Remote Dual Boot Control

[Rahim-Rahmatzada]

Hi there,

I’m working on a remote Raspberry Pi deployment using PINN with dual boot: Ubuntu and LineageOS. I need a way to remotely switch OS without knowing the Pi’s local IP address. Here’s what I’ve run into:

LineageOS (installed via PINN) cannot be rooted due to partition constraints atleast I think thats the issue, so I can’t modify /SETTINGS/noobs.conf from within Lineage.

From what I understand is to change OS remotly I can edit the default_partition_to_boot value but I cant access this file in Android due to no root.

My current idea: install Tailscale directly into the PINN environment, so Tailscale starts on boot and I can SSH/VNC into PINN to change OS settings remotely.

Questions:

Is it feasible to add Tailscale (or even similar networking tool) to PINN’s recovery environment?

Does anyone have a better method to remotely switch OS from one unrooted system?

Can PINN optionally support network services like SSH/VNC for this use case?

Any guidance or workarounds would be much appreciated. Thanks!

[procount]

Please see: https://github.com/procount/pinn/blob/master/README_PINN.md#how-to-use-pinn-headlessly-vnc for a general introduction.
Followed by: https://github.com/procount/pinn/blob/master/README_PINN.md#secure-remote-access for secruing remote access (although you will need to know the Pi's IP address.
Finally some more detail is available in: https://github.com/procount/pinn/wiki/Secure-SSH-with-Putty

PINN does not support tailscale, wireguard or any other VPN, but the methods above should provide sufficient security if you know the Pi's IP address. If you need VPN access, you could set it up on a separate Pi in the same remote network. I have used PiVPN to install wireguard successfully in this way.

You may want to look at the forcetrigger and remotetimout options to allow you to control the OS to boot over VNC. Without input it will timeout and default to one of your OSes.