MV1000W along with Other OpenWRT Routers

...ever run into a situation where there's a desire to change how the "Disk Drive" of a device is organized?

Example

OK, take the GL.iNet brand GL-MV1000W (or just plain GL-MV1000). It has a onboard 8GB eMMC! That's like having an 8GB MicroSD Card welded to the PCB. Cool!

Except for one thing... It just isn't taken advantage of. The default configuration has the following;

• 16.3 MB allocated to the "/boot" Partition (IE, where the Image file containing the "InitRAMFS" stuff, and a .dtb file for other information)
• 512.3 MB allocated to the "/rom" Partition (in the 'shape' of a SquashFS Partition containing all the regular file system stuff, configuration files (/etc), .ko (kernel module files), etc.)
• 6.8 GB allocated to "/data" (an Overlay Partition)

lsblk

NAME         MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
loop0          7:0    0   489M  0 loop 
mtdblock0     31:0    0   960K  0 disk 
mtdblock1     31:1    0    32K  0 disk 
mtdblock2     31:2    0    32K  0 disk 
mmcblk0      179:0    0   7.3G  0 disk 
├─mmcblk0p1  179:1    0  16.3M  0 part 
├─mmcblk0p2  179:2    0 512.3M  0 part 
└─mmcblk0p3  179:3    0   6.8G  0 part 
mmcblk0boot0 179:8    0     4M  1 disk 
mmcblk0boot1 179:16   0     4M  1 disk 

cfdisk /dev/mmcblk0

                                      Disk: /dev/mmcblk0
                      Size: 7.29 GiB, 7818182656 bytes, 15269888 sectors
                              Label: dos, identifier: 0x00000000

    Device             Boot          Start         End     Sectors      Size    Id Type
    /dev/mmcblk0p1     *              2048       35327       33280     16.3M    83 Linux
    /dev/mmcblk0p2                   36864     1085951     1049088    512.3M    83 Linux
    /dev/mmcblk0p3                 1087488    15274495    14187008      6.8G    83 Linux

All the "Linux stuff" is on mmcblk0 with the "stuff on the MTD device" being related to the Marvell U-Boot, boot loader.

It's all fine and cool, but... What if?

The Question

Can it be turned into a 'real computer'? IE, what about leaving the '/boot' Partition in place, but then having the rest of the eMMC card as a single large EXT4 partition?

Solution (Not)

Booting from and InitRAMFS.bin file. Nope, doesn't seem to work. Several "bootm" and "booti" methods were attempted at the Marvell / U-Boot command prompt with the best outcome displaying "Starting kernel . . .", and then hanging there.