6th November 2022
I have decided to stop using microSD cards in my Raspberry PI mini cluster. I'm afraid, that the card will fail in few months, so I have decided to switch to SSD disk. The prices are almost similar to prices of microSD cards (price of usb to ssd adapter not included).
In my cluster, I'm using Ubuntu 20.04. Ubuntu 20.04 was released before the EEPROM update to RPi4 which allowed USB booting. In this tutorial we will show how to prepare USB booting on Ubuntu 20.04.
I have bought:
- external box and SSD to USB adapter https://www.alza.sk/axagon-adsa-1s6-slimport6-d3020462.htm
- 2.5" SSD Verbatim VI550 S3 2.5" SSD 256GB https://www.alza.sk/verbatim-vi550-s3-2-5-ssd-256gb-d5721718.htm
Some users recommends 3.5A power supply, for case you plugin the SSD disk to USB port of Raspberry Pi. My power supply is only 3A, but seems it works. This SSD model use only 1,31 W, based on product parameters.
- turn off Raspberry PI
- insert microSD card to your notebook (or to microSD adapter)
- unmount the card and umount also the ssd disk
- run dd command to copy data from microSD card to SSD drive (replace X with source device and Y with target device)
$ sudo dd if=/dev/sdX of=/dev/sdY status=progress bs=16M
- if the SSD has higher capacity, start Gparted software after dd has passed
- click on the partition you want to resize
- from menu select Partition > Resize/Move
- move slider to the right
- confirm action
- choose menu Edit > Apply all operations
- click apply
Now we have copied the content from microSD card to SSD disk
All Raspberry PI 4B model with 8GB ram and also some 4GB ram models supports boot from USB. But there are issues with usb boot on Ubuntu 20.04 - it is not supported by default. We need to update EEPROM, but in the end after this changes it will work.
Following lines are prepared based on this two articles:
- https://medium.com/@zsmahi/make-ubuntu-server-20-04-boot-from-an-ssd-on-raspberry-pi-4-33f15c66acd4
- https://jamesachambers.com/raspberry-pi-4-ubuntu-20-04-usb-mass-storage-boot-guide/comment-page-2
I have extracted most of this informations from this two articles. You can follow my instructions below instead of that links - my instructions are tested in November 2022 and there are few changes compared to the above links. If you need explanation of some of the step, you can always check that links for more info.
I recommend to download Raspberry PI Imager. It is software which can download and flash bootable operating system on your rpi.
- lets install Raspberry PI OS 64bit with 0,8 GB image size to new microSD card (do not overwrite your existing filesystem, use another card)
- select target drive and select input image
- before you start flashing, open settings (the cog in the bottom right corner)
- set credentials:
- username: pi
- password: raspberry
- flash the device
Insert the card to RPI and turn it on.
Login to wifi router admin to detect, which IP was assigned to the rpi - for me it was 10.0.2.122
This will update the OS on your newly flashed microSD. Do NOT upgrade system on your Ubuntu 20.04 project! Use the newly flashed card!
Run
$ sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade -y
We will not change the firmware release channel to beta, as this version of OS has supported firmware already in default channel. Do not change it to beta, keep it as is without changes.
Check, if pieeprom-2022-04-26.bin exists. If yes, select that value
$ sudo su
$ cd /lib/firmware/raspberrypi/bootloader/default/
$ rpi-eeprom-update -d -f pieeprom-2022-04-26.bin
Output:
*** INSTALLING pieeprom-2022-04-26.bin ***
CURRENT: Thu 29 Apr 16:11:25 UTC 2021 (1619712685)
UPDATE: Tue 26 Apr 10:24:28 UTC 2022 (1650968668)
BOOTFS: /boot
Using recovery.bin for EEPROM update
EEPROM updates pending. Please reboot to apply the update.
To cancel a pending update run "sudo rpi-eeprom-update -r".
