[IDEA] Boot XBian from USB

[dharmabm]

ok, after working on this for several days and reading this thread several times, it would seem that you must run xbian-copy on beta2 as it does not work properly on rc1? i have tried this over and over again and always get RO errors after running the copier from rc1. my brain hurts from trying to debug where the problem lies.
i have been running xbian since getting my pi about 6 months ago, and believe it is the best release available for xbmc on the pi, however the documentation is pretty horrible. being an IT professional for ever 20 years, i understand that the ability to provide good code and provide good docs are sometimes mutually exclusive (especially when the devs are doing this for free in their own spare time). can i volunteer to assist with the wiki to try to provide a decent and dependable set of instructions compiled from all the info found here in the forums? devs, please PM me if i could be of some assistance.
and thank you for the wonderful work - even if i can't get it running from usb yet, it is still the best and most dependable xbmc build available for our little toys! ;>}

[Smultie]

(17th Mar, 2014 12:11 AM)dharmabm Wrote:  ok, after working on this for several days and reading this thread several times, it would seem that you must run xbian-copy on beta2 as it does not work properly on rc1? i have tried this over and over again and always get RO errors after running the copier from rc1. my brain hurts from trying to debug where the problem lies.
i have been running xbian since getting my pi about 6 months ago, and believe it is the best release available for xbmc on the pi, however the documentation is pretty horrible. being an IT professional for ever 20 years, i understand that the ability to provide good code and provide good docs are sometimes mutually exclusive (especially when the devs are doing this for free in their own spare time). can i volunteer to assist with the wiki to try to provide a decent and dependable set of instructions compiled from all the info found here in the forums? devs, please PM me if i could be of some assistance.
and thank you for the wonderful work - even if i can't get it running from usb yet, it is still the best and most dependable xbmc build available for our little toys! ;>}

Thanks! This will be greatly appreciated!

[MacUsers]

Hi there,

After reading a number of posts and attempting numerous times, I've a simple question: Has any one ever succeeded booting up XBian v1.0B2 off USB stick/drive? After cloning /dev/root to /dev/sda1 using xbian-config, the moment I change that in the cmdline.txt nothing works - I get nothing but a blank screen with a cursor blinking on the top left corner. Cloned /dev/root just after a fresh install of Xbian without doing any "upgrade" whatsoever. Those who have said: "it works" can shade some light on this please?

I really like to use Xbian but this glitch is putting me off. Is there any answer/comment from Xbian team yet? Bests!

[dharmabm]

(27th Mar, 2014 05:09 PM)MacUsers Wrote:  Hi there,

After reading a number of posts and attempting numerous times, I've a simple question: Has any one ever succeeded booting up XBian v1.0B2 off USB stick/drive? After cloning /dev/root to /dev/sda1 using xbian-config, the moment I change that in the cmdline.txt nothing works - I get nothing but a blank screen with a cursor blinking on the top left corner. Cloned /dev/root just after a fresh install of Xbian without doing any "upgrade" whatsoever. Those who have said: "it works" can shade some light on this please?

I really like to use Xbian but this glitch is putting me off. Is there any answer/comment from Xbian team yet? Bests!

i had it working on a freshly installed beta2 but i can't really say how i did it, it was a lot of trial and error. one tip, use a usb drive which is bigger than your sdcard, i think one of the issues i was having was trying to use the same size. i am doing some extensive testing in the next few day in order to compile documentation for the wiki, so bear with me a bit and i might have some answers soon.

one note, although maybe it was just a typo - you do realize it still boots from the sdcard right? you have to have the sdcard in to read cmdline.txt, which tells it to load / from usb.

[MacUsers]

(27th Mar, 2014 05:31 PM)dharmabm Wrote:  one tip, use a usb drive which is bigger than your sdcard, i think one of the issues i was having was trying to use the same size.

ahh.... that's something I didn't do for Xbian. And I never knew that's an issue until now. All my other USB installations (for Raspbian and RaspBMC), incidentally, were bigger than the SD card. I'll give it a go tonight.

(27th Mar, 2014 05:31 PM)dharmabm Wrote:  one note, although maybe it was just a typo - you do realize it still boots from the sdcard right? you have to have the sdcard in to read cmdline.txt, which tells it to load / from usb.

It's not "typo" but yes, I know that. People are so commonly started using "booting from USB" to refer this setup, I also saved myself from few more extra words. Saying: "loading root file-system off USB" seems accurate. Anyway, my cmdline.txt is always on a SDcard. Bests!

[NitSuA]

(27th Mar, 2014 05:31 PM)dharmabm Wrote:  

(27th Mar, 2014 05:09 PM)MacUsers Wrote:  Hi there,

After reading a number of posts and attempting numerous times, I've a simple question: Has any one ever succeeded booting up XBian v1.0B2 off USB stick/drive? After cloning /dev/root to /dev/sda1 using xbian-config, the moment I change that in the cmdline.txt nothing works - I get nothing but a blank screen with a cursor blinking on the top left corner. Cloned /dev/root just after a fresh install of Xbian without doing any "upgrade" whatsoever. Those who have said: "it works" can shade some light on this please?

I really like to use Xbian but this glitch is putting me off. Is there any answer/comment from Xbian team yet? Bests!

i had it working on a freshly installed beta2 but i can't really say how i did it, it was a lot of trial and error. one tip, use a usb drive which is bigger than your sdcard, i think one of the issues i was having was trying to use the same size. i am doing some extensive testing in the next few day in order to compile documentation for the wiki, so bear with me a bit and i might have some answers soon.

one note, although maybe it was just a typo - you do realize it still boots from the sdcard right? you have to have the sdcard in to read cmdline.txt, which tells it to load / from usb.

