PINN releases

    Hi,

    Are you interested in producing PINN releases of the latest LIbreELEC versions again?

    I've had a request to provide installations for 9.26 and 9.28 for the Pi2 & Pi3 models.

    Thanks.

    It was the last one I had before NOOBS was deprecated.
    If you have any later versions, I'd be happy to update them.

    Do you also keep old versions available, seeing as users have specifically requested 9.26 & 9.28?

    Quote from procount

    If you have any later versions, I'd be happy to update them.

    we maintain the noobs files for every release, we just do not versioning it because the old noobs can't handle it and pinn has it preset with full url

    so for us would be the easiest if we would make some pinn.json and you link to that ?

    procount currently we only have the latest version available, via https://releases.libreelec.tv/noobs/..., but that does seem to cause issues with the mirrors so we are discussing if we should provide versioned directories.

    9.2.6 was our last release for RPi1, RPi2 (also used for RPi3), RPi4 and RPi5 releases are at 11.0.5 now - which was just released today and the mirrors don't seem to have picked up the new noobs files yet.

    eg https://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/libreelec/noobs/ doesn't have RPi5 yet but it's available directly from our release server - eg https://releases.libreelec.tv/noobs/LibreELEC_RPi5/os.json, RPi2 is at 11.0.4 (the previous release) and RPi4 at 11.0.3 (I broke RPi4 and RPi5 noobs builds in 11.0.4 so that was our previous RPi4 noobs release as well).

    The easiest solution would be if you could pull a json with the latest noobs image metadata from our server, like RPi imager does - then we can automatically update it when we do a new release.

    Regarding image metadata: do you have some info which settings should be in the os/os_list.json files`? Currently we fill in lots of very deprecated fields like supported_hex_revisions which IIRC got dropped ages ago and may be missing some other now required fields.

    so long,

    Hias

    Hey guys,

    Thanks for the feedback & support!

    Let me review your metadata and update PINN to serve the latest LibreELEC versions. Then we can look at you managing your own os_list, so you can keep it updated and support multiple versions going forward.

    Thanks :)

    Quote from HiassofT

    procount another question: do you support UUID=... instead of LABEL=... in partition setup now? Currently we still have label entries in partition.json but as LABELs can easily clash that's not ideal.

    By default PINN uses /dev/mmcblk0pX for SD card installations and PARTUUID on USB drives. These normally work well for most OSes.

    /dev/sdX can be forced for USB drives (e.g. for Android that doesn't use PARTUUID), or labels can be specified, but are not preferred as you have realised.

    If you don't need to use labels, I would suggest leaving it up to PINN to use PARTUUID or /dev/mmc as appropriate.

    I will look at your partition_setup.sh file for you, but its probably ok.

    Quote from CvH

    procount

    is that the list that is pulled for the current images ? Wondering because there are only old releases listed.

    Yes, but the URLs point to your own release servers, so although the meta-data is out of date, it should still be installing your latest versions (I haven't checked!). This will be resolved when you have control over updating the os_list.json file yourselves.

    Edited once, last by procount: Merged a post created by procount into this post. (January 14, 2024 at 5:13 PM).

    I have created a separate os_list for LibreElec, added the Pi5 version and updated the meta-data dates & versions.

    The meta files work, but I'm looking at some improvements.

    I note you have your own md5 checksums for kernel.mg and system. PINN can also use an sha512 checksum across the tar.gz files and partition_setup.sh file that you are not using at present. You could use them instead of, or in addition to, your own md5 checksum, or keep it as it is. Any thoughts?

    Thanks for adding/updating the os list!

    I think moving to sha checksums of the downloaded tarballs etc is a good idea, then we can drop the manual md5 sum creation and checks in partition_setup.sh.

    Do you have some pointers how to use/add the pinn sha512 checksums?

    In general I'm very open to all improvements and suggestions how to simplify stuff, just speak up :)

    so long,

    Hias

    OK, thanks. I'll sort it.
    You will still have to generate the sha checksum of your tar.gz files, but PINN will do the checking for you.

    I will provide guidance for you going forward.

    Apologies in advance if I take a while doing this - I'm juggling many plates!

    Take your time, we're not in a rush.

    I had planned to rework our noobs/pinn build a bit in the next weeks or so (as time permits) and it'd be nice to have that finished when we ship LE12.0.0. As we haven't started with LE12 betas yet I'd guess that won't be before March, so there's plenty of time (and it's also no huge deal if we do it some time later, then you/we can just do a manual os_list update).

    so long,

    Hias