[Bug 1765628] Re: Create an image for all raspberry models

[Oliver Grawert]

flash-kernel is the thing that puts the bootloader and bootloader configuration in place at the end of installations (the equivalent to grub-install on x86). 
It is the interface/API you need if you want to use ubiquity or debian-intaller. 
It is also hooked up directly with the kernel debs and automatically run after a kernel update (to adjust bootloader variables, write things to flash on systems where thats needed etc).

while you can indeed go completely without debian-installer/ubiquity and
use self-expanding pre-installed images, you would need to special-case
a bunch of expected distro-defaults in the images... and would have to
maintain this patchset.

my personal preference would also be to chainload grub from u-boot like
opensuse and fedora do to implement UEFI, but this requires a lot of
integration work in various places of the distro. this should be done as
a general solution for all armhf installs across the board and needs a
bit more planning than just throwing together a rpi image ... that said,
as a proof of concept, a pi image would indeed be a good start.

note though that in the end you will still need some generic
api/interface for the installers if you want to use them. which will
make you end up with a flash-kernel-like tool again.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1765628

Title:
  Create an image for all raspberry models

Status in livecd-rootfs package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  Currently (Xenial to Bionic) server images only run on the raspberry
  pi 2.  This is due to the u-boot bootloader.

  However it is possible to produce one image that runs on a pi 2 and 3.
  Fedora arm 32 bit produce such an image.  They make use of conditional
  filters in the config.txt
  (https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/config-
  txt/conditional.md ) and put two versions of u-boot on the image.

  They other way to do it is to remove u-boot entirely and just rely on
  the internal pi bootloader to sort it out.  This could be permanent,
  or just for first boot where upon flash-installer is called to install
  the correct u-boot file.

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