STICKY: PINN - An enhanced version of NOOBS.

[procount]

Simply, bsdtar cannