STICKY: PINN - An enhanced version of NOOBS.

[procount]

done.

[Haris1977]

Thanks procount. Here is an other one:

As you say in README file in the self-update section:

"It is possible to disable self-update checks by adding the no_update option to recovery.cmdline. You will have to delete this option to enable self-updates again."

This one means that you have to ssh or remove sd-card, put it in pc and remove the no_update option from the recovery.cmdline. So in order to make it easier for us, i wonder if you could add a "tick option" in os boot selector in order to enable/disable this again..

PS: It could be smth like this: By ticking ENABLE SELF UPDATE in os boot selector, recovery.cmdline would be as normal. By un-ticking ENABLE SELF UPDATE recovery.cmdline would auto add the no_update option.

[procount]

It is always possible to do a manual update by opting to reinstall PINN when it is the only item selected.
Also, if you have a screen and keyboard, it is possible to remove the no_update option by entering the recovery shell (ctrl-alt-f2) witt root/raspberry, but then it is necessary to :

Code: Select all

mount -o remount,rw /mnt
cd /mnt
vi recovery.cmdline
#remove the no_update option
sync
#reboot

Agreed, it is not easy, but a fix similar to your suggestion is already in my roadmap

EDIT: It is also possible to select PINN on the Maintenance menu and click on Edit Config to allow editing of PINN's recovery.cmdline within PINN itself, without having to drop into the recovery shell.

[Haris1977]

For the time being i ll leave it as it is. But i will have that in mind if needed Thanks!

PS Glad to hear that this is on your to-do list!

[steve51184]

is there any way after an OS(s) has been installed to add another or remove one? like in berryboot?

[procount]

Berryboot works quite differently to NOOBS/PINN as all OSes share one kernel and it uses a type of overlay file system for each OS such that any changes (new files etc) that are made are stored separately to the original OS file system, which makes rollback quite easy and does not require separate partitions for each OS, since any changed data is stored in files.

NOOBS and PINN store each OS on the SD card in a similar way to how they are installed normally, so typically each OS will have a FAT32 boot partition and an EXT4 rootfs partition (but there are exceptions). On initial OS installation PINN allocates ALL of the SD card space to these partitions, expanding the EXT4 partitions equally to fill the space. So after initial installation, there is no more space left to add more partitions for other OSes. To add other partitions, it is necessary to squash and resize the existing partitions. This is a nontrivial task that is best done with specialised tools like gparted. So it is not easy to ADD OSes to an existing installation because it means changing the partition layout/structure.

HOWEVER, recent versions of PINN have included 2 new features to make adding OSes a bit easier: 1) ProjectSpaces and 2) Replacement of OSes.
A ProjectSpace is like an empty OS consisting of 2 partitions (FAT32 and EXT4) but with no content. These can be installed at the beginning to reserve space for a future OS, but of course you need to anticipate this need to add a future OS. The second feature allows the partitions used by an existing OS to be used to install another OS into. This may be the same OS, or a different OS, providing the partition structures are compatible. So this means a new OS can be later installed into an existing ProjectSpace. It is possible to install many ProjectSpaces and OSes onto an SD card or external HDD (up to a limit of 63 partitions), but the more OSes are installed, the smaller its partition sizes will be, since the size of the SD card is limited.

There is an excellent webapp at http://pinn.mjh.nz which allows you to specify the size taken up by each OS, rather than letting PINN distribute the SD card space equally between the OSes. This could be used to reserve space to add extra partitions to later, but PINN does not support adding partitions after initial installation. It is also possible to gain space by copying an existing PINN installation to a larger SD card (using the built-in SD card Clone function). So for these specific use cases, I may do something in the future with PINN to help.

These new features are an improvement over NOOBS, as they allow you to reinstall an existing OS to "factory defaults", replace it with another OS, install multiple copies of the same OS and use ProjectSpaces to add OSes at a later date, all without destroying the other OS partitions, as NOOBS can only install all OSes in one go at initial installation.

Likewise, removing an OS is not really an option, if you mean to reclaim its partition space and distribute it to the other OSes. You can however, replace it with a ProjectSpace to reserve it for a later time, or replace it directly with another OS, provided the partition structures are compatible.

[BarryHavenga]

Hi. The latest Pinn installs quite an old version of Konstakang Lineage 7.1. How do I get it to update to the latest version? Regards

I had a look at Lineage15.1 (Android 8.1) and installed it.
Apart from it being structured differently to the previous v14.1 (Android 7.1.2) It's also quite slow:

This build currently uses Google’s SwiftShader software renderer so display performance is probably not what you’d expect. This build is not meant as a daily driver and it’s certainly not suitable for media device use.

So I'm not proposing to add it to PINN at present as it doesn't seem to provide much of a benefit.

Hi. I checked again last night and did a Lineage update. The 7.1.2 that loads is still quye old and the lastest 7.1.2 ROM available is: lineage-14.1-20180615-UNOFFICIAL-KonstaKANG-rpi3.zip. Is there any change of updating PINN to this version. The older defects has a number of defects including quite frustratingly the failure to present shutdown options when pressing F5.

[procount]

Hi. I checked again last night and did a Lineage update. The 7.1.2 that loads is still quite old and the latest 7.1.2 ROM available is: lineage-14.1-20180615-UNOFFICIAL-KonstaKANG-rpi3.zip. Is there any change of updating PINN to this version. The older defects has a number of defects including quite frustratingly the failure to present shutdown options when pressing F5.

Looking into it, but not quite working yet...

