Raspberry Pi Accessories : Pi Desktop: Booting from the SSD (aka booting from USB devices on a Pi 3) : Comments

RE: Pi Desktop: Booting from the SSD (aka booting from USB devices on a Pi 3)

messages@element14.com — Mon, 03 Jul 2017 17:49:29 GMT

Nice post, but what most of us want is to be able to just add the SSD and reboot.

Until you can make it that easy, most of us are just too scared to dive in with our limited Linux skills.

DAB

RE: Pi Desktop: Booting from the SSD (aka booting from USB devices on a Pi 3)

messages@element14.com — Mon, 03 Jul 2017 19:00:05 GMT

Both fortunately, and unfortunately, DAB, that's exactly what you have to do. Dive in.

The hardware in its current state isn't going to change from needing the config file altering on the SDCard for that first boot.

Though, this's partly the intention of the Raspberry Pi, to learn linux, to learn how computers work, even birds have to leave the nest sometime!

Breaking a linux installation on the Pi isn't the end of everything, thankfully. I encourage people to break it, that's the best way to learn.

RE: Pi Desktop: Booting from the SSD (aka booting from USB devices on a Pi 3)

messages@element14.com — Tue, 04 Jul 2017 18:32:28 GMT

No can do.

My current health has left me with severe ADD issues, so learning Linux is out of the question.

So hopefully, one of you insiders will come to the rescue with a nice kit I can buy and upgrade my RPI.

DAB

RE: Pi Desktop: Booting from the SSD (aka booting from USB devices on a Pi 3)

messages@element14.com — Wed, 05 Jul 2017 11:17:56 GMT

I agree with DAB, ease of use (or installation) is key.

Look at the recurrent issues on Raspberry Pi, a lot of cases are about incorrectly flashed SD cards etc ... If that's already too difficult, this certainly will be.

More experienced users will not mind, but starters might struggle and be intimidated.

RE: Pi Desktop: Booting from the SSD (aka booting from USB devices on a Pi 3)

messages@element14.com — Wed, 05 Jul 2017 18:54:27 GMT

And that is my main point.

Anything that can be done to encourage people to USE the RPI should be done.

The last thing you want to do is make it appear that only Linux power users can do anything useful with the device.

That is precisely why most PC's run MS Windows today.

Unix had a tremendous lead in capability, but they made it too difficult for the average person to use.

So now Linux is trying to catch up and make itself relevant in a Microsoft dominate world.

Just saying.

DAB

RE: Pi Desktop: Booting from the SSD (aka booting from USB devices on a Pi 3)

messages@element14.com — Wed, 05 Jul 2017 20:43:51 GMT

Sure, and perhaps there could be another product designed with that in mind. I'm not sure the raspberry pi is it, and that's okay.

RE: Pi Desktop: Booting from the SSD (aka booting from USB devices on a Pi 3)

messages@element14.com — Thu, 06 Jul 2017 18:59:54 GMT

I agree.

The RPI does a good job for its intended market, but like any computer, everyone gets delusions of grandeur and take it outside its intended domain.

DAB

RE: Pi Desktop: Booting from the SSD (aka booting from USB devices on a Pi 3)

messages@element14.com — Sat, 08 Jul 2017 13:38:38 GMT

Hi, I just tot my PiDesktop and got most of it working. But I can not boot it without SDcard.

I use a Pi3, formatted the Samsung 250 SSD as FAT using my Mac (with cable) and then connected it again with the USB adapter to the HAT is the Pi Desktop. With the built in SD card copier I copied the content of the SD card to the SSD and after a restart I can see (with gparted) that I have a /dev/mmcblk0 and a /dev/sda

on the sda I have two partitions /dev/sda1 with mount point /media/pi/boot and /dev/sda2 with mount point /media/Pi/62ca0b.....e4a38

I set the program_usb_boot_mode=1 and got the 17:3020000a result.

However when I now try to startup without the SDcard it still won't boot.

What did I miss? I have been searching earlier posts but I have no clue...

Ted

RE: Pi Desktop: Booting from the SSD (aka booting from USB devices on a Pi 3)

messages@element14.com — Sat, 08 Jul 2017 17:21:36 GMT

My Experience: Having difficulty following along with the instructions given, especially the gparted stuff, I started over and loaded up a fresh noobs image. To my surprise, there was a choice of where to install Rasbian and my little mSATA drive was one of the choices! So I chose that and let everything simmer, booted up and executed the pidesktop.deb file, rebooted and everything works as advertised.

RE: Pi Desktop: Booting from the SSD (aka booting from USB devices on a Pi 3)

messages@element14.com — Sat, 08 Jul 2017 19:31:28 GMT

Thanks Larry, I followed your suggestion and started with a NOOBS image on the SDcard. As you described I could select to install Raspbian on my Samsung mSata SSD which I did. After reboot it works fine, but I still can not boot without the SDcard. I guess it needs some boot info / settings from that SDcard before it switches to the SSD.

(I also tried to flash a Jessie image to the SSD with Etcher from my Mac, but Etcher does not recognize it, even though Disk Utility formatted it first as FAT and the disk shows up in the Finder...)

RE: Pi Desktop: Booting from the SSD (aka booting from USB devices on a Pi 3)

messages@element14.com — Sat, 08 Jul 2017 19:50:56 GMT

There is a procedure described elsewhere in this thread to allow booting without the SDcard but it is a non-reversible action and I'm not interested in making that modification as I might switch the pi with others in my collection. Also, it is very difficult to get the SDcard out of the PiDesktop so I think it's okay to leave it in.

