance.
Best