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Been playing this morning with various Pi settings and been trying to get my microSD setup (I had been playing with PiBakery) but I can’t tell if it’s the program that’s rubbish or my microSD cards! Tried a number of cards and have 3 duff ones – a TDK 16GB, a Kingston 2GB and a 16GB Sandisk, all seemed to throw errors up.
I think I’ll be looking at a multi pack of USB sticks from MyMemory and running them from that! Something like this or this should do the job. Slightly harder to do with my Zero’s but not impossible I imagine as long as I have an adaptor. That way I need a single microSD card to work and set the USB boot flag!
"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett
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I run a Pi Zero-W and a nano USB (sandisk ultra fit) works fine via a normal OTG cable (from 99p on ebay). I’ve had a few micro SDs go bad – all Sandisks (although Ibought mostly that brand). Bit of a chore if they are in warranty as they have to go back to the Czech republic (neither quick or free)
My PiHole went down the other day after a power cut. Not had time to investigate yet but the Pi Ubiquiti controller next to it was fine. Both have the same SanDisk micro SDs.
Good idea about the OTG cable. I have a nano OTG stick around somewhere…
The Pi can be quite picky wryt SD cards. Try using SD Formatter to recover them, but I now tend to prefer to use usb sticks or a cheap ssd with the pi as the combination of swap files and updates can eat into the life potential of SD cards in a noticeable way
I only use the MicroSD for the /boot partition. Everything else (rootfs) is on an NFS drive on a real HD, so no issues with a failing SD. Worst case scenario, I get another small one and set up the boot and handover on that.
Arch Linux, on a Ryzen 7 1800X, 32 GB, 5 (yes -5) HDs inc 5 SSDs, 4 RPi 3Bs + 1 RPi 4B - one as an NFS server with two more drives, PiHole (shut yours), Plex server, cloud server, and other random Pi stuff. Nice CoolerMaster case, 2 x NV GTX 1070 8GB, and a whopping 32" AOC 1440P monitor.
The problem with the NFS drive means you need 2 devices on the premises.
The problem with a USB powered drive means you no longer have a nice neat solution, you have more power and other cabling to deal with, plus the extra expense.
An OTG drive would solve both issues.
I think the ideal solution depends on your usage. The USB2 interface is restricted to around 35MB/s, but it is relatively simple to use this with equipment that will fully utilise this through direct connections (e.g.cheap ssd, or usb stick). Dan’s solution via the Pi3B 300MBS Ethernet is marginally faster. Both solutions are more robust than using an SD card.
I’ve opted for the directly connected SSD (no SD card) as I think the Pi Foundation will have to move to usb3 in its next incarnation in order to keep up with the Rock64. Dan’s solution is also robust as most competitors offer true gigabit Ethernet.
The reason I went for NFS boot is, of four Pis, only one boots from the directly connected drive. The other three boot from the NFS share. I have two NFS drives, both powered over USB (though I use a powered hub rather than connecting directly to the Pi to avoid undervolting the Pi), which means I have a simple backup solution, just rsync the NFS folders for the other three Pis to the second drive.
There’s barely any speed difference in normal operation between this, and SDCards, and as has been highlighted, using real drives is considerably more robust.
Arch Linux, on a Ryzen 7 1800X, 32 GB, 5 (yes -5) HDs inc 5 SSDs, 4 RPi 3Bs + 1 RPi 4B - one as an NFS server with two more drives, PiHole (shut yours), Plex server, cloud server, and other random Pi stuff. Nice CoolerMaster case, 2 x NV GTX 1070 8GB, and a whopping 32" AOC 1440P monitor.
Dan if you have a Pi3B your method is probably faster than a simple SD card, as unless you opt for an expensive hi-speed card the 300 mb/st Ethernet is faster. link
Well, for the moment, the NFS drives are connected to a 3B. The other three are 3B+, but this was in anticipation of populating the 3B+s with PoE hats. However, fortunately, I just bought one PoE hat as a test, and it’s since been found that, except with very low powered USB devices, there’s a serious problem with PoE in that it frequently over-volts the USB. Not to the point of any damage, but certainly to the point that USB becomes unstable. It seems to be interference on the board, but the devs are still diagnosing.
It’s serious enough that they’ve all been pulled from sale now (pretty much everywhere). I could return it for a refund, but TBH, apart from being able to observe the issue in the software diagnostics, it’s not a problem for me (the Pi the hat is on has nothing connected except the network).
Nevertheless, until the issue is fixed, I’m still on MicroUSB power, so I could swap the 3B with one of the 3B+ Pis to get back to the improved ethernet speed. Maybe this weekend. Just need to decide which to slow down. I’m thinking the retropie, but it likes the improved horsepower, so perhaps my owncloud machine, where net speed is less important.
Arch Linux, on a Ryzen 7 1800X, 32 GB, 5 (yes -5) HDs inc 5 SSDs, 4 RPi 3Bs + 1 RPi 4B - one as an NFS server with two more drives, PiHole (shut yours), Plex server, cloud server, and other random Pi stuff. Nice CoolerMaster case, 2 x NV GTX 1070 8GB, and a whopping 32" AOC 1440P monitor.
I use these to get data and power to my Pi machines from a PoE switch. At £8 a lot cheaper than a hat and works with all the Pi models, and anything else powered via 5v micro USB.
Good call, Dave, I may have to test one of those. Do you know whether it delivers the required 2.5 amps? Pi will run on 2amps, but it’s not ideal.
