[maemo-users] Multi Profile Setup

[From: Austin Che]

> Another issue is rebooting (it does too much and can help to kill your 
> display with 770), this can be solved by modifying startup/shutdown 
> sequence to not to reboot completely (i.e. go to bootloader and load 
> linux kernel again) but to stop everything, go back to initfs and start 
> again with different rootfs.

    Does it already have some of this functionality? I've noticed that
    neither reboot nor poweroff using the menu on the device is a
    truly clean reboot/shutdown. For example, on poweroff, if the
    device is on the charger, it doesn't even kill all processes. If I
    have music playing, it keeps on playing after 'poweroff'! And
    reboot appears to not be a hard reset as some state appears to be
    saved.

    I assume it's going to a different runlevel but I don't know
    exactly what it's doing. Does anyone know what the different init
    runlevels are used for? On first boot up, it appears to use
    runlevel 2, but after a 'poweroff' with charger and 'poweron'
    again, it doesn't go back to runlevel 2.
    
> I was already thinking about tweaking initfs and rootfs boot scripts to 
> restart system without going through bootloader and kernel again but so 
> far had no spare time for this. Adding unionfs to initfs and bootmenu 
> options is next step. This could be useful also for developers, one 
> could add another unionfs layer over rootfs, test some dangerous stuff 
> and then remove the layer and go back to previous system.

    It certainly would be useful to be able to run, for example, both
    bora and chinook on a N800 for development purposes and easily
    switch between the two.