[IDEA] Boot XBian from USB

[duno]

(14th Aug, 2016 08:11 AM)Nachteule Wrote:  Yeah, seems you have completely lost the track

Maybe, maybe not, do you mean "track" or "trick"?

As you have seen, i am able to boot different OS via USB on a RPI3, since this:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/bootmodes/msd.md

But i do not understand the wiki in

http://wiki.xbian.org/doku.php/installation_usb

First, it is older than the Patch from

https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/bootmodes/msd.md

and second, i do not have a

/boot/boot.scr.txt

[Nachteule]

I suppose this article was written long before it was possible to boot RPi without sd-card.

Quote:/boot/boot.scr.txt

You did not read this article correctly. This is only valid for Cubox-i/Hummingboard devices (they are booting via u-boot and not by proprietary rpi boot)

This article is valid for both hw types, whereas the RPi msd boot works with RPi's (3???) only

But anyway, interesting feature

[duno]

(16th Aug, 2016 04:38 AM)Nachteule Wrote:  I suppose this article was written long before it was possible to boot RPi without sd-card.

That is, what i allways tried to say ...

Any hint to boot the PI3 with enabled

Code:

vcgencmd otp_dump | grep 17:
17:3020000a

with Xbian?

[Nachteule]

You know that this feature is not officially released?

Only theoretically:

1) you have to replace firmware files (bootcode.bin and start.elf)
You can fetch them from here, you need _x version of those files and store it to /boot without _x
2) you have to replace mmcblk0pX with sdaX in files /boot/cmdline.txt and /etc/fstab

(currently I don't have any motivation for testing this, don't want to trash my rpi3 installation)

[duno]

(16th Aug, 2016 05:19 AM)Nachteule Wrote:  (currently I don't have any motivation for testing this, don't want to trash my rpi3 installation)

What do you mean with "trash my rpi3 installation"?

I inserted, into the modified RPI3, the "ex-broken" Micro-SD-Card from the RPI2 and the RPI3 was also booting fine
into Xbian!

That patch, OTP=one time programmable, only made the PI3 available to boot additional via USB and Network (NFS).

Nothing more.

Now, i "just" need to know, how to modify an Xbian-Image, that it can also boot Xbian via USB, nothing more.

[Nachteule]

(16th Aug, 2016 06:49 AM)duno Wrote:  

(16th Aug, 2016 05:19 AM)Nachteule Wrote:  (currently I don't have any motivation for testing this, don't want to trash my rpi3 installation)

What do you mean with "trash my rpi3 installation"?

I inserted, into the modified RPI3, the "ex-broken" Micro-SD-Card from the RPI2 and the RPI3 was also booting fine
into Xbian!

That patch, OTP=one time programmable, only made the PI3 available to boot additional via USB and Network (NFS).

Nothing more.

Now, i "just" need to know, how to modify an Xbian-Image, that it can also boot Xbian via USB, nothing more.

See my last post. Not sure if 1) is really needed, but 2) is needed (btw. this is also documented at raspberrypi.org (at the end)

[Darkguy]

I'm currently trying to install XBian via NOOBS onto a USB drive (along with Raspbian, Recalbox and Screenly). I tried both using the current NOOBS installer by XBian as well as adding the XBian directory into a current NOOBS 2.4.4 file system.

Both version fail with an error message "mount: unknown filesystem type 'btrfs'"

I presume this is due to cmdline.txt in the XBian root.tar.xz, which is looking to setup partitions in /dev/mmcblk0p2 instead of /dev/sda?

Any help on what to change in order to get this running on a USB drive?

[Nachteule]

(9th Nov, 2017 02:07 AM)Darkguy Wrote:  I'm currently trying to install XBian via NOOBS onto a USB drive (along with Raspbian, Recalbox and Screenly). I tried both using the current NOOBS installer by XBian as well as adding the XBian directory into a current NOOBS 2.4.4 file system.

Both version fail with an error message "mount: unknown filesystem type 'btrfs'"

I presume this is due to cmdline.txt in the XBian root.tar.xz, which is looking to setup partitions in /dev/mmcblk0p2 instead of /dev/sda?

Any help on what to change in order to get this running on a USB drive?

I never used NOOBS to install operating systems to a usb drive. So I can't say if this works or not for USB drives (installing on sd-card works).

