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usb: Keep each iPad's USB serial number the same across boots - #110
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Installed systems and RAM payloads told the host a new USB serial number on every boot (BOOT:<boot id>), so the Mac saw a new device each time: macOS asked again whether to allow the accessory, and the serial console got a new name. Both now use BOARD:<board> ID:<12 hex>, the ID being SHA-256 over "orchard-" and the device-tree serial-number that m1n1 copies from Apple's tree, so the hardware serial is not published. A RAM payload's boot and SSH host key are read over the serial console on every connection instead of from the USB name. Trees without a serial number, or a helper that fails, keep the per-boot BOOT: serial, so USB serial and SSH always come up. Recovery, install and the install-to-system handoff keep their serials. From orchard PR OrchardLinux#110 (commit bbe62ba), the stable serial part. The same PR also embedded every board's device tree in each initrd and a feature table in the platform layer, for warm restart and the feature registry; those are not part of this topic. The empty or malformed hash fallback and the init fallback are additions.
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November 12, 2026 21:17
Installed systems and RAM payloads told the host a new USB serial number on every boot (BOOT:<boot id>), so the Mac saw a new device each time: macOS asked again whether to allow the accessory, and the serial console got a new name. Both now use BOARD:<board> ID:<12 hex>, the ID being SHA-256 over "orchard-" and the device-tree serial-number that m1n1 copies from Apple's tree, so the hardware serial is not published. A RAM payload's boot and SSH host key are read over the serial console on every connection instead of from the USB name. Trees without a serial number, or a helper that fails, keep the per-boot BOOT: serial, so USB serial and SSH always come up. Recovery, install and the install-to-system handoff keep their serials. From orchard PR OrchardLinux#110 (commit bbe62ba), the stable serial part. The same PR also embedded every board's device tree in each initrd and a feature table in the platform layer, for warm restart and the feature registry; those are not part of this topic. The empty or malformed hash fallback and the init fallback are additions.
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Landing the stable serial part as your commit: one USB serial per unit (BOARD: ID:) for installed systems and RAM payloads, and the RAM boot and host key read over ACM on every connection. Added on top: a fallback to the per-boot BOOT: serial when the hash cannot be made, in both the initrd and usb-session, so USB serial and SSH always come up. Not in this topic: the per-board pristine DTBs in the initrd and device-features.json (warm restart and the feature registry). Your previous head is kept as tag |
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Part 7 of 23 of the iPad 5 (J71t) series in this repository; merge after #108.
Problem
The USB serial number changed between installed boots and RAM sessions, so the host saw a new device every boot and could not keep its SSH known_hosts entry or serial console name.
Change
Share one BOARD/hashed-ID serial format between installed boots and RAM sessions (
usb-identity), and get the per-boot SSH identity through the existing ACM console. Documented in docs/device-protocol.md, with tests.Testing
Dependencies
Depends on #108.
This branch is stacked on the PRs it depends on and carries their commits; the change of this PR is its last commit, "usb: Keep per-device system and RAM serials stable across boots".
This update keeps the branch's earlier history: it merges the current base into the branch and adds the reworked change as a new commit on top.
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