Boot Deploy

boot-deploy is a distro-agnostic script for finalizing and deploying files related to booting Linux on mobile devices. It's used extensively by postmarketOS for all supported devices, but was split off into a separate project to allow other distributions to utilize it too.

Configuration

deviceinfo

boot-deploy uses the "deviceinfo" format from postmarketOS, which is specified here on the postmarketOS wiki.

The deviceinfo file is sourced by boot-deploy, providing configuration at runtime.

Note: not all of the variables on the deviceinfo reference wiki page are used by boot-deploy, some of them are used internally by postmarketOS. For an up to date list of variables that boot-deploy can use at runtime, see the top of the boot-deploy-functions.sh file.

Kernel Command-line

boot-deploy uses generate-kernel-cmdline to generate the kernel command line from layered configuration files. This allows distros to provide defaults, packages to add specific parameters (e.g. for specific devices), and users to override settings without modifying device or distro configuration.

For details on how to configure kernel command line parameters, see man 5 generate-kernel-cmdline.

OS-level Customization

boot-deploy requires a file at /usr/share/boot-deploy/os-customization, which is used to provide OS distribution customization for some aspects of its output. This file is sourced in shell script, so it must be in var=value format. It must contain the following variables (the given values are just examples):

distro_name="postmarketOS"
distro_prefix="pmos"
crypttab_entry="root"

Additionally, the following optional variables are supported:

bootimg_filename="boot.img"

Usage

Usage:
	./boot-deploy -i <file> -k <file> -d <path> [-o <path>] [files...]
Where:
	-i  filename of the initfs in the input directory
	-k  filename of the kernel in the input directory
	-d  path to directory containing input initfs, kernel
	-o  path to output directory {default: /boot}
	-c  path to deviceinfo {default: both /usr/share/deviceinfo/deviceinfo and /etc/deviceinfo are sourced, in that order }

		Additional files listed are copied from the input directory into the output directory as-is

The script implementation is found in boot_deploy_functions.sh, which it looks for under /usr/share/boot-deploy/boot_deploy_functions.sh. The default location can be overridden, e.g. for testing purposes, by setting the environment variable BOOT_DEPLOY_FUNCTIONS.

Contributing

Thanks for wanting to help out! See CONTRIBUTING.md for important information about sending patches to add support for weird devices/bootloaders/whatever!