RE: Pi Desktop: Booting from the SSD (aka booting from USB devices on a Pi 3)

messages@element14.com — Sun, 09 Jul 2017 00:21:30 GMT

Your SSD is behaving in a way which suggests the image hasn't been written to it properly. SDCards can behave similarly, or you haven't plugged in the microUSB to USB adapter into the side of the HAT to the Raspberry Pi. This is important because the SSD does not communicate to the Raspberry Pi over the GPIO pins.

You don't need to partition your SSD to FAT/FAT32 before writing the image to it. I suggest using different software, or consider using 'dd' to write the image to the SSD if you're using a Mac or Linux operating system.

RE: Pi Desktop: Booting from the SSD (aka booting from USB devices on a Pi 3)

messages@element14.com — Sun, 09 Jul 2017 00:29:01 GMT

tedvan The Pi 3 will default to booting from the SDCard first if you have the bit set and the SDCard left in it.

If you haven't set the bit and you haven't redirected the rootfs to be ran from the SSD then you're not running Linux from it at all.

RE: Pi Desktop: Booting from the SSD (aka booting from USB devices on a Pi 3)

messages@element14.com — Sun, 09 Jul 2017 01:40:40 GMT

I am looking with GParted at /dev/sda and I see a /dev/sda6 labeled root0 which has a used size of 6.27 GiB. Isn't that where Raspbian resides? Looks to me like I AM booting from SSD even though I have not set the bit.

RE: Pi Desktop: Booting from the SSD (aka booting from USB devices on a Pi 3)

messages@element14.com — Sun, 09 Jul 2017 18:51:52 GMT

How the drive is mounted when the driver is loaded (/dev/sdx) doesn't imply or show that the Pi has booted from it (from power on).

If you haven't set the boot bit on the Pi 3, then it's not booting from the SSD, also if you've left the SDCard in which is also setup to boot from, then the Pi 3 will boot from the SDCard first.

Booting from the SDCard and then accessing the rootfs from the SSD, isn't booting from the SSD. You're booting from the SDCard and accessing the Raspbian applications from another drive, so in this case you're not taking advantage of any speed benefit of booting from the SSD.

If that's what you want to do there's nothing wrong with that, particularly. By all means do so.

RE: Pi Desktop: Booting from the SSD (aka booting from USB devices on a Pi 3)

messages@element14.com — Sun, 09 Jul 2017 22:38:35 GMT

What size fan will work best with this?

RE: Pi Desktop: Booting from the SSD (aka booting from USB devices on a Pi 3)

messages@element14.com — Sat, 15 Jul 2017 13:28:32 GMT

I tried two other ways but I still can not get my Pi3 to boot without SDCard :-(

I made sure the bit was set first and then put NOOBS on the mSATA SSD and rebooted: it does not want to start from that

Then I started with NOOBS on the SDcard and Raspbian installed fine: After that connected the SSD and tried to duplicate everything to the SSD following the steps from the manual: but the ppp-hdclone does not work (all options greyed) Instead I used the SDcopy from the menu, which finished successfully. Ran ppp-hdclone again to finish the last part of the process, took out the SDCard booted again and got a kernel panic : unable to mount root fs on unknown block.

So now I am back at the procedure to install from a NOOBS SDCard to the SSD. IThis works fine but I have to leave in the SDcard to boot

I hope you can give me a procedure that works: the one in the Manual does not

RE: Pi Desktop: Booting from the SSD (aka booting from USB devices on a Pi 3)

messages@element14.com — Sat, 15 Jul 2017 16:09:09 GMT

I have successfully installed my Raspberry Pi 3 / Pi-Desktop / Samsung 32GB mSata drive and have it booting to the mSata without the MicroSD card. However, I have noticed that it will not reboot using the command 'sudo reboot' or 'sudo shutdown -r now' - it does start to reboot, but after the first 4 lines of text after the "rainbow" box screen it just powers off. It successfully boots when pressing the power button to power back on, shuts down when holding the button for 2 seconds, then starts up again fine when pressing the power button again, but the reboot command does not boot up again. I need to be able to reboot this Pi remotely, so need the reboot facility.

Any ideas anyone?

RE: Pi Desktop: Booting from the SSD (aka booting from USB devices on a Pi 3)

messages@element14.com — Sat, 15 Jul 2017 21:55:50 GMT

I have removed the following files from the "/lib/systemd/system/" folder and rebooted:

embest.service

embest-shutdown.service

I presume they are the services installed during the Pi Desktop installation that enables the power button for powering off. The button no longer shuts down the Pi but "sudo reboot" successfully reboots the Pi. This is a temporary fix that I am happy with. Hopefully element14 will update their software to fix this issue.

RE: Pi Desktop: Booting from the SSD (aka booting from USB devices on a Pi 3)

messages@element14.com — Sat, 15 Jul 2017 22:47:15 GMT

What operating system does your other computer run which you're using to write the image to the SDCard?

RE: Pi Desktop: Booting from the SSD (aka booting from USB devices on a Pi 3)

messages@element14.com — Sun, 16 Jul 2017 08:14:59 GMT

I use a Mac to copy the NOOBS files to a clean formatted SDcard (using SDFormatter) or a clean disk (formatted with DiskUtility). On my Mac I use Etcher to write an image (or PiBakery for preconfigured Rasbian).

In this post: http://www.makerspace-uk.co.uk/setting-diy-pi-desktop-kit/ I found some hints that I will try next time. Seems that ppp-hdclone is where many users get lost. Also noticed that some USB drives cannot be booted from with a Pi3 with the bit set...

RE: Pi Desktop: Booting from the SSD (aka booting from USB devices on a Pi 3)

messages@element14.com — Sun, 16 Jul 2017 12:03:08 GMT

Have you tried connecting the SSD Hat via USB to your Mac and then writing the card image to the SSD? This is mentioned in the manual, you will need to press the power button to power on the hat.

Also, unless you need to run a different operating system to Raspbian, avoid using NOOBS and use the Raspbian image instead.