Great job! Will sticky this! I'd like to point out that if you use the StellarMate App (at least one time), it would sync your time and location to that of the phone/tablet GPS. So no need to set that manually. Similarly, you can join WiFi network from the App itself.

First, I want to thank you for this great write up. Very easy to follow along without knowing what I'm doing (for parts of it). Question at step 2 of making almost everything off the SSD:

sudo rsync -avx / /ssd

After a long list of copied files, I get the following error:
rsync: write failed on "/ssd/lib/modules/4.19.115+/kernel/drivers/iio/pressure/bmp280-i2c.ko": Read-only file system (30)
rsync error: error in file IO (code 11) at receiver .c(374) [receiver=3.1.3]

Is his expected? Did I do something wrong? How should I fix?

EDIT: I must have done *something* wrong... I continued with the instructions and the thing will no longer boot... with or without the SSD.

vtanguay wrote: First, I want to thank you for this great write up. Very easy to follow along without knowing what I'm doing (for parts of it). Question at step 2 of making almost everything off the SSD:

sudo rsync -avx / /ssd

After a long list of copied files, I get the following error:
rsync: write failed on "/ssd/lib/modules/4.19.115+/kernel/drivers/iio/pressure/bmp280-i2c.ko": Read-only file system (30)
rsync error: error in file IO (code 11) at receiver .c(374) [receiver=3.1.3]

Is his expected? Did I do something wrong? How should I fix?

EDIT: I must have done *something* wrong... I continued with the instructions and the thing will no longer boot... with or without the SSD.

The command only copies everything from your root folder / to the /ssd folder.
If you mounted your SSD on the /ssd path then that should work.

However, I did not get the error message that you mention here so maybe it can also be different from SSD to SSD

Hello

Raspberry Pi 4 now supports both data and power over USB port. I was wondering if we could simply connect a powered USB hub to USB C port and then connect devices through that. On R-Pi 4 forums it seems this is enabled in the firmware. How to do that with stellarmet? Any ideas?

vtanguay wrote: First, I want to thank you for this great write up. Very easy to follow along without knowing what I'm doing (for parts of it). Question at step 2 of making almost everything off the SSD:

sudo rsync -avx / /ssd

After a long list of copied files, I get the following error:
rsync: write failed on "/ssd/lib/modules/4.19.115+/kernel/drivers/iio/pressure/bmp280-i2c.ko": Read-only file system (30)
rsync error: error in file IO (code 11) at receiver .c(374) [receiver=3.1.3]

Is his expected? Did I do something wrong? How should I fix?

EDIT: I must have done *something* wrong... I continued with the instructions and the thing will no longer boot... with or without the SSD.

Thought I'd close the loop with this. I've resolved my issue. Again, I want to thank you for the guide it was very helpful for me.
For reference, it turns out the issue was insufficient power. I hadn't receive my powered USB hub yet so the SSD was plugged directly into the pi (powered by a cheapo wall wart). I got the exact same problem the second try. dmesg command revealed insufficient voltage. Tried again with the new hub and it copied all the files over.

When it was time to bootup, it still did not work because I use a Sabrent SATA USB adapter. After some reading, I used the quirks fix and now everything works great. I have a new adapter ordered.
Thanks again.
Vince

Thanks for a really good guide!
Wavemon is a nice tool to test WiFi Signal Strength:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install wavemon
$ wavemon

Great guide, very helpful for Astroberry as well! Used it to install a SSD mounted at boot time, works perfectly. Lots of space now and fast, especially important for FireCapture when it writes the video files. On the SD card, this was nearly impossible.

I have two questions: How can I back up the SD/SSD combo to an external image file? It‘s a bit different from the situation with just a SD card. And how would I restore this backup, just in case?

Thanks and CS, Bernd

Thanks for an excellent guide !

One comment regarding external USB 3.0 Realtek WiFi. When I was configuring mine I had problems with building the source code. After some digging on this forum I managed to get it to work by running this set of commands:


I hope this will help others who experience the same problem

PS My WiFi dongle is connected through USB 3.0 passive hub

Could you give more details on the model of your wifi device ? I am searching for one with compatibility with stellarmate/raspbian

It is the same one as posted on the first page

Flybiz USB3 WiFi adapter to get USB3 speeds (Chipset: Realtek 8812BU)
www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07S23DBBY/

Should update to specify that with the new bootloader you can avoid using a microSD card entirely and boot and run off the external M.2 drive. I've got it working right now. One less failure point and allows you to do everything off the SSD.

Additionally, you can always keep an updated microSD card around in case of disk failure - but SSDs are pretty robust.

It's as simple as just blowing the Stellarmate image onto the SSD and then plugging it into the USB3 port on your Pi (I'm using a Pi4 for this). If your bootloader is post Sept 2020 and you have no microsd card in it'll boot directly off the SSD.

Reference: www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardwa...ypi/bootmodes/msd.md

gregoberfield wrote: Should update to specify that with the new bootloader you can avoid using a microSD card entirely and boot and run off the external M.2 drive. I've got it working right now. One less failure point and allows you to do everything off the SSD.

Additionally, you can always keep an updated microSD card around in case of disk failure - but SSDs are pretty robust.

It's as simple as just blowing the Stellarmate image onto the SSD and then plugging it into the USB3 port on your Pi (I'm using a Pi4 for this). If your bootloader is post Sept 2020 and you have no microsd card in it'll boot directly off the SSD.

Reference: www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardwa...ypi/bootmodes/msd.md

I thought it might be helpful to share my experience of this, it was not quite this simple.
Using a Pi4 8Gb, updating the boot loader (see www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardwa...errypi/booteeprom.md ) was simple, but the result was not an 'automatic' change to being able to boot from USB.
I needed to edit the boot loader config (see www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardwa...bootloader_config.md ) which seemed to be simple, but the changes I made did not ever seem to be applied when I rebooted.
It turns out that despite the linked EEPROM page saying otherwise, I had to remove (actually I just renamed) the existing bootcode.bin file before I could successfully apply any changed to the boot loader config. It is still a pretty simple change overall, but the information provided seems a little misleading.