Some weeks ago, I used PINN [1] for installing them on my USB drive (PINN on sd-card, rest on USB), and that worked. But, there were some minor issues which had to correct manually:

1) PINN is using PARTUUID for the root device (in file /boot/cmdline.txt), and unfortunately this entry was/is(?) wrong and has to correct manually
2) PARTUUID for boot partition /etc/fstab was/is(?) wrong and has to fix manually

hth

[1]

• PINN supports XBian out of the box
• You can download PINN from here
  

[Darkguy]

(9th Nov, 2017 02:35 AM)Nachteule Wrote:  

(9th Nov, 2017 02:07 AM)Darkguy Wrote:  I'm currently trying to install XBian via NOOBS onto a USB drive (along with Raspbian, Recalbox and Screenly). I tried both using the current NOOBS installer by XBian as well as adding the XBian directory into a current NOOBS 2.4.4 file system.

Both version fail with an error message "mount: unknown filesystem type 'btrfs'"

I presume this is due to cmdline.txt in the XBian root.tar.xz, which is looking to setup partitions in /dev/mmcblk0p2 instead of /dev/sda?

Any help on what to change in order to get this running on a USB drive?

I never used NOOBS to install operating systems to a usb drive. So I can't say if this works or not for USB drives (installing on sd-card works).

Some weeks ago, I used PINN [1] for installing them on my USB drive (PINN on sd-card, rest on USB), and that worked. But, there were some minor issues which had to correct manually:

1) PINN is using PARTUUID for the root device (in file /boot/cmdline.txt), and unfortunately this entry was/is(?) wrong and has to correct manually
2) PARTUUID for boot partition /etc/fstab was/is(?) wrong and has to fix manually

hth

[1]

• PINN supports XBian out of the box
• You can download PINN from here
  

Thanks, tried PINN, installed it to a USB drive, then used it to install XBian. I get the boot screen, but then I get thrown to the recovery shell, as this version is also looking for the root partition on a non-existing mmcblkp0 partition. Any suggestions?

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[Nachteule]

(22nd Nov, 2017 04:51 AM)Darkguy Wrote:  Thanks, tried PINN, installed it to a USB drive, then used it to install XBian. I get the boot screen, but then I get thrown to the recovery shell, as this version is also looking for the root partition on a non-existing mmcblkp0 partition. Any suggestions?

Yes, please use this this PINN version and install XBian from General tab and not from Media tab (this would install a very old version which can not deal with PARTUUID partitions because of lack of this commit)

I tried installing XBian alone and Raspbian with XBian together, both worked.

[Darkguy]

(22nd Nov, 2017 06:55 AM)Nachteule Wrote:  Yes, please use this this PINN version and install XBian from General tab and not from Media tab (this would install a very old version which can not deal with PARTUUID partitions because of lack of this commit)

I tried installing XBian alone and Raspbian with XBian together, both worked.

OK, I think I'm almost there. I used this version of PINN and installed XBian (the included version from the General tab), Raspbian and Recalbox all on the USB drive. All three systems boot fine and are usable (I tried RetroPie earlier, but the included version seems not to be able to handle booting off USB yet). The only problem is, that the XBian root partition only is being created at 636 MB and 521 MB of that are already in use, meaning I can't even download/install any updates.

Here's the partitions that PINN created on a 32 GB (around 29.8 GiB) drive:

Code:

/dev/sda1 63M vfat RECOVERY(PINN)
/dev/sda5 30M ext4 SETTINGS (PINN)

/dev/sda6 60M vfat boot (Recalbox)
/dev/sda7 1.9G ext4 root (Recalbox)
/dev/sda8 6.6G ext4 share (Recalbox)

/dev/sda9 68M vfat boot0 (Raspbian)
/dev/sda10 11G ext4 root0 (Rapbian)

/dev/sda11 63M vfat boot (XBian)
/dev/sda12 636M btrfs root (XBian)

Judging from those sized, there should be another 9.6G available on the drive. Any idea why the XBian partition is being created so small and what could be done to increase it?

[Nachteule]

(23rd Nov, 2017 08:23 AM)Darkguy Wrote:  

(22nd Nov, 2017 06:55 AM)Nachteule Wrote:  Yes, please use this this PINN version and install XBian from General tab and not from Media tab (this would install a very old version which can not deal with PARTUUID partitions because of lack of this commit)

I tried installing XBian alone and Raspbian with XBian together, both worked.

