uSD won't boot Jspot

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WH6ST
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uSD won't boot Jspot

Post by WH6ST »

Hi gang. I'm still quite new at this stuff. Problem: I have one uSD card for 2 Jspots. Trying to create another. No matter what I do- multiple downloads of pistar, re-formatting, you name it- the new (multiple) cards won't boot either Jspot. The thing I've noticed, when examining the files on the operational card vs. the other non-op cards, is that there is an indicated 27 items on the operational card, and only 26 items on the non-op cards. The missing file "System Volume Information". Everything else looks to be the same on both cards. Any suggestions as to my errant ways? Thanks, Steve, WH6ST
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MW0MWZ
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Re: uSD won't boot Jspot

Post by MW0MWZ »

Just for sanity's sake here - you care using a "RPi" image for the (making a wild assumption here) Raspberry Pi Zero? and not using a "Nano" image?

This one seems to be a common mistake....
Andy

73 de MW0MWZ
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AF6VN
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Re: uSD won't boot Jspot

Post by AF6VN »

"System Volume Information" is a Windows support file https://www.howtogeek.com/282214/what-i ... delete-it/ and has nothing to do with an operational R-Pi image; it tends to just indicate that you've manipulated the contents using Windows.

How are you copying the image to the SD card? -- to my knowledge you can not use Windows "drag&drop" to copy the contents (unlike NOOBS installer).

Also, an R-Pi image tends to have a small FAT partition viewable on Windows, but most of the card will be consumed by a Linux partition that Windows can not do anything with.

--
AF6VN
Dennis L Bieber
WH6ST
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Re: uSD won't boot Jspot

Post by WH6ST »

Yes, RPi Zero W. I'm flashing the rpi image using Balena Etcher. Tried flashing both the zipped and unzipped files. The process seems so simple- download correct file, flash to card, install in spot. But somehow I, or my computer, am missing something. As mentioned above, when examining the files (I didn't go over all the 168 files in one of the folders....) the only thing that appeared different was that SVI file. I'm trying to use two brand new, never used, uSD cards. Is there a particular booting file I could check to see is included or attached? Keep in mind I'm pretty much a computer dolt (but learning by the day!) Much appreciate your help. Aloha, Steve.
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Re: uSD won't boot Jspot

Post by AF6VN »

WH6ST wrote: Tue Jul 09, 2019 5:01 pm Yes, RPi Zero W. I'm flashing the rpi image using Balena Etcher. Tried flashing both the zipped and unzipped files. The process seems so simple- download correct file, flash to card, install in spot. But somehow I, or my computer, am missing something. As mentioned above, when examining the files (I didn't go over all the 168 files in one of the folders....) the only thing that appeared different was that SVI file. I'm trying to use two brand new, never used, uSD cards. Is there a particular booting file I could check to see is included or attached? Keep in mind I'm pretty much a computer dolt (but learning by the day!) Much appreciate your help. Aloha, Steve.
Thing is -- most of the OS will not be visible to a Windows computer since Windows can't read Linux EXT# partitions. The FAT partition is only around 63MB, the rest of the card is not seen by Windows. I don't expect there to be anything special in that FAT partition -- just the standard Raspbian boot files (the binary bootloader that the R-Pi graphics processor [yes, the R-Pi graphics processor boots the ARM processor] uses to load the OS, and the device tree binaries specific to each R-Pi board model

Heck -- that would be a test point... REMOVE the ZUM board, write a Raspberry NOOBS image to the card, and boot that (you will need a USB keyboard/mouse and HDMI connection to a monitor/HDTV). The goal here is to confirm that the Raspberry hardware itself is functional by going through the normal (non Pi-Star) configuration process. NOOBS is a pure FAT file -- format the SD card as FAT, copy (not Etcher, extract and drag&drop) everthing to the card, which should be around 8GB minimum (the drag&drop will use about 1.5GB -- but as part of the first boot/configure it will repartition the card so the FAT is only a small part, and the rest of the card is Linux).

