Reinstating the Pi Loader partition
Jon Abbott (1421) 2599 posts |
How does one put the partition entry back for the loader partition, on a newly formatted SSD? If that’s not possible, if I build a new install via NOOBS, does it expand the FileCore partition to fill the drive? |
Steve Pampling (1551) 7932 posts |
No, but check here for some free scripts otherwise you need a copy of !SystemDisc which is available through Elesar |
Jon Abbott (1421) 2599 posts |
I’ve spent a couple of hours today trying to switch the Pi3 over the boot from an SSD, but I’ll be buggered if I can get it working. From what I can make out on the Pi forum, you have to modify a write-once bit on the board to boot from USB – but there’s no going back once you’ve change it. Hmm…I don’t think so, I have lots of SD cards I need to be able to boot from. I’ve also noticed that if there’s an SSD attached, RISCOS was locking up when I selected shutdown from the Pi icon. NOOBS is a non-starter as you have to boot from the drive you want to install too. I wrote the RISCOS SD image to the SSD, which was a waste of time as it’s both locked at 2GB and again, the Pi won’t boot from it. I guess the only option left is to create a lite SD card, with the FAT partition and just a stub !Boot that switches to booting from the SSD. I just need to figure out why it locks on reboot. |
David Pitt (3386) 1248 posts |
There is a huge snag with having the firmware and ROM on USB. The ROM starts up and reads the adjacent CMOS. The snag is that the SDCMOS module can only write to two hardwired locations
Or configure HTH. Oh crap in spades!!!! My RPi3B+ has just shutdown-ish, and after apparently successfully testing the recent beta ROMs. It has taken nearly three weeks to fail!!! |
Stuart Painting (5389) 680 posts |
Provided that you haven’t fiddled with the Pi’s write-once memory, the process should be simple: 1. Format the SSD using !HForm 2. Copy !Boot (but not !Boot.Loader) from the SD to the SSD. 3. Copy everything else (Apps etc.) from the SD to the SSD. Remember to leave !Boot.Loader on the SD, natch. 4. Issue the following configuration commands: 5. Reboot. In practice, things are never that simple. I have also had a fair amount of trouble with unexpected lockups after issuing Shutdown (and in fact I have never got the “Restart” button to work when running RISC OS on the Pi). The “Raspberry RO” system (sold by a certain gentleman on the south coast) has a modified shutdown procedure which somehow avoids the hangs when !Boot is on the SSD. A quick check on the website shows that the software is sold separately… |
David Feugey (2125) 2687 posts |
Oooooh. This is correct:
Just put the ROM and all the other Pi files on a FAT only SD card. |
Tristan M. (2946) 1036 posts |
Things like the above configuration should be put in the Wiki under a configuration section or something. It’s something that keeps coming up, and it’s hard to find unless one knows what they are looking for already. |
Jon Abbott (1421) 2599 posts |
Ah…that bit isn’t mentioned on the How to boot from a USB mass storage device on a Raspberry Pi documentation. In which case I can set it and simply clone an SD to SSD to retain !Boot.Loader Thanks for the clarification. |
Tristan M. (2946) 1036 posts |
This is a recurring question because of the lack of clarity on the RPi website. |
Jon Abbott (1421) 2599 posts |
After all that, I’ve gone back to SD. Switching to SSD via USB adds an additional 10 seconds to the boot time (SSD – 42s, SD – 32s)…ordinarily not an issue, but I reboot my Pi hundreds of times a day so every second counts! The additional delay appears to be in the firmware, as once RISCOS starts its POST, its near identical in speed to SD. |
Andrew Conroy (370) 724 posts |
I can only say that the software I’ve written for the RaspberryRO doesn’t do anything special regarding whether it’s shutting down with !Boot on SD or SSD. It does, however, turn the power off (using the custom Power Control Module ) from the PostDesk folder, so the “Restart” button never appears. |
Steve Pampling (1551) 7932 posts |
Broken link Andrew, I’m pretty sure you meant Power Control Module Hover over yours and then mine and you will see the difference. Jon is after a reset rather than a shutdown anyway. |
Andrew Conroy (370) 724 posts |
Thanks, not sure why the browser didn’t include the http bit when I cut and pasted :( I’ve fixed it now.
I know, I was responding to Stuart’s comment that CJE had done some thing different to avoid the freeze. |
Stuart Painting (5389) 680 posts |
Point taken. My experience has been that the revised shutdown menu (where you get “Switch off”, “Restart” or “Cancel” on pressing Ctrl-Shift-F12) the Restart button does actually restart the machine.1 By contrast, the standard shutdown sequence (with a Restart button on the message “The computer is ready to be switched off”) always hangs when I click on the Restart button. 1 During the restart – when the splash screen appears – I usually get the message “Waiting for boot drive to be ready” so the restart doesn’t actually work, but that’s a separate issue… |
Andrew Conroy (370) 724 posts |
From memory, if you click on “Restart”, the software issues a TaskManager_Shutdown with bit 5 set. |
Jon Abbott (1421) 2599 posts |
Either CJE have done nothing, or it’s a different issue. I’ve added some Repro’s to my bug report having now had some time to do some testing. Getting back to my original question “How does one put the partition entry back for the loader partition”, which I suppose is also a variation on “How do you expand the FileCore partition”. I managed to extend the partition using acorn-fdisk but that doesn’t really help much as the FileCore zones would need increasing and the map moved to the new middle zone. |
Chris Mahoney (1684) 2100 posts |
For what it’s worth: I have a Pi 3 with the ROM on SD and !Boot on SSD, and the Restart button on the “ready to switch off” window has always worked for me. I remember some problems with RTCs mentioned at one point, but I’ve never had one. |
Tristan M. (2946) 1036 posts |
There is a strong correlation between an RTC and the shutdown error. I only ever see it on Pis that I put an RTC on. |
Andrew Conroy (370) 724 posts |
There is software which traps the shutdown and asks “Do you want to switch off, restart or cancel?”. If you click on Switch off, it restarts the shutdown and a PowerOff file in PostDesk turns the power off. If you click on Restart, it issues TaskManager_Shutdown with bit 5 set. All off the top of my head, as it’s work stuff, and I’m at home ona Sunday night! Effectively, you never see the RISC OS “Restart” button. |
Jon Abbott (1421) 2599 posts |
Either CJE have done nothing, or it’s a different issue. I’ve added some Repro’s to my bug report having now had some time to do some testing. I meant with regard to adding specific code to preventing RISCOS locking up. You can easily test it with the repros I’ve listed. RMKilling FAT32FS after opening a FAT partition resolves it for me, so its a fair bet the issue is related to FAT32FS. |
Rick Murray (539) 13405 posts |
That my one or your one? ;-)
What sort of FAT partition? I ask because I’m using the shutdown thingy that I wrote (which may or may not be the CJE one) and I have accessed FAT partitions up to 2GB. Shutdown and reboot usually work as expected unless something is messing with the system (of it gets “unstable”). I did used to get “Memory cannot be moved” but I’ve not seen that in a while. I have an RTC so it isn’t unexpected that it might happen, did anybody ever track down why? |
Jon Abbott (1421) 2599 posts |
I refer the honourable gentleman to the Repros I posted earlier. |