Ubuntu Core on eMMC

[ninetyninelab]

It's easy enough to write to sd and start using Ubuntu Core. But I would like to put the image to the built-in eMMC - is this possible? If so, is there an instruction or manual?

[danielt]

IIRC this was discussed during last weeks OpenHours (last ten minutes of the show) and, unfortunately, there is no support for installed Ubuntu Core to eMMC at this time.

[ninetyninelab]

Generally I tried to do as follows

• I've downloaded Ubuntu Core 16 image for DragonBoard 410c from official ubuntu site and unpack it
• Found emmc device on /dev/mmcblk0
• Flash the image with sudo dd of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=10M

And this method does not work, I do not really understand why this does not work, because The original image contains both the kernel and rootfs

[ndec]

this is because it is more complex than it looks like

Ubuntu core has a bunch of dependencies on the bootloader and the partition table to support the following Ubuntu core features:
* rolling back to previous image when upgrade failed
* full system upgrade

as such the 'boot' device , e.g. /dev/mmcblk0 (EMMC) vs /dev/mmcblk1 (SD CARD) must be hardcoded in a few places.

It is very likely possible to install Ubuntu core on eMMC, but you will need to find out where to make these changes. Ubuntu core also uses its own partition table , so you will need to create the partition table on eMMC..

if you want to experiment with that, i would recommend asking the ubuntu people on #ubuntu-arm .

[ogra]

This has been fixed a while ago, see the bottom of:

snapcore/dragonboard-gadget