Running RuneAudio from USB Stick

Mat

Hi, I was trying to move storage partition of RA to USB stick. For now without success. The procedure (works for OpenElec) is quite simple:
1. Create ext4 partition on USB stick (I named it RUNEAUDIO)
2. Copy all files and folders from second partition on sdcard (/dev/mmcblk0p2) to new partition on USB stick
3. Modify cmdline.txt to point to new partition "root=/dev/mmcblk0p2" --> "root=UUID=xxxxxxx" (xxxxxxx is UUID of new partition on USB stick)
4. Reboot

I am not sure what am I doing wrong, runeaudio does not boot. Is there anybody who managed to make this work or who might now what is the problem?

Thanks,
Mat.

rikardo1979

Mat wroteHi, I was trying to move storage partition of RA to USB stick. For now without success. The procedure (works for OpenElec) is quite simple:
1. Create ext4 partition on USB stick (I named it RUNEAUDIO)
2. Copy all files and folders from second partition on sdcard (/dev/mmcblk0p2) to new partition on USB stick
3. Modify cmdline.txt to point to new partition "root=/dev/mmcblk0p2" --> "root=UUID=xxxxxxx" (xxxxxxx is UUID of new partition on USB stick)
4. Reboot

I am not sure what am I doing wrong, runeaudio does not boot. Is there anybody who managed to make this work or who might now what is the problem?

Thanks,
Mat.

My question is why? What you trying to achieve by running from USB drive instead of SD card?
As the only thing you can gain of is stability. SD cards are pretty common to get corrupted if RPi is not powered down properly.
But this is probably the only pro of it

You can not gain speed improvement or anything else I can think of.
So what are your reasons behind ?

hondagx35

Hi Mat,

rikardo1979 wroteMy question is why?

I'm also interested why you like o do this.

If it is te security, i will post a solution for a read only filesystem soon.

Frank

Mat

hondagx35 wroteHi Mat,

rikardo1979 wroteMy question is why?
I'm also interested why you like o do this.

If it is te security, i will post a solution for a read only filesystem soon.

Frank

Hi, thanks to both for fast response. Reasons, why I am trying to do this are:
- protection from SD card corruption, my RPI is not always on, often unplugged without shutdown command
- speed performance (not sure but I would like to try)
- curiosity

I guess there is a lot of writing on Storage (root) partition when "Updating Library".

I have "multiboot" RuneAudio and Openelec on same SD card (as hansh64 described in post #3191 I think it would be nice to have only (multi)boot partition on SD card and storage for all systems on USB stick partitions.

johnbanks

Hi guys ...

I always run the second (OS) partition from a USB stick on my RuneAudio & OpenElec (separate not combo) rigs built for myself & family members.

I burn the image onto an SD card, power up and then down properly (just in case the second partition gets changed on first power on??). Then I clone copy the second partition on the SD card and burn it to the USB stick. Finally I make the necessary change to the cmdline.txt file in the first (FAT) partition on the SD card.

I believe that USB sticks have more sophisticated wear levelling than SD cards.

Also I know from CrystalDiskMark tests run on my Windows laptop using the USB 2.0 port (as RPi) that a USB 3.0 stick reads twice as fast and writes more than 6 times faster than a microSD card.

Regarding corruption caused by sudden power loss during a file write – it seems logical that the less time spent in this ‘vulnerable’ write condition (because writes are faster) then the less chance of corruption.

The USB stick I use is – Integral Fusion 16GB USB 3.0 and the microSD card– Kingston 8GB Class 4.

Hope this helps

Mat

johnbanks wrote I burn the image onto an SD card, power up and then down properly (just in case the second partition gets changed on first power on??). Then I clone copy the second partition on the SD card and burn it to the USB stick. Finally I make the necessary change to the cmdline.txt file in the first (FAT) partition on the SD card.

I still have problems with this. I think my issue is not in copying/cloning files but in cmdline.txt. When I made dualboot I just copied files to second partition on SDCARD and it worked fine. When I copy files to USB Stick and change cmdline.txt Rune does not boot. Yesterday I tried clonning content with dd command and still without success.

John, do you use "root=UUID=xxxxx" in cmdline.txt or something else?

johnbanks

Mat ...

Try ...
disk=/dev/sda1
Change the "1" if the OS is not in the first partition on the USB stick.
Hope this helps

Mat

johnbanks wroteMat ...

Try ...
disk=/dev/sda1
Change the "1" if the OS is not in the first partition on the USB stick.
Hope this helps

John, thanks for help. root=/dev/sda1 indeed works

. UUID and PARTUUID just don't work. I didn't like /dev/sda1 because it is possible to get into conflict with other USB drives. Anyway, with your help I got it work and did some measurements. I was surprised that boot time was not faster but even a little bit slower than with SD card.

My HW:
- RPI 2 (default, nothing overclocked)
- SanDisk Ultra 8GB Class 10 SD card (up to 48MB/S)
- SanDisk Ultra Fit USB 3.0 16GB Flash Drive (up to 130 MB/s)

------------------------
Test starting RuneAudio (about a month old Frank's image with Midori and HDMI output to TV, thanks for that, Frank)
- Boot from SDCard: GUI shows up on TV in 30 seconds
- Boot from USB Stick: GUI shows up on TV in 32 seconds

Test starting OpenElec v6.0.3
- Boot from SDCard: GUI shows up on TV in 14 seconds
- Boot from USB Stick: GUI shows up on TV in 16 seconds
------------------------

So my curiosity is fulfilled, I am staying with SD Card only.