--
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Dennis L Bieber
WH6ST
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Re: uSD won't boot Jspot

Post by WH6ST »

Thanks for your replies. Can one easily copy and paste from one card to another (on Windoze)? I was guessing not. I'm guessing also the the RPi Zeros are working fine, because they, well, work fine with the one good uSD. I bought some new cards and I think I'll try flashing to beta version to see if that works....onward. Steve
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KE0FHS
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Re: uSD won't boot Jspot

Post by KE0FHS »

I think it's possible to duplicate a card, but I'm not sure of the correct method when doing so for a Raspbian-based card on a Windows computer. However, there's an alternative method that's really easy:
  1. In Pi-Star, create a backup of your configuration. Use the Backup/Restore link in the menu bar.
  2. Go to the Pi-Star website (https://www.pistar.uk/wifi_builder.php) and create a wpa_supplicant.conf file with your WiFi network login credentials. Save that to your computer.
  3. Download a fresh Pi-Star image (either 3.4.17 from https://www.pistar.uk/downloads/ or the beta release candidate of 4.1.0 from https://www.pistar.uk/beta/)
  4. Flash the image to your new microSD card using a program like Balena Etcher (https://www.balena.io/etcher/), which is one of the easiest flash utilities available. Note that you can ignore any Windows system messages that say you need to format the card when you first insert your microSD card and also when Etcher is finished flashing the image; Etcher takes care of that for you.
  5. Eject the microSD card from you computer, and then re-insert it. Once again, ignore any Windows system message.
  6. Copy the wpa_supplicant.conf file to the root directory of the microSD card, and then eject the card again.
  7. Boot up your new Raspberry Pi with the new microSD card. It should connect directly to your WiFi network. Note that the first time you boot up, it takes longer than usual as the image gets expanded to fill the full microSD card on the first boot up.
  8. Restore the backup you made in the first step. You're now ready to go. Note that some settings are not backed up, so if you changed them to something other than their default, you'll find that they are on the default settings again after you run a restore, for example:
    • General Configuration:
      • System Time Zone (default Europe/London)
      • Dashboard language (default English_uk)
    • D-Star Configuration – Time Announcements (default: On) and Use DPlus for XRF (default: Off). If you change the Use DPlus for XRF setting, you must run a Pi-Star Update to put the new setting into effect.
    • Firewall Configuration – Auto AP (default: On)
    • Remote Access Password – Since Pi-Star backup does not back up this password, if you want to use your own password, which is a good idea, you'll need to enter your own password.
    • Expert Editor > CSS Tool – Custom CSS settings aren't backed up. If you change CSS settings, write them down so you can manually restore them.
73, Toshen, KE0FHS
Playing with Pi-Star (unofficial notes about setting up and using Pi-Star):
https://amateurradionotes.com/pi-star.htm
WH6ST
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Re: uSD won't boot Jspot

Post by WH6ST »

Now I'm really starting to worry...Toshen, I followed your instructions to the letter. Used one of the "old" uSD cards, and one brand new. Used both the standard Rpi image, and the Beta. Neither Jspot will connect to WiFi. Put in the original "known-good" uSD, everything works fine.....What the heck am I missing? Steve.
G4AON
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Re: uSD won't boot Jspot

Post by G4AON »

Windows might foul up the SD card. I reformat the SD card using the utility from the SD card association, look under downloads, it will remove partitions too:
https://www.sdcard.org/

I write the Pi-Star image using Win32 Disk Imager, from:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/

73 Dave
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AF6VN
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Re: uSD won't boot Jspot

Post by AF6VN »

KE7FNS wrote: Sat Jul 13, 2019 9:03 am Download http://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/

<SNIP>

That should make an exact duplicate of all the partitions on the SD card, then you can just repeat the writing step as many times as you want SD cards.
Caveat: the destination card must be identical or larger. Not just in size printed on the label, but in actual formatted block count. I once attempted such a procedure (forget if it was for an R-Pi or a BBB) but the destination card reported a few blocks fewer than the source card and the image could not be written to it. Win32DiskImager doesn't have the ability to "trim" an image down if the entire space is not being occupied. (If the destination is a much larger card, the partition written won't use the entire card, and a partition resize will have to be done later)

FYI: the BBB forums have deprecated Win32DiskImager in favor of Balena Etcher (which can even accept zipped/compressed image files without first unzipping them). However, Etcher only writes to memory cards, it does not create image files from cards.


I haven't tried but... If the Pi-Star image includes drivers for USB card readers and the rsync https://linux.die.net/man/1/rsync command (may need to apt-get install) it MIGHT be worth taking that new image (created with a version of pi-star that matches the running system), and rsync (as root) the entire running partition over the one in the card reader (look for options to force copy everything, not just "newer"). The contents of the FAT (boot) partition can be copied using Windows.

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