2018-04-21, 02:43 PM
Unfortunately, you can't expand the partition using Raspbian, you have to use a disk tool like gparted.
Steps (from memory - apologies if it isn't perfect):
1. On an SD card, boot OP NOOBs 10 and upgrade everything to the latest version. Reboot.
2. Open a terminal. enter "mount". You'll see a list of mounted partitions on your SD card. It will probably be something like:
The "/dev/mmcblk0p7 on / type ext4 (rw,noatime,data=ordered)" line is the important one. That is the partition you are moving to the SSD.
3. Plug in your SSD. What I like to do is run the command "tail -f /var/log/syslog" BEFORE I plug it in, then I can watch the output and see what device was selected for the SSD, Most likely it is going to be /dev/sda1 or /dev/sdb1... something like that.
4. Assuming you originally booted from an OP distribution, now you can copy your root partition (in this example /dev/mmcblk0p7) to your SSD (in this example /dev/sda1). It will take a few minutes to complete. Be patient.
5. After it's done, reboot to clean up.
6. Now you need to expand the partition on the SSD. First install gparted if it isn't already:
sudo apt install gparted
7. Then run it. You'll need to have a screen attached to your RPI, as gparted is a graphical tool. I'm sure there is a command line way to do this in parted, but I never bothered to learn it.
8. You should see a window come up showing the partitions on your SD card. The pulldown in the upper right will give you the opportunity to look at your SSD.
9. You should see one partition there, the one that you just copied from your SD card. Select it, unmount it (right-click pull down), then in the partition menu item at the top, select "Resize/move". You'll get a window with a slider on the top that you can move to the maximum size available on your SSD. Select what you want and execute. It might take a while.
10. Reboot
11. In your terminal, run "sudo nano /boot/cmdline.txt"
12. Change the "root=" phrase to point to the new partition on your SSD (e.g. "root=/dev/sda1") and save.
13. Reboot, and you should be using the SSD with it's new size. If you want to know what size you have now, open a terminal and run "df".
Hopefully this works for you. As I said, I'm doing this from memory, so you might have to fiddle around a little with the steps to get it to work.
There is one thing you should be aware of. Using /dev/sda or /dev/sdb to identify an external USB drive isn't always reliable. There is a chance that if there is another drive plugged in, device names won't be consistent after a reboot. The way to fix this is to use the PARTID of the partition on the SSD. That's something I definitely can't do from memory! If this gets to be a problem for you, let me know and I'll try to dig up the process for determining the PARTID and using it in cmdline.txt.
Andy
Steps (from memory - apologies if it isn't perfect):
1. On an SD card, boot OP NOOBs 10 and upgrade everything to the latest version. Reboot.
2. Open a terminal. enter "mount". You'll see a list of mounted partitions on your SD card. It will probably be something like:
Code:
pi@openplotter:~ $ mount
/dev/mmcblk0p7 on / type ext4 (rw,noatime,data=ordered)
devtmpfs on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,relatime,size=468148k,nr_inodes=117037,mode=755)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,relatime)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000)
tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,mode=755)
tmpfs on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,size=5120k)
tmpfs on /sys/fs/cgroup type tmpfs (ro,nosuid,nodev,noexec,mode=755)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/systemd type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,xattr,release_agent=/lib/systemd/systemd-cgroups-agent,name=systemd)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu,cpuacct type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,cpu,cpuacct)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,blkio)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/memory type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,memory)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/devices type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,devices)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,freezer)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/net_cls type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,net_cls)
systemd-1 on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type autofs (rw,relatime,fd=22,pgrp=1,timeout=300,minproto=5,maxproto=5,direct)
mqueue on /dev/mqueue type mqueue (rw,relatime)
debugfs on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw,relatime)
fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw,relatime)
configfs on /sys/kernel/config type configfs (rw,relatime)
/dev/mmcblk0p6 on /boot type vfat (rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro)
tmpfs on /run/user/1000 type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,size=94552k,mode=700,uid=1000,gid=1000)
gvfsd-fuse on /run/user/1000/gvfs type fuse.gvfsd-fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=1000,group_id=1000)
/dev/mmcblk0p5 on /media/pi/SETTINGS type ext4 (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,data=ordered,uhelper=udisks2)3. Plug in your SSD. What I like to do is run the command "tail -f /var/log/syslog" BEFORE I plug it in, then I can watch the output and see what device was selected for the SSD, Most likely it is going to be /dev/sda1 or /dev/sdb1... something like that.
4. Assuming you originally booted from an OP distribution, now you can copy your root partition (in this example /dev/mmcblk0p7) to your SSD (in this example /dev/sda1). It will take a few minutes to complete. Be patient.
Code:
dd if=/dev/mmcblk0p7 of=/dev/sda1 bs=1M5. After it's done, reboot to clean up.
6. Now you need to expand the partition on the SSD. First install gparted if it isn't already:
sudo apt install gparted
7. Then run it. You'll need to have a screen attached to your RPI, as gparted is a graphical tool. I'm sure there is a command line way to do this in parted, but I never bothered to learn it.
8. You should see a window come up showing the partitions on your SD card. The pulldown in the upper right will give you the opportunity to look at your SSD.
9. You should see one partition there, the one that you just copied from your SD card. Select it, unmount it (right-click pull down), then in the partition menu item at the top, select "Resize/move". You'll get a window with a slider on the top that you can move to the maximum size available on your SSD. Select what you want and execute. It might take a while.
10. Reboot
11. In your terminal, run "sudo nano /boot/cmdline.txt"
12. Change the "root=" phrase to point to the new partition on your SSD (e.g. "root=/dev/sda1") and save.
13. Reboot, and you should be using the SSD with it's new size. If you want to know what size you have now, open a terminal and run "df".
Hopefully this works for you. As I said, I'm doing this from memory, so you might have to fiddle around a little with the steps to get it to work.
There is one thing you should be aware of. Using /dev/sda or /dev/sdb to identify an external USB drive isn't always reliable. There is a chance that if there is another drive plugged in, device names won't be consistent after a reboot. The way to fix this is to use the PARTID of the partition on the SSD. That's something I definitely can't do from memory! If this gets to be a problem for you, let me know and I'll try to dig up the process for determining the PARTID and using it in cmdline.txt.
Andy