[IriDium]

To speed it up even more - boot from a SSD.

I had a spare one after giving up on Windoze 7 (Didn't even look at 8), so I created a 8G boot partition and the rest as ext4 for movies etc. Used xbian-config to clone xbian and then set the boot as the UUID of the xbian-copy partition.

It booted perfectly and ran like a dream - the gui was much smoother and a 1TB USB2 movie drive was scanned in around 10 minutes (Normally about 30 - 40 minutes when on the SD card.

However, before you rush out and buy a SSD, there is an issue with fstrim or to be more precise, the caddy it is in. It appears that not all caddies support the trim feature, and worse, no way of knowing from the literature if it is supported.

So whilst at first it is a superb addition, over time it will degrade until it is no faster than a 3.5” floppy. My only solution so far is to remove the SSD from the caddy, put it in my main machine and run fstrim from there and then put it back in the caddy. Too much hassle for me.

So does anyone know of a 2.5” SSD caddy that DOES support fstrim?

[Exnor]

(2nd Apr, 2015 01:38 AM)IriDium Wrote:  To speed it up even more - boot from a SSD.

I had a spare one after giving up on Windoze 7 (Didn't even look at 8), so I created a 8G boot partition and the rest as ext4 for movies etc. Used xbian-config to clone xbian and then set the boot as the UUID of the xbian-copy partition.

It booted perfectly and ran like a dream - the gui was much smoother and a 1TB USB2 movie drive was scanned in around 10 minutes (Normally about 30 - 40 minutes when on the SD card.

However, before you rush out and buy a SSD, there is an issue with fstrim or to be more precise, the caddy it is in. It appears that not all caddies support the trim feature, and worse, no way of knowing from the literature if it is supported.

So whilst at first it is a superb addition, over time it will degrade until it is no faster than a 3.5” floppy. My only solution so far is to remove the SSD from the caddy, put it in my main machine and run fstrim from there and then put it back in the caddy. Too much hassle for me.

So does anyone know of a 2.5” SSD caddy that DOES support fstrim?

Arent all SSD caddys (usb) supposed to support FStrim? i'm glad you shared that info here because i was thinking on getting one.

[IriDium]

Well from the error code (can't remember what it was (ioctl or something) and a google) seemed to suggest that fact. Maybe I'm unlucky, and others would find it works.

Which is a shame, as it would certainly boost the I/O.

[Exnor]

(2nd Apr, 2015 02:30 AM)IriDium Wrote:  Well from the error code (can't remember what it was (ioctl or something) and a google) seemed to suggest that fact. Maybe I'm unlucky, and others would find it works.

Which is a shame, as it would certainly boost the I/O.

Can you post the maker and model of your caddy? So i don't get one like it lol

[IriDium]

False alarm.

Dumb alert. I was running the command on a partition, not the whole disk. All works well in Ubuntu.

Terminal

sudo hdparm -I /dev/sdd|grep -i trim

showed that trim was supported.
so

Terminal

sudo fstrim -v /media/

worked

Terminal

sudo fstrim -v /media/SSD-Data

failed

However, under Xbian, the mount points are different and I get the error

Terminal

xbian@DogStar ~ $ sudo fstrim -v /
fstrim: /: FITRIM ioctl failed: Operation not supported

So for now (until I can find another solution) I'll have to fstrim the disk under Ubuntu.

[Exnor]

(2nd Apr, 2015 05:55 PM)IriDium Wrote:  False alarm.

Dumb alert. I was running the command on a partition, not the whole disk. All works well in Ubuntu.

Terminal

sudo hdparm -I /dev/sdd|grep -i trim

showed that trim was supported.
so

Terminal

sudo fstrim -v /media/

worked

Terminal

sudo fstrim -v /media/SSD-Data

failed

However, under Xbian, the mount points are different and I get the error

Terminal

xbian@DogStar ~ $ sudo fstrim -v /
fstrim: /: FITRIM ioctl failed: Operation not supported

So for now (until I can find another solution) I'll have to fstrim the disk under Ubuntu.

So the caddy works fine right?

[IriDium]

Yes the caddy works fine (Startech)

[mansp]

Hi,

I updated xbian today and this broke my installation, I reverted to an old image that I had saved and tried again, same result.

What i get is an error after the "loading xbian" freezes, like this:
"[669]: error opening ATTR(/sys/devices/platform/mmc-bcm2835.0/mmc_host/mmc0/mmc0:aaaa/block/mmcblk0/queue/iosched/target_latency) for writing: permission denied"

Parts of the screen is out of view and cannot be seen even if zoom settings on TV are changed. I believe the update was either the new xbian-package-xbmc or another one I cannot recall, the xbian-package-update worked fine I believe. The first time I tried to restore an old snapshot but got the error "source name does not exist" (I double checked the name). After some reboots the system booted into a "recovery boot console". Thats when I restored the old image and tried again.

