Pi4: DietPi on sole external SSD Topic is solved

[DietCH]

hi everyone,

Is it now possible to run DietPi on a single SSD drive attached to USB (ie: without a microSD card) of a Raspberry Pi 4? How?

[Joulinar]

Hi,

well the question is not if you can boot DietPi on a RPi4 from an extern SSD.

The question is, if you can boot Raspbian Lite on a RPi4 using an external SSD

Answer: Not yet. see > https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentati ... teeprom.md

The feature will come and there is already an available beta firmware out. However not yet official released. As well a first guide how to use the beta version is out on the web. Maybe you like to have a look. But this is all without guaranty as it's still beta

https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-eepr ... e-notes.md

https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/boo ... y-pi-4-usb

And one more linkt to a similar topic on GitHub

https://github.com/MichaIng/DietPi/issu ... -629771482

[DietCH]

Thank you for that quick reply and useful links.

So I guess the big question is: will DietPi be updated when the final EEPROM comes out? (new version of Raspbian I suppose)?

[Joulinar]

Hi,

the OS below DietPi is a Raspbian Lite (base image) in case of RPi devices. Therefore the eeprom update service is already there and updates will be applied during boot, if available.

Code: Select all

root@DietPi4:~# journalctl -u rpi-eeprom-update
-- Logs begin at Sat 2020-05-23 10:25:50 CEST, end at Mon 2020-05-25 16:47:33 CEST. --
Mai 23 10:25:51 DietPi4 systemd[1]: Starting Check for Raspberry Pi EEPROM updates...
Mai 23 10:25:51 DietPi4 rpi-eeprom-update[249]: BCM2711 detected
Mai 23 10:25:51 DietPi4 rpi-eeprom-update[249]: BOOTLOADER: up-to-date
Mai 23 10:25:51 DietPi4 rpi-eeprom-update[249]: CURRENT: Thu 16 Apr 17:11:26 UTC 2020 (1587057086)
Mai 23 10:25:51 DietPi4 rpi-eeprom-update[249]:  LATEST: Thu 16 Apr 17:11:26 UTC 2020 (1587057086)
Mai 23 10:25:51 DietPi4 rpi-eeprom-update[249]:  FW DIR: /lib/firmware/raspberrypi/bootloader/critical
Mai 23 10:25:51 DietPi4 rpi-eeprom-update[249]: VL805: up-to-date
Mai 23 10:25:51 DietPi4 rpi-eeprom-update[249]: CURRENT: 000137ad
Mai 23 10:25:51 DietPi4 rpi-eeprom-update[249]:  LATEST: 000137ad
Mai 23 10:25:51 DietPi4 systemd[1]: Started Check for Raspberry Pi EEPROM updates.
root@DietPi4:~#

Probably you would need to set rpi-eeprom-update to stable. By default it's set to critical

Code: Select all

root@DietPi4:~# cat /etc/default/rpi-eeprom-update
FIRMWARE_RELEASE_STATUS="critical"
root@DietPi4:~#

detailed information can be found at the bottom of the page https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentati ... teeprom.md

[DietCH]

Just a word of caution to people trying this.

I have tried it this morning and managed to boot from a 1TB HD. The initial resize2fs took quite some time (5 minutes?), but afterwards DietPi booted up just fine (v6.3).

The problem came later when I configured DietPi with root access. I tried to install a couple of packages, and on the next reboot, I got an error and the Pi didn't start on USB HD anymore. I think the problem was that the packages/script erased some necessary files like recovery.elf and recovery4.elf (which were stated as not found on the screen), and also start4cd.elf which was stated as not compatible.

So I am unsure which script changed these files, but be aware of these issues.

[baz123]

I really do not understand why folk want to do this. Other than freeing up an SD Card it has zero benefit AFAICS. I usually transfer the boot folder to an old, small (2GB) SDCard once the transfer of the rootfs has been done and boot from that.

[Joulinar]

@DietCH
Did you have done a reboot right after you updated to 6.30??

[DietCH]

It was a fresh install directly from USB (no SD card used).

After the initial config, yes, it asked for a reboot, and that's when some files were changed on the HD.

[Joulinar]

well during initial setup, a couple of Raspbian/Debian package update procedures will be called. Maybe it will revert (beta) changes you have done to get USB booting up?

[Reds]

Now that this boot from USB firmware is official and stable, is it safe to use with DietPi 6.3 to avoid the problems discussed above?