[IDEA] Boot XBian from USB

[Fred]

That should to the trick normally. How did you copy the files to the other SD card? Are you sure the other SD card is compatibel with the RPi?
Are you getting anything on the screen?

You could do some led troubleshooting:
http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting#Power_.2F_Start-up

[doug]

(27th Jul, 2013 05:17 PM)Fred Wrote:  That should to the trick normally. How did you copy the files to the other SD card? Are you sure the other SD card is compatibel with the RPi?
Are you getting anything on the screen?

You could do some led troubleshooting:
http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting#Power_.2F_Start-up

I've tried with several cards; all compatible with the RPi (I have used older 256KB cards with Alpha 5 for a USB installation and I also tried a known, working SD card I used have used with a Beta 1.1 installation.)

To copy the files, I copied the contents of the original SD card to my PC and then copied those files to a FAT formatted SD card.

I am getting stuff on the screen. I suppose giving that information would help! (slaps forehead). The XBian logo appears, the init process happens, the "loading..." screen appears and the progress bar moves entirely to the right and stops. I don't see the "starting xbmc..." text. My flash drive is being accessed as the activity light is blinking...about half way into the "loading..." screen. Normally, I get about a 33 second boot time (until the xbmc menu appears) from a working USB installation. With the replaced SD card, I get 10 seconds of "init" (normal) and then 7 seconds of USB activity during the "loading..." phase, then USB activity stops and the "loading..." progress bar just moves to the right and nothing more happens.

As for activity lights, it all looks normal during the boot process. The Green activity light flashes a few times. Red Power light is solid. Ethernet lights are all on with a blinking LNK light.

Doug

[rikardo1979]

@doug
Try to disable splash screen and boot than so you can see whats happening and post here as it might help Devs to help you

[doug]

(28th Jul, 2013 04:12 AM)rikardo1979 Wrote:  @doug
Try to disable splash screen and boot than so you can see whats happening and post here as it might help Devs to help you

Here's wait I get when I remove splash:

Code:

To drop down to shell, hold shift on USB attached keyboard...
Loading initram modules...
1 waiting for root...
Mounting root as: mount -t btrfs -o rw,,noatime,compress=lzo,thread_pool=1,space_cache,autodefrag /dev/sda1 /rootfs
Moving root
Switching root

[InspMustache]

HI guys,

I've followed the thread and made a bash script that will do pretty much everything for you. It will just ask you which partition you want to use and take it from there. It worked for me so hopefully it will work for others as well. Just put it on the first partition of your SD card (or anywhere else but if you're on Windows that's the only partition you can access), drop to the shell and execute it (not as root) with "/boot/usb-install".

You can find the script here:
http://ubuntuone.com/2WvZeOYR8k1Lbn7LAnaxmH

[Fred]

Wow, really nice first post , thanks for sharing. I haven't been able to test it but it looks good.
Some remarks:
I would put in a warning that all data on the selected partition will be erased.
What happens when someone chooses a non-existing partition?
What happens if the user already has something mounted at /mnt? You might want to do a 'sudo umount /mnt' just in case (don't know if this happens automatically when you mount another partition to the same location).

[Uncle_Tubbie]

How to execute please?

I download or saved the link as a bat file in Windows 7. How do I execute in putty to run on xbain?

Quote:Wow, really nice first post Smile, thanks for sharing

TIA

[f1vefour]

You will need to save the script on the Pi, it is a shell script not a Windows batch script.

[Uncle_Tubbie]

Oops...

Quote:You will need to save the script on the Pi, it is a shell script not a Windows batch script.

Is there a link you can post on how to do that? I don't know how.

Thank you for the quick reply

[Fred]

Don't know what you mean with TIA?


Steps to download and run it on your RPi (not tested so at your own risk).
Login to you RPi and browse to some folder where you want to put the file and run the following commands:

Code:

wget -O usbinstall http://ubuntuone.com/2WvZeOYR8k1Lbn7LAnaxmH
chmod +x usbinstall
./usbinstall

[f1vefour]

(29th Jul, 2013 02:04 AM)Fred Wrote:  Don't know what you mean with TIA?

Thanks In Advance

I didn't want to give full instructions as I have a bad feeling of the outcome, I was hoping Uncle_Tubbie would research how to run shell scripts.

[Uncle_Tubbie]

Uncle_Tubbie will try and report back in the next 24 - 48 hours. Mrs. Tubbies want to go out with her now.

ttfn = ta ta for no

PS ,thank you f1vefour for being honest with your concern about the outcome. I think I learn more when I crash and burn then when I am successful on the first try.

=)

[Fred]

Nice. I like that way of working

[Uncle_Tubbie]

Quote:--2013-07-28 12:34:08-- http://ubuntuone.com/2WvZeOYR8k1Lbn7LAnaxmH
Resolving ubuntuone.com (ubuntuone.com)... 91.189.89.204
Connecting to ubuntuone.com (ubuntuone.com)|91.189.89.204|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 993 [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: `usbinstall'

100%[======================================>] 993 --.-K/s in 0s

2013-07-28 12:34:08 (18.9 MB/s) - `usbinstall' saved [993/993]

xbian@xbian ~/.xbmc/addons $ chmod +x usbinstall
xbian@xbian ~/.xbmc/addons $ ./usbinstall
-bash: ./usbinstall: cannot execute binary file
xbian@xbian ~/.xbmc/addons $ chmod +x usbinstall
> xbian@xbian ~/.xbmc/addons $ ./usbinstall
> -bash: ./usbinstall: cannot execute binary file
>

This is what came back from putty

[Fred]

Can you try 'sudo ./usbinstall' then?