$ sudo reboot
Verify that eeprom has been updated:
$ sudo vcgencmd bootloader_version
Plug the SSD disk to the Raspberry Pi USB 2 port (black port) and mount its partitions:
$ lsblk
$ sudo mkdir /mnt/boot && sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot
$ sudo mkdir /mnt/principal && sudo mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/principal
$ cd /mnt/boot
$ sudo cp /boot/*.elf /mnt/boot/
$ sudo cp /boot/*.dat /mnt/boot/
sudo su
cd /mnt/boot
zcat vmlinuz > vmlinux
Update the section [pi4] on config.txt file (located on /mnt/boot) as follow:
sudo su
vi /mnt/boot/config.txt
Add the next lines and save the file.
dtoverlay=vc4-fkms-v3d
boot_delay
kernel=vmlinux
initramfs initrd.img followkernel
Now we’ll add a script for auto decompression of the Kernel in boot partition (/mnt/boot/) let’s name it auto_decompress_kernel
$ cd /mnt/boot/
$ sudo vi auto_decompress_kernel
Content of file:
#!/bin/bash -e
# auto_decompress_kernel script
#Set Variables
BTPATH=/boot/firmware
CKPATH=$BTPATH/vmlinuz
DKPATH=$BTPATH/vmlinux
#Check if compression needs to be done.
if [ -e $BTPATH/check.md5 ]; then
if md5sum --status --ignore-missing -c $BTPATH/check.md5; then
echo -e "\e[32mFiles have not changed, Decompression not needed\e[0m"
exit 0
else
echo -e "\e[31mHash failed, kernel will be compressed\e[0m"
fi
fi
#Backup the old decompressed kernel
mv $DKPATH $DKPATH.bak
if [ ! $? == 0 ]; then
echo -e "\e[31mDECOMPRESSED KERNEL BACKUP FAILED!\e[0m"
exit 1
else
echo -e "\e[32mDecompressed kernel backup was successful\e[0m"
fi
#Decompress the new kernel
echo "Decompressing kernel: "$CKPATH".............."
zcat $CKPATH > $DKPATH
if [ ! $? == 0 ]; then
echo -e "\e[31mKERNEL FAILED TO DECOMPRESS!\e[0m"
exit 1
else
echo -e "\e[32mKernel Decompressed Succesfully\e[0m"
fi
#Hash the new kernel for checking
md5sum $CKPATH $DKPATH > $BTPATH/check.md5
if [ ! $? == 0 ]; then
echo -e "\e[31mMD5 GENERATION FAILED!\e[0m"
else
echo -e "\e[32mMD5 generated Succesfully\e[0m"
fi
#Exit
exit 0
Make it executable:
sudo chmod +x auto_decompress_kernel
We’ll add a script 999_decompress_rpi_kernel in /mnt/principal/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/ folder to decompress the rpi kernel
$ cd /mnt/principal/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/
$ vi 999_decompress_rpi_kernel
Content:
DPkg::Post-Invoke {"/bin/bash /boot/firmware/auto_decompress_kernel"; };
Make it executable:
sudo chmod +x /mnt/principal/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/999_decompress_rpi_kernel
Switch off the Raspberry Pi and unplug the microSD card. Then boot from USB 2.
For the first time, I was unable to boot via USB 3 (blue usb port on rpi) So I put the disk to USB 2. Then, it booted.
When my disk was connected to USB 2, the speed results was:
HDParm disk read: 32 MB /sec
HDParm cached disk read: 33 MB/sec
DD Disk write 27 MB/sec
The fix for USB 3 is described in article https://jamesachambers.com/raspberry-pi-4-ubuntu-20-04-usb-mass-storage-boot-guide/comment-page-2 in section Fix (some) USB Adapter Problems Using Quirks
$ sudo lsusb
My adapter is Bus 001 Device 003: ID 152d:1576 JMicron Technology Corp. / JMicron USA Technology Corp.
So my adapter id is 152d:1576
sudo vi /boot/firmware/cmdline.txt
Add the following entry into the very front of cmdline.txt (insert space after this command):
usb-storage.quirks=152d:1576:u
Now shutdown the rpi. Plug the ssd disk to USB 3 port (blue one) and plugin power to start rpi.
You can check your disk read/write performance via:
sudo hdparm -Tt /dev/sda2
Alternatively, you can use this script:
sudo curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TheRemote/PiBenchmarks/master/Storage.sh | sudo bash
My results (USB 3 after the fix):
HDParm disk read: 252 MB /sec
HDParm cached disk read: 195 MB/sec
DD Disk write 90 MB/sec
As we can see, this is not the full speed of SSD, but it is pretty good improvement compared to microSD card. And the biggest advantage is the longer lifespan of storage medium.