Over the last few years, various boxes have introduced Multiboot which is a nice way to switch between different images without loosing the main image you use everyday.
We asked Vu+ to add this feature around 4 / 5 years ago, however they said it wasn't possible.
As you know, we no longer work with Vu+, therefore we no longer have to follow the code on their git, so we can do what we like now without breaking any compatibility or causing conflicts in the coding.
So we have been working hard in the background recently, and now we are happy to say we have a working "real" mulitboot option for Vu+ boxes that should work with all Enigma2 images available.
Currently this is only for the 4K ARM boxes, however in the future we "may" find a way to make it compatible with the older and slower MIPS boxes.
This is not ready for release just yet, there are still a few bugs to iron out (such as the box doesn't always reboot when switching images and requires a power off rather than just a reboot).
The advantage of this over OpenMultiboot is that it does not require reflashing the kernel every time you switch image, this saves wear on the flash (not really an issue for most users) but more importantly, it speeds up the bootup time and in most cases only takes 5 seconds longer to boot than it would to boot a normal image in flash (so much faster than using OpenMultiboot) and as the flash is not repartitioned, it is much much safer to use, than the other Multiboot option that is available.
A limitation of this, is that the flash size of most Vu+ 4K boxes is only 3.5GB and as images are fairly large this means you can only flash 2 or 3 images before the flash is full (I have 4 installed in the screenshots, but there isn't really enough free space to install any plugins), so before it is released we hope to be able to expand this so that you can install the images into boot slots on a usb stick.
So stay tuned and keep checking back as you will see it here first.
We asked Vu+ to add this feature around 4 / 5 years ago, however they said it wasn't possible.
As you know, we no longer work with Vu+, therefore we no longer have to follow the code on their git, so we can do what we like now without breaking any compatibility or causing conflicts in the coding.
So we have been working hard in the background recently, and now we are happy to say we have a working "real" mulitboot option for Vu+ boxes that should work with all Enigma2 images available.
Currently this is only for the 4K ARM boxes, however in the future we "may" find a way to make it compatible with the older and slower MIPS boxes.
This is not ready for release just yet, there are still a few bugs to iron out (such as the box doesn't always reboot when switching images and requires a power off rather than just a reboot).
The advantage of this over OpenMultiboot is that it does not require reflashing the kernel every time you switch image, this saves wear on the flash (not really an issue for most users) but more importantly, it speeds up the bootup time and in most cases only takes 5 seconds longer to boot than it would to boot a normal image in flash (so much faster than using OpenMultiboot) and as the flash is not repartitioned, it is much much safer to use, than the other Multiboot option that is available.
A limitation of this, is that the flash size of most Vu+ 4K boxes is only 3.5GB and as images are fairly large this means you can only flash 2 or 3 images before the flash is full (I have 4 installed in the screenshots, but there isn't really enough free space to install any plugins), so before it is released we hope to be able to expand this so that you can install the images into boot slots on a usb stick.
So stay tuned and keep checking back as you will see it here first.
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