Why can't we boot the entire OS off an SD card?

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Question:
If we've got the hard SPL bootloader, we can put the apps on sdcard thru symlinks, we've got debian on the sdcard, why can't we just boot the whole thing off the sdcard? We could keep a fall-back os on the flashrom, just in case.

Is this possible?

I don't know if that's possible.....but if it was it might cause the phone to run slow....

Edit: because the phone would have to get all the information from the sd card...and that takes longer...
Besides I don't really see the point in that....seeing as we can save apps to sd cards....so you don't really need the phones internal memory

because flash memory is a bazillion times faster and works 99.9% of the time where sdcards can be faulty, but im sure with a few scripts/code changes its possible

I tried symlinking the whole /system directory to the sd card. Let's just say it doesn't work. haha.

we can actually

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Actually we can, it was a tut here not too alone ago about it but i am like 75% sure there is

Originally Posted by Fear_Zoa

I don't know if that's possible.....but if it was it might cause the phone to run slow....

Edit: because the phone would have to get all the information from the sd card...and that takes longer...
Besides I don't really see the point in that....seeing as we can save apps to sd cards....so you don't really need the phones internal memory

i don't think that's the problem - as you can see, a debian system or android can be run from sdcard on the openmoko freerunner (yes, i takes 2 secondes longer of boottime)

i think (i'm not a android engineer) it's because the bootloader doesn't allow it!

cheerio, hades00