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Re:Using BerryBoot to run Astroberry from an SSD

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I usually run directly from an Astroberry image on a Verbatim Premium 32GB microSD on my RPi4, but thought it would be interesting from the speed point of view to run on a SanDisk Extreme SSD. I used BerryBoot on a small microSD card to boot to Raspbian Buster on the SSD, and then followed the instructions on Astroberry.io to install Astroberry the longhand way. Everything seemed to work and when I rebooted, the BerryBoot pointed to the SSD and Astroberry woke up looking as normal. However I clicked on KStars, watched the Splash Screen but when it closed no further KStars window opened. I could repeat this by clicking again on the KStars symbol on the Taskbar, always the same (non) result. Any suggestions about what may be going wrong? Thanks.
3 years 11 months ago #51550

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UPDATED: Please note that as of around mid-2020 the Pi4 firmware (assuming it is up to date via rpi-eeprom-update), supports booting directly off a USB SSD.

This means that most of the information in this thread is out of date.


I put Astroberry on a SSD card, but I did it by copying the Astroberry image via rsync from an existing SD card to a ext4 partition on the SSD.

I then modified /boot/cmdline.txt to mount the root filesystem of the SSD, not the SD card.

I don't think USB booting is supported as yet on the Pi4, so you still need to have the SD card with the boot partition inserted, despite running off the SSD.

The method was very similar to this: www.tomshardware.com/uk/news/boot-raspbe...-from-usb,39782.html

I'm not experiencing the issue you are, perhaps try launching kstars from a terminal and see if it outputs any error?
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Last edit: 3 years 2 months ago by Giles. Reason: typo
3 years 11 months ago #51551

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I run from an SSD drive, but I just used the built in SD card copier in The Raspbian accessories menu, to copy the full SD card to an external SSD, then modified the boot partition to then boot from the SSD drive....simples.... :)
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3 years 11 months ago #51553

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I tried running Kstars from the terminal and this was the result:

At the moment running from the SSD is a 'nice to have' - everything is working pretty well from the microSD card.
3 years 11 months ago #51556
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Hi !

I used this tutorial (in German) to transfer everything from SD to SSD for thee RPI4. And everything is working fine. I did this with a ready installed astroberry on SD-Card and transferred this to the SSD.


Why using the SSD ?
After I´ve lost a view SD-Cards because of Power-loss (exidently and stupidly ;-) ) I didn´t feel like it anymore. So I bought Kingston industrial SD, installed Astroberry and then I did the steps explained in the Video. Since the I´ve never had that issue again. And its faster...

CS
Reiner
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Last edit: 3 years 11 months ago by Reiner vom Bruch.
3 years 11 months ago #51572

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Hi AstroNerd,
Just wondered if you are actually using Astroberry (rather than Stellarmate or AstroPi3 images) in this case? I have tried the SD card copier, but when I examine the drives available after copying, there is no second partition on the SSD, although four zram drives complete the list.
Thanks, Ed
3 years 11 months ago #51960

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I'm still struggling with the various SSD YouTube videos (my German is pretty weak) but not yet had the breakthrough I am hoping for!
Ed
3 years 11 months ago #51961

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Hi,
I have actually done it with both SM and AB and both worked fine, although the first time I tried I had that same issue, but for some reason each time after it’s worked ok.... ??
3 years 11 months ago #51964

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Right then - I’ll just have to be more persistent!
3 years 11 months ago #51965

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Yippee - after three consecutive ‘SD Card Copy’ commands, all’s well that ends well. I’m not sure I can recall exactly the steps and which boxes I ticked in the process, but hopefully I won’t have to do it again too soon!
3 years 11 months ago #52004

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Can you share what modification you did to the boot partition to make it boot from the SSD?
3 years 2 months ago #66458

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This was at a time before it was easy to boot a Raspberry Pi 4 directly from SSD. Since July I have been running astroberry from an SSD exclusively. Just burn an image straight to your SSD instead of microSD and plug it in to your RPi4! Make sure your RPi4 firmware is fully up to date (sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade) before you do this.
3 years 2 months ago #66462

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