I've taken some of fanoush's advice and implemented this in a new patch, where the changes are:

* When bootmenu is flashed, /etc/bootmenu.d/*.item is copied onto the flash image.
* bootmenu.conf now loads from /etc/bootmenu.d on initfs instead of mounting rootfs
* Added new tool, refresh_bootmenu which refreshes /etc/bootmenu.d on initfs without modifying anything else
* Fallback to /sbin/init on initfs if linuxrc cannot be exec'ed
* Fixed minor bug with not clearing out ITEM_LINUXRC

This fixes two scenarios: SSU breaking multiboot (most likely, since it's WONTFIX..), https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3589 by the fact you can reflash and still have same boot menu. Rootfs reflash - /etc/bootmenu.d is still in initfs.

Patch is at http://bsd.tspre.org/~stskeeps/bootm...xrc-patch2.txt

My personal goal for this is along the lines of:

Bootmenu deb that installs boot menu files and such on system, but doesn't flash until user clicks the icon in Utilities "Install Boot Menu" (runs it in x-terminal on device). This one would prolly help a lot if SSU's keep on breaking boot menu..

/usr/sbin/flash_bootmenu (initfs_flasher)
/usr/sbin/refresh_bootmenu (for Deblet installer and other installers, put in item in /etc/bootmenu.d/ and run refresh_bootmenu in a xterm or whatever)