[Debian-eeepc-devel] second power button (1005P)

[Robert Schuettler]

* Trent W. Buck <trentbuck at gmail.com> [2010-07-17 18:13]:

> My 1005P has a second power button which, in the default configuration,
> boots the DeviceVM "instant on" OS.  Pushing it now just makes it wait a
> little while, then give up and do a normal boot.

It should still boot the "instant on" OS, if you've kept the original
partitioning sheme. I think the main thing is to keep the very last (EFI)
partition. Here's an "fdisk -l" from a 1001P (smaller hard drive and XP
instead of Win7 by default but otherwise with identical hardware to the 1005
AFAIK):

 /dev/sda1   *           1       10444    83891398+   7  HPFS/NTFS
 /dev/sda2           10445       18558    65175705   83  Linux
 /dev/sda3           18559       19451     7173022+  1c  Hidden W95 FAT32
 /(LBA)
 /dev/sda4           19452       19457       48195   ef  EFI (FAT-12/16/32)

I didn't zap the partitions when I installed Linux, so sda1 is Windows (at
the moment), sda2 is Linux, sda3 is the recovery partition (that lets you
overwrite sda1 and put the evil OS there again in case you ever need to pass
on your Eee or send it in to ASUS or do other experiments). sda4 is the EFI
partition that's probably holds the "instant on" OS.
 
> Does anyone understand what the firmware is actually trying to do
> (e.g. load the second PBR instead of the MBR)?  I'd find it quite useful
> to be able to define a second default boot option.

Pragmatic approach: You could just put a 2nd OS on a 2nd partition and/or
boot from a USB device. But - out of curiousity - let us know if you find
out how to boot a system of choice via the 2nd power button.

Robert