I managed to get it working in this way: http://forum.xbian.org/thread-427-post-21209.html#pid21209

I think the difference is that I don't point to sda1 in config.txt, but use the label.

[dharmabm]

(27th Mar, 2014 07:57 PM)MacUsers Wrote:  

(27th Mar, 2014 05:31 PM)dharmabm Wrote:  one tip, use a usb drive which is bigger than your sdcard, i think one of the issues i was having was trying to use the same size.

ahh.... that's something I didn't do for Xbian. And I never knew that's an issue until now. All my other USB installations (for Raspbian and RaspBMC), incidentally, were bigger than the SD card. I'll give it a go tonight.

i'm not sure that it's an 'issue', just one more thing to eliminate from the list of potential problems.

[MacUsers]

(27th Mar, 2014 09:04 PM)NitSuA Wrote:  I think the difference is that I don't point to sda1 in config.txt, but use the label.

Tried LABEL as well, but didn't work either. I'm gonna give another try tonight.

[MacUsers]

(27th Mar, 2014 11:20 PM)dharmabm Wrote:  i'm not sure that it's an 'issue', just one more thing to eliminate from the list of potential problems.

Looks like that was an issue, at least for me. The moment I used a larger [than the SD card] USB stick, it worked, regardless of using /dev/sdxx or LABE=xbian-copy in the cmdline.txt file. Eventually it stopped working though but that was probably because I messed up during the system upgrade.

[dharmabm]

(28th Mar, 2014 08:04 PM)MacUsers Wrote:  

(27th Mar, 2014 11:20 PM)dharmabm Wrote:  i'm not sure that it's an 'issue', just one more thing to eliminate from the list of potential problems.

Looks like that was an issue, at least for me. The moment I used a larger [than the SD card] USB stick, it worked, regardless of using /dev/sdxx or LABE=xbian-copy in the cmdline.txt file. Eventually it stopped working though but that was probably because I messed up during the system upgrade.

please click 'thanks' if i helped, i'm trying to build a reputation here.

[Aweponken]

Hi,
I'm getting the "wrong destination block device" error when I enter sda1(which is my USB-stick) in the cloning program.. The stick is a 16gb Transcend and the SD card is a 16gb SanDisk.
I tried to format the USB-drive to FAT32, but it didn't help.
I also tried writing the xbian image file to the USB-drive(using Win32 Disk Imager) and then change the to root=sd1 on the SD card but I just end up with a flashing "_" in the top left corner.

[dharmabm]

(4th Apr, 2014 12:46 AM)Aweponken Wrote:  Hi,
I'm getting the "wrong destination block device" error when I enter sda1(which is my USB-stick) in the cloning program.. The stick is a 16gb Transcend and the SD card is a 16gb SanDisk.
I tried to format the USB-drive to FAT32, but it didn't help.
I also tried writing the xbian image file to the USB-drive(using Win32 Disk Imager) and then change the to root=sd1 on the SD card but I just end up with a flashing "_" in the top left corner.

you are using /dev/sda1 and not just sda1? it shouldn't matter about the format of the USB drive, as it is formatted in the copy process anyway. it has been suggested that the USB should be larger than the sdcard, but that shouldn't really matter either as the copy should allow for +/- 300mb in partition size. there have been some issues in xbian-copy on RC1, although there are updates coming soon which should resolve them, using xbian-copy on beta2 and the staging builds should be working properly. answer the first question and we will try to help further.

[Aweponken]

(4th Apr, 2014 01:40 AM)dharmabm Wrote:  you are using /dev/sda1 and not just sda1? it shouldn't matter about the format of the USB drive, as it is formatted in the copy process anyway. it has been suggested that the USB should be larger than the sdcard, but that shouldn't really matter either as the copy should allow for +/- 300mb in partition size. there have been some issues in xbian-copy on RC1, although there are updates coming soon which should resolve them, using xbian-copy on beta2 and the staging builds should be working properly. answer the first question and we will try to help further.

Yes I use /dev
So I got the cloning process to work and it copies it all very nicely. Although I still get the flashing screen when starting the pi. Tried both sda1 and sdb1, none works. Xbian claims it should be sda1.

[dharmabm]

did you try root=LABEL=xbian-copy?

[mk01]

@Aweponken

please check if initramfs.gz is not commented in /boot/config.txt. normally init ramdisk is not needed for "standard" usb boot as kernel can boot from USB (if root= is not specified with UUID or LABEL). if LABEL or UUID is used, initramfs stage should be used automatically and (again) first line of /boot/config.txt should look like this

Code:

initramfs initramfs.gz  0x00a00000

and not like this

Code:

#initramfs initramfs.gz  0x00a00000

with USB boot there could be few details which will prevent your system from booting even if all set correctly. for instance your USB device can come up slowly and kernel will not wait for rootfs device long enough - you can add "rootdelay=10" into cmdline.txt.

also if you have more than one USB storage device (topic of sda/sdb changing randomly) use LABEL or UUID root= style (like @dharmabm proposed)

Code:

root=UUID=34334524k2j4kj2
root=LABEL=label

and keep in mind that UUID is unique, but LABEL is not so just check you don't have the same LABEL reused. you can check with

Code:

blkid