Making a recovery partition in embedded Linux I have an Atmel SAM9X system running Angstrom. I am trying to make a recovery partition so when a user holds a button during boot up the recovery partition boots up. I have modified the bootstrap so when a button is held on boot up, an alternate linux kernel is loaded. What I want is the alternate kernel to load linux from the recovery boot partition not the normal main partition. Is this even possible? Or can I load the recovery partition without using two kernels? The reason I want this is so if the main bootable partition gets corrupted the recovery partition will copy itself to the main partition (similar to those Dell or HP windows machines with the recovery partition) and the main bootable partition will be restored. **Edit** : Giles suggestion did it. The bootstrap was setting the kernel command line argument, I just added `root=/dev/mmcblk0p3` (boot from 3rd sd partition) to that and it booted from the desired partition!

The kernel contains a default root partition setting, determined at compile time (you can change it in the binary image with the `rdev` command). You can pass an argument on the kernel command line to override this default at boot time, e.g. `root=/dev/mmcblk9p42` to boot from MMC device 9 partition 42 instead of the default. The command line is passed to the kernel by the bootloader, so you need to change your bootloader configuration.

If there is an initrd or initramfs, it may override the root partition that was compiled in or passed by the bootloader.