installing on USB on a RPI

1st Official Post
    • Official Post

    Booting from a USB is NOT possible, as previously mentioned. However running from a USB should be possible.

    I haven't tried, but if you install LE on a USB stick and also a SD. Then on the SD card, change cmdline.txt for root= point to say sda1 (Many options are available LABEL, UUID) instead of mmcblk0p2. (This was done from memory, so may not be precisely correct)

    Have you looked on the Wiki - I'm sure there might be an entry for this.

    offcourse i mean run from USB, looked in the wiki and didnt find anything, but found some generel help on google so ill just apply that to LE. =)
    Thanks for pointing me into the right direction!

    Edited once, last by charlie (June 24, 2016 at 3:59 AM).

    Hello Charlie,

    Did you get this working? I am trying same thing: boot on a SD and then LE on the usb.
    I followed all the steps I found on the internet and now I only have to modify the cmdline.txt.

    My problem is that I do not kown which label I must include. I tried to connecto via ssh to the LE (before I perform the changes) to see which label is assigned but I am not able to connect with ssh.

    This is the original content:
          boot=/dev/mmcblk0p1 disk=/dev/mmcblk0p2 quiet
    Did you try with this?
    boot=/dev/sda1 disk=/dev/mmcblk0p2 quiet

    Any success on your side?

    Regards,
    pblgmz
    [hr]
    I do confirm IT WORKS!!
    The line I wrote on my previous post WORKS.
    Regards,

    Edited once, last by pblgmz (July 10, 2016 at 4:57 PM).

    Hi,

    In OE, when you want to run it from USB, you should have to modify theese lines

    boot=/dev/mmcblk0p1 disk=/dev/mmcblk0p2 quiet

    to

    boot=/dev/mmcblk0p1 disk=LABEL=STORAGE quiet

    so, you need to leave boot partition on mSD, and partition "STORAGE" move to USB (format it as ext4, and label "STORAGE")
    if you want to change your mSD with another smaller capacity, the new mSD have been format as "FAT" (or FAT32), with options "boot" and "lba", and copy all content from the first to the smaller.

    I guess it must be the same in LE

    I hope I explained well, because my English is not very good.

    Edited once, last by gark81 (July 10, 2016 at 7:39 PM).

    • Official Post

    It's a lot safer to use UUID or LABEL instead of /dev/sda1 as sda1 "might" change if another USB drive is attached.

    "Get the UUID and LABEL info"

    #blkid

    @@ Load of other Stuff @@
    /dev/sda1: LABEL="NTFS-128" UUID="15E570AC5C3321DC" TYPE="ntfs" PARTUUID="000b5098-01"

    so cmdline.txt becomes.

    root=UUID=15E570AC5C3321DC

    or

    root=LABEL=NTFS-128

    Your UUID and LABEL will be different.

    ** On another point, is it possible to JUST move /storage to a USB drive and just leave a symbolic link on the SD card? Most of the configuration and I/O on a working system is to that mount point, so you would have the system on the SD card and the user data on a USB drive.

    Quote from Iridium


    ** On another point, is it possible to JUST move /storage to a USB drive and just leave a symbolic link on the SD card? Most of the configuration and I/O on a working system is to that mount point, so you would have the system on the SD card and the user data on a USB drive.

    this is exactly what is happening if you copy or move /storage to a harddrive and change cmdline.txt to: (as gark81 also writes, or use uuid as you write)

    boot=/dev/mmcblk0p1 disk=LABEL="labelofyourhardrive" quiet

    system will be on sd and userdata on harddrive.
    if the symlink thing will work i have no idea, i never seen it done that way but i think you could run into trouble.

    the problem with moving the system image from sd card and change boot in cmdline.txt is when you update. the firmware/bootfiles needs to reside on sd and will not be updated. i guess you could update these files manually, but there really is no reason to move boot.
    at least thats how it was on openelec, i suspect it is the same on libreelec.

    Edited once, last by tuxen (July 11, 2016 at 11:26 PM).

    Hi all,

    Has any one tried this with LE already? Does any one know the stability of the system when using this configuration? I have done this in the past with OE, and still using it nowadays. But my personal experience is dat the USB/SD card gets corrupted a lot. Can be related to power issues but i never figured it out. The reasom i use this configuration is that you can enable caching in Kodi witch improves streaming and reduses buffering a lot.