[procount]

PINN has been updated to v2.8.5.2

V2.8.5.2

• VNCnotice - Displays a notice on the main screen when vncinstall is in use
• PINN update - Prevents crash on manual update when there is no network
• ae-ts - tidy up of translations

Some minor improvements.

[procount]

Updated some OSes:

• PiTop OS 2018-07-09
• Lede (OpenWrt) 18.06.0

[procount]

PINN has been updated to v2.8.5.3

V2.8.5.3

• Partuuid - Fixed an issue from v2.8 where partuuids were introduced to installed_os.json
• Wallpaper - Customised wallpaper is now available by writing your own `wallpaper.png` file to PINN's recovery partition

A couple of people asked to be able to create their own wallpaper for NOOBS or PINN but I can't remember the reference. But anyway, it's now possible by just dropping your own wallper.png file on PINN's recovery partition.

[DarkPlatinum]

Im trying to move my raspbian image to PINN. I know i need the image file as .tar.xz in the OS bin. how do i get gzip to make tar.xz compression ?

[procount]

You don't!
Use 'gzip' to create .gz files, but use 'xz' to create .xz files.

But IIRC, you can use .tar.gz files instead of .tar.xz files.
The xz compression was chosen because it creates smaller files, which helps with storage on the SD card and internet downloads.
But if you are doing it locally and installing by USB, for example, neither of those arguments matter, so you can just use .tar.gz files instead.

[DarkPlatinum]

Interesting. Im new to compressing, may i ask how to compress a dd image format .tar.xz/gz? i see this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/188 ... ne-command using a RPi to do all this btw.:

Code: Select all

sudo dd if=/dev/sdb conv=sync,noerror bs=64K

[procount]

Interesting. Im new to compressing, may i ask how to compress a dd image format .tar.xz? i see this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/188 ... ne-command using a RPi to do all this btw.:

Code: Select all

sudo dd if=/dev/sdb conv=sync,noerror bs=64K

It's not so easy, because you're mixing up 2 different formats.
(In any case, the above command is missing an output filename parameter e.g. `/of=filename.img`)

An .img file produced by dd is a bit by bit copy of the drive (/dev/sdb in this case), which will be as large as the whole disk. This is a bit wasteful if there are only a few files on it, even if you do compress it with gzip or xz.

A .tar file is a `tape archive` file - basically all the files concatenated into 1 big file (with additional metadata for the folder structure etc). It's only as big as the amount of data on the drive, not the size of the whole drive (It's more like a zip file).

So to convert from a .img file to a .tar.xz file, you would need to mount the .img file on a mountpoint in your folder structure, then tar the files in it, and finally compress the .tar file to become a .tar.xz or .tar.gz file. This is a bit complicated.

Have you seen this in the README:
https://github.com/procount/pinn/blob/m ... os-version
Especially look at step 9 on how to tar and compress the files of a partition directly for NOOBS/PINN.

So i can just use a tar.gz format?

Yes. Just replace xz with gzip.
You can use tar if you don't have bsdtar installed, check the parameters in case any are different.

Generally it's better to use .tar.xz/.tar.gz files with PINN instead of .img.gz or .img.xz files. This is because PINN will create the partition and format it to the correct size before the files are installed. That way they will fill any size of partition that is big enough. An image file contains the partition size and formatting, so it is not so adaptable. If it is bigger than the partition, it will not fit. If it is smaller, you need to expand the file system after installation to make full use of the partition size.

[DarkPlatinum]

I will create a disk img file with dd, then compress it with xarchiver. Thanks Procount

[procount]

Ok, but that's not what I proposed, so good luck with that if you want to install it with PINN. You'll have to rewrite your partitions.json file and possibly partition_setup.sh to match.

[procount]

I found your original post (https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/view ... 1&t=221817) and see you are trying to transfer three existing OSes onto a USB drive with PINN to control the multiboot aspect.

You will find it a lot easier to follow the instructions on my wiki: https://github.com/procount/pinn/wiki/H ... using-PINN as it includes step-by-step instructions. It assumes a Linux based PC, but you can use a RaspberryPi with Raspbian installed on it instead.

[DarkPlatinum]

Ok, but that's not what I proposed, so good luck with that if you want to install it with PINN. You'll have to rewrite your partitions.json file and possibly partition_setup.sh to match.

Thank you for the link you have provided. i will backup Raspbian and possibly RetroPie.

I will start doing the backup shortly (link you have given).

[DarkPlatinum]

When I get to the part to compress using xz, this stops my raspberry ok because the xz compression takes over 500mb Ram. What do you suggest I do?

[procount]

As you are doing this locally, you don't need the maximum compression facilities that xz provides. So firstly, you can remove the -9 option as that uses more RAM.
If you still have problems you can replace xz with gzip e.g.

Code: Select all

gzip boot.tar

[Haris1977]

PINN has been updated to v2.8.5.3

V2.8.5.3

• Wallpaper - Customised wallpaper is now available by writing your own `wallpaper.png` file to PINN's recovery partition

Procount where this new wallpaper option is being applied? To os boot selection dialog?

[procount]

It's the initial wallpaper that includes the raspberry logo and the "Press Shift..." text.
I think it is always there in the background, just covered up by the various windows.
All I have done is made it customisable, I haven't changed its functionality.

[Haris1977]

It's the initial wallpaper that includes the raspberry logo and the "Press Shift..." text.
I think it is always there in the background, just covered up by the various windows.
All I have done is made it customisable, I haven't changed its functionality.

Oh, i thought it was a custom wallpaper for the os booting dialog.

[procount]

You mean within the dialog box itself? Were you expecting it to show up behind all the text describing each OS?
If you choose a big enough wallpaper, it should show up around the OS boot dialog