Booting directly from hdd

Is it possible to run the system directly from hard disk drive?

I have situation like below:

  • my system: Ubuntu 16.04.5 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.4.18-ning aarch64) - I need two network interfaces (eth0, eth1)
  • hdd connected to SATA interface
  • I do not want to use SD card at all

I have done a lot of tests in different combinations, but not able to configure this properly. I tried:

  • to start from SD card and configure uEnv.txt (in directory /media/pi/BPI-BOOT/bananapi/bpi-w2/linux/), but it does not work with old (16.4) Ubuntu version
  • to start from SD card where I had last (18.4) Ubuntu version, configure uEnv.txt (root=/dev/sataa2) and install old (16.4) Ubuntu version (with some changes) on my hdd. In this case the disk /dev/sataa2 was mounted correctly, but the system hangs during startup.
  • to modify the path directly in eMMC, but I am not able to export/save changes to eMMC (SW4 at 0 and SPI ROM:20180907)