armbian / armbian/build

Armbian boot partition unreadable on Windows machines due to weird partition type

Open
#5,962 35 comments 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub
Can be closed? Feature Request
Dominant language
Shell
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Avg merge
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

### What happened?

Armbian build sets the boot partition as type 0xEA. This partition type is not standard in any specific distribution or operating system. As such Windows is unable to discover and mount the partition which makes it impossible to mount and modify the network config or other first boot configurations on Windows machines. After changing the partition type to either 0x0B or 0x0C, for DOS FAT32, the partition mounts correctly and is editable fine.

I haven't observed any side effects of doing so, u-boot seems to correctly discover and use these partitions regardless.

I tried tracking down this change and why it was set to 0xEA but found no definitive answer, it might very well be intentional and in that case, I'd like to know as to why.

### How to reproduce?

N/A

### Branch

main (main development branch)

### On which host OS are you observing this problem?

Jammy

### Relevant log URL

_No response_

### Code of Conduct

- [X] I agree to follow this project's Code of Conduct

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start by tracing the Armbian build path that assigns the boot partition type 0xEA, then review the surrounding image-generation logic and the 35-comment discussion for the rationale. Done means the chosen partition type is documented or changed with evidence that Windows can mount the boot partition and U-Boot still discovers it.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
shell
Domain
build-system, operating-systems
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
45/100

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