Arch Linux, on a Ryzen 7 1800X, 32 GB, 5 (yes -5) HDs inc 5 SSDs, 4 RPi 3Bs + 1 RPi 4B - one as an NFS server with two more drives, PiHole (shut yours), Plex server, cloud server, and other random Pi stuff. Nice CoolerMaster case, 2 x NV GTX 1070 8GB, and a whopping 32" AOC 1440P monitor.
The description says 2.4 A.
I have one running a Pi Hole and another a Ubiquiti controller, both on 24 /7. The Pi Hole is in trouble but that looks like the SD card as mentioned before. Most of the Amazon reviews are from folk running Pi.
It was the SD card but it hasn’t been totally trashed, so set the PiHole up again from scratch. Set the DHCP server to point to the PiHole, rebooted my laptop and went straight to the PiHole admin. I was amazed to find the laptop had already made 271 requests 47 of which had been blocked.
Thanks to a sale at one of my suppliers I have now picked up an IP-Com 8 port Gigabit Managed PoE switch. It’s 802.3at PoE+ (30W) so can handle everything except the big PTZ cameras. The Pi’s and my AP are running from it.
As it’s managed, and so is my normal switch, I can now set up my test network on the same infrastructure as the home network. That will save having to get various switches and routers out of cupboards and temporarily plugged in on the bench in a pile of spaghetti patch leads.
Next project is to look at Dan’s NFS share hand off for my own internal use Pi’s and a USB drive one for anything going elsewhere. I’ve just had a thought, my wireless test kit runs quite happily from a mobile phone portable battery pack, I wonder if a Pi could?
One for Dan. According to the switch the Pi Hole is consuming 1.7 watts and the Pi UniFi Controller 1.8 watts.
Dave, do you have any USB devices plugged in, and I don’t mean low power devices like mouse and KB. How about USB HD (without a separate PSU, for example).
Arch Linux, on a Ryzen 7 1800X, 32 GB, 5 (yes -5) HDs inc 5 SSDs, 4 RPi 3Bs + 1 RPi 4B - one as an NFS server with two more drives, PiHole (shut yours), Plex server, cloud server, and other random Pi stuff. Nice CoolerMaster case, 2 x NV GTX 1070 8GB, and a whopping 32" AOC 1440P monitor.
Digging this up as I recalled something above – about the Pi Zero being booted from USB and OTG cable. However, I was Googling yesterday and I couldn’t see anything that suggested the Pi Zero was USB boot compatible.
I was looking at getting one for the new cadet unit for Pi Hole duties, as they’re on a 4G connection. However, wanted to boot from USB but it appears they still need a microSD card with bits on.
"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett
Had to reboot the PiHole and it didn’t, again. Added PiHole service to the PiUniFi server but decided the Pi is too flaky for anything serious i.e. production.
My old HP Proliant Microserver Gen 7 (AMD N54L) is sat there doing nothing, so I decided it’s time to tip my toes in the VMWare pool. It’s got a dual core 2.2Ghz Turion CPU, 8GB ram, 4 x 1TB spinners (unfortunately no VMWare compatible RAID) and a spare 120GB SSD. All drives checked with OEM diagnostics and are fine.
The free ESXi hypervisor has been installed via a USB DVD drive on a 16GB USB drive plugged into a socket on the motherboard and the SSD into a similar spare SATA (both are designed for tape / CD drives as the HDDs are in a custom cage). ESXi can also access the NFS shares on my Synology which means I don’t have to move downloaded ISOs onto it’s local storage.
I’ve been running proof of concept for the last 2 days and it’s very usable and rock solid. Running an Ubuntu 18.04 desktop remotely via VNC is acceptable for most “office” type tasks but not for things like watching video **. This is whilst a PiHole and UniFi server are running in another VM. So this morning I wiped the lot and started again bearing in mind all I’d learned.
I’ll probably do a proper blog post on it later.
** yesterday evening I was running U18.04 remotely full screen on my laptop. I had a notification on my phone from Amazon about a case I may want to look at. Spookily it was one with 4 x hot swap drives bays – how do they know? Anyway I was on autopilot and just fired up Firefox and googled the case, then went to a You Tube review. It was only when I couldn’t increase the sound that I remembered it wasn’t running on my laptop.
Update, and thanks, Dave. I now have three of those PoE splitters, working a treat. Pi4 is still using the PoE hat, but doesn’t need the USB, so no issue. Good call.
Arch Linux, on a Ryzen 7 1800X, 32 GB, 5 (yes -5) HDs inc 5 SSDs, 4 RPi 3Bs + 1 RPi 4B - one as an NFS server with two more drives, PiHole (shut yours), Plex server, cloud server, and other random Pi stuff. Nice CoolerMaster case, 2 x NV GTX 1070 8GB, and a whopping 32" AOC 1440P monitor.
Had an issue with the Pi yesterday running for whatever reason, so dug out the new Pi 3+ that I had lying about upstairs waiting to be used and a 30GB SSD I’d had from a previous purchase, and it’s flying! Amazed at how much difference the SSD has made, even over USB2. I’d go as far as to say it’s a pretty usable machine for day to day use – I installed the GUI version of Raspbian and then Pi Hole, as I’m looking at remoting in and running programs when needed as various software items I use don’t work nicely on Mac or Windows and it seems to be running things like that extremely nicely.
"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett
Although it is impossible to boot a Pi Zero from SSD you can ‘more or less’ do so with just a shim actually on the SD card.
Choose a 8GB or lower card (tend to be more reliable) and follow the directions given here
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