OK, I think I'm almost there. I used this version of PINN and installed XBian (the included version from the General tab), Raspbian and Recalbox all on the USB drive. All three systems boot fine and are usable (I tried RetroPie earlier, but the included version seems not to be able to handle booting off USB yet). The only problem is, that the XBian root partition only is being created at 636 MB and 521 MB of that are already in use, meaning I can't even download/install any updates.

Here's the partitions that PINN created on a 32 GB (around 29.8 GiB) drive:

Code:

/dev/sda1 63M vfat RECOVERY(PINN)
/dev/sda5 30M ext4 SETTINGS (PINN)

/dev/sda6 60M vfat boot (Recalbox)
/dev/sda7 1.9G ext4 root (Recalbox)
/dev/sda8 6.6G ext4 share (Recalbox)

/dev/sda9 68M vfat boot0 (Raspbian)
/dev/sda10 11G ext4 root0 (Rapbian)

/dev/sda11 63M vfat boot (XBian)
/dev/sda12 636M btrfs root (XBian)

Judging from those sized, there should be another 9.6G available on the drive. Any idea why the XBian partition is being created so small and what could be done to increase it?

That's strange, because PINN should set up partition size correctly (each os get same disk space if there is enough space avalaible on disk)

1) make sure that initramfs is enabled, because partition/fs resize is done there
2) please give me output of sudo fdisk -l

[Darkguy]

(23rd Nov, 2017 08:44 AM)Nachteule Wrote:  That's strange, because PINN should set up partition size correctly (each os get same disk space if there is enough space avalaible on disk)

1) make sure that initramfs is enabled, because partition/fs resize is done there
2) please give me output of sudo fstab -l

1) initramfs is enabled (on 'always') in the XBian-Config part of settings

2) unfortunately I just get "sudo: fstab: command not found" and when trying to install it, I get "E: Unable to locate package fstab"

I can offer the contents of /etc/fstab or the output of blkid if that helps?

---

Here's the output of sudo lsblk:

Code:

NAME    MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda       8:0    1 28.7G  0 disk
├─sda1    8:1    1   63M  0 part /media/RECOVERY
├─sda2    8:2    1    1K  0 part
├─sda5    8:5    1   32M  0 part /media/SETTINGS
├─sda6    8:6    1   60M  0 part /media/boot
├─sda7    8:7    1    2G  0 part /media/root
├─sda8    8:8    1  6.8G  0 part /media/share
├─sda9    8:9    1   69M  0 part /media/boot0
├─sda10   8:10   1 11.1G  0 part /media/root0
├─sda11   8:11   1   63M  0 part /boot
└─sda12   8:12   1  8.5G  0 part /tmp/tmp.29xkOqsFO2
zram0   254:0    0  128M  0 disk [SWAP]

and here's the output of parted -l

Code:

Model: SanDisk Ultra Fit (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 30.8GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags:

Number  Start   End     Size    Type      File system  Flags
1      4194kB  70.3MB  66.1MB  primary   fat16        lba
2      70.3MB  30.8GB  30.7GB  extended
5      71.3MB  105MB   33.6MB  logical   ext4
6      105MB   168MB   62.9MB  logical   fat32        lba
7      168MB   2265MB  2097MB  logical   ext4
8      2265MB  9571MB  7306MB  logical   ext4
9      9571MB  9644MB  72.4MB  logical   fat32        lba
10      9647MB  21.6GB  12.0GB  logical   ext4
11      21.6GB  21.7GB  66.1MB  logical   fat16        lba
12      21.7GB  30.8GB  9080MB  logical   btrfs


Model: Unknown (unknown)
Disk /dev/zram0: 134MB
Sector size (logical/physical): 4096B/4096B
Partition Table: loop
Disk Flags:

Number  Start  End    Size   File system     Flags
1      0.00B  134MB  134MB  linux-swap(v1)

[Nachteule]

Sorry, i meant fdisk -l

So, your XBian partition has 8.5G, so what's wrong?

If your root fs has not been resized yet, you could run

Code:

sudo btrfs filesystem resize max /

[Darkguy]

(23rd Nov, 2017 09:47 AM)Nachteule Wrote:  Sorry, i meant fdisk -l

So, your XBian partition has 8.5G, so what's wrong?

If your root fs has not been resized yet, you could run

Code:

sudo btrfs filesystem resize max /

Thanks a lot, that did the trick! No idea why the filesystem hadn't been resized, but everything seems fine now.

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