Booting from USB-Stick possible?

[Jaques-Ludwig]

Is it possible to boot from USB-Stick instead of micro-sd-card? I have the apprehension that the micro-sd-card-slot could break if I use it to often. If it’s possible, how can I do this?

 

Thanks,

 

Jaques-Ludwig

 

 

[TRS-80]

3 minutes ago, Jaques-Ludwig said:

Is it possible to boot from USB-Stick instead of micro-sd-card?

 

In general (with Armbian), the answer is yes.

 

I am not sure there is anything Helios64 specific that may be different about this (for that, wait for gprovost, aprayoga or someone else more knowledgeable to answer specifics).

 

5 minutes ago, Jaques-Ludwig said:

If it’s possible, how can I do this?

 

The tool you are looking for is the (perhaps poorly named) nand-sata-install.

 

However perhaps we have got all this backwards.  Whether your concerns re: micro sd slot breaking are well-founded, is also a separate question.  Do you plan to be swapping out sd cards a lot?  I would think that with a NAS especially, mostly it would just be sitting there (after the initial setup).

[SIGSEGV]

Yes, you can boot off USB.

You need to either have a U-Boot image on the SD card or on the eMMC.

From there, if the system partition is not found on the SD Card or the eMMC, it will try to look for it on the USB drives that are connected.

 

My system is booting from a USB drive at the moment - the U-Boot is installed on the eMMC (I erased the partition table afterwards, but the bootloader is still there).

If you zero out the eMMC, you loose the bootloader and you need to boot from an SD card. I belive that once we can install the bootloader to the SPI chip you would be able to boot directly from the USB.

 

As @TRS-80 mentioned on the post above - the tool to use for moving your current system from the SD Card to either a USB or eMMC is "nad-sata-isntall".

Today, there was a new post on the wiki page for the Helios64 about the process.

 

Edited November 13, 2020 by SIGSEGV
Clarification regarding wiki page.

[gprovost]

Yes as mentioned by @SIGSEGV we have added a new wiki page that covers this topic : https://wiki.kobol.io/helios64/install/transfer/

 

[Jaques-Ludwig]

vor 15 Stunden schrieb gprovost:

Yes as mentioned by @SIGSEGV we have added a new wiki page that covers this topic : https://wiki.kobol.io/helios64/install/transfer/

 

Hi,

 

I know this page, but I can't find the point: System on SD-Card. Which point of this wiki page do I have to use if I want my system from SD-Card to USB and boot from USB?

 

Thanks, 

 

Jaques-Ludwig

[SIGSEGV]

Hi @Jaques-Ludwig,

That page refers to booting once from the SD-Card to install the system onto the eMMC, with armbian-config or directly with the nand-sata-install tool.

Afterwards your system should boot without the SD-Card, which is what you are looking to achieve, right?

[Jaques-Ludwig]

vor 2 Stunden schrieb SIGSEGV:

Hi @Jaques-Ludwig,

That page refers to booting once from the SD-Card to install the system onto the eMMC, with armbian-config or directly with the nand-sata-install tool.

Afterwards your system should boot without the SD-Card, which is what you are looking to achieve, right?

Yes, thats right.  But I want to boot from usb- stick not from eMMC. I think I will wait until the install is directly on usb-stick possible. 

The reason is, that I have installed HomeAssistant and that writes continously data on the drive.  I don't want to destroy the eMMC drive with that constant writing access and a usb-stick is cheaper if it is destroyed.

 

Jaques-Ludwig 

[SIGSEGV]

@Jaques-Ludwig

The following steps worked for me to boot from a USB stick.

In order to boot from USB try this steps:

1. Boot from the SD card
2. Plug in the USB stick - use command 'lsblk' to see the device name and write it down.
3. Choose option 3 from the main menu of 'nand-sata-install' tool
4. Choose the right destination (device from step 2)
5. Wait for writing to finish and reboot.

It's part of the guide. If you did install on the eMMC, then you can write the image used for initial SD-Card to a USB drive and erase the partition table from the eMMC. The boot loader will still be in the eMMC - but now your system will boot from the USB drive because the root partition has the UUID that the boot loader is looking for.

 

[Jaques-Ludwig]

vor 7 Minuten schrieb SIGSEGV:

@Jaques-Ludwig

The following steps worked for me to boot from a USB stick.

In order to boot from USB try this steps:

1. Boot from the SD card
2. Plug in the USB stick - use command 'lsblk' to see the device name and write it down.
3. Choose option 3 from the main menu of 'nand-sata-install' tool
4. Choose the right destination (device from step 2)
5. Wait for writing to finish and reboot.

It's part of the guide. If you did install on the eMMC, then you can write the image used for initial SD-Card to a USB drive and erase the partition table from the eMMC. The boot loader will still be in the eMMC - but now your system will boot from the USB drive because the root partition has the UUID that the boot loader is looking for.

 

Thanks for your  answer.

 

One question.  I installed the system on eMMC. Then I decided to install it on SD-Card, so I have to set J10 and J11 on the board as written in the wiki.

 

Can these jumper be set when I use your solution?

 

Thanks,

 

Jaques-Ludwig 

[SIGSEGV]

@Jaques-Ludwig,

I'm using the default jumper configuration on the Helios64 board.

[gprovost]

@Jaques-Ludwig As explains by @SIGSEGV you still need to store the bootloader somewhere else than USB because the system cannot boot directly from USB. So in our wiki we present the following approach : Bootloader on eMMC, Root file System on USB.

 

Very soon we will also explain how to store bootloader SPI, but honestly not really major added value than the above approach.

 

6 hours ago, Jaques-Ludwig said:

One question.  I installed the system on eMMC. Then I decided to install it on SD-Card, so I have to set J10 and J11 on the board as written in the wiki.

 

Technically you need to use jumper P10 to disable eMMC to be sure the system won't boot from it.

However take note the 1st stage bootloader (aka SPL) will always try to first find 2nd stage bootloader (aka U-boot) on microSD first, then eMMC. So it means that even if system boot from eMMC, if there is a microSD card inserted with a 2nd stage bootloader (aka U-Boot), the system will boot the system from microSD card... therefore you don't really need to bother about P10 jumper. Hope I'm not confusing more by trying to explain more :-/

[SIGSEGV]

Thanks for the clarification @gprovost.

Looking forward to storing the bootloader on SPI - I believe that looking for the 2nd stage bootloader on the microSD is a perfect way to rescue the system in cases it's needed.