Should there even be something about bcm2835? since the RPi2 has the bcm2836..

My setup is the following:

RPi 2 Quad
PSU 5V 2 A
TV, wireless usb keyboard, HDD and ethernet

M

[Smultie]

(8th Apr, 2015 01:51 AM)mansp Wrote:  Hi,

I updated xbian today and this broke my installation, I reverted to an old image that I had saved and tried again, same result.

What i get is an error after the "loading xbian" freezes, like this:
"[669]: error opening ATTR(/sys/devices/platform/mmc-bcm2835.0/mmc_host/mmc0/mmc0:aaaa/block/mmcblk0/queue/iosched/target_latency) for writing: permission denied"

Parts of the screen is out of view and cannot be seen even if zoom settings on TV are changed. I believe the update was either the new xbian-package-xbmc or another one I cannot recall, the xbian-package-update worked fine I believe. The first time I tried to restore an old snapshot but got the error "source name does not exist" (I double checked the name). After some reboots the system booted into a "recovery boot console". Thats when I restored the old image and tried again.

Should there even be something about bcm2835? since the RPi2 has the bcm2836..

My setup is the following:

RPi 2 Quad
PSU 5V 2 A
TV, wireless usb keyboard, HDD and ethernet

M

Noticed exactly the same: https://github.com/xbianonpi/xbian/issues/711

[marcello]

(19th Feb, 2015 08:34 AM)mansp Wrote:  

(19th Feb, 2015 01:23 AM)Exnor Wrote:  Is this data sheet usefull for you?

I did pick up a new micro usb cable today that was shorter, an old sony cable. It was perhaps half of the length of the old one that I have been using, and now the rainbow square is gone. So I guess that the cable was the weak link here. I am however stuck with my original problem, that the TV switches to the other hdmi source unless I plug the cable in that port.

Hi Mansp,
I got into quite some undervoltage issues too, and finally traced it back all the way to cheap micro USB cable's. I lost up to 0.25 volt for just the cable when feeding the more powerhungry Pi2, and usb stick and wifi.
5 Volts 2.4 amps is easily printed by 'less educated engineers' or their marketing buddies.
But providing a stable PSU for the Pi2 needs just a bit more than a cheap phone charger and cables you got lying around.
I have learned it the hard way too, and corrupted quite some SD setups in the process.
But Hey, I powered the pi2 ( and bplus ) from the TV and streamed heavy content which needed audio processing for output though the TV while it was rescanning the server library :-).
A 2 amps power supply that outputs just up to the max of 5.15 volt even at the rated max current does the trick for me, without changing the cables.
greetz M

[Exnor]

(26th Apr, 2015 01:14 AM)marcello Wrote:  

(19th Feb, 2015 08:34 AM)mansp Wrote:  

(19th Feb, 2015 01:23 AM)Exnor Wrote:  Is this data sheet usefull for you?

I did pick up a new micro usb cable today that was shorter, an old sony cable. It was perhaps half of the length of the old one that I have been using, and now the rainbow square is gone. So I guess that the cable was the weak link here. I am however stuck with my original problem, that the TV switches to the other hdmi source unless I plug the cable in that port.

Hi Mansp,
I got into quite some undervoltage issues too, and finally traced it back all the way to cheap micro USB cable's. I lost up to 0.25 volt for just the cable when feeding the more powerhungry Pi2, and usb stick and wifi.
5 Volts 2.4 amps is easily printed by 'less educated engineers' or their marketing buddies.
But providing a stable PSU for the Pi2 needs just a bit more than a cheap phone charger and cables you got lying around.
I have learned it the hard way too, and corrupted quite some SD setups in the process.
But Hey, I powered the pi2 ( and bplus ) from the TV and streamed heavy content which needed audio processing for output though the TV while it was rescanning the server library :-).
A 2 amps power supply that outputs just up to the max of 5.15 volt even at the rated max current does the trick for me, without changing the cables.
greetz M

If you have access to an oscilloscope and multimeter you can "debug" all that very fast...

Plug the PSU output to the oscilloscope to see how stable is the output.. if you see too much harmonics or even worse if the output wave is not near flat, then you have a crappy PSU that might not deliver the stability that the Pi 2 needs.

To test if the PSU is feeding the necessary amps you need to use the multimeter...

[djaevla]

Hello guys,

is there an easy way to move from xbian RP B 1 to RP 2?

Thanks in advance,
Greetz

[Skywatch]

I would strongly recommend a fresh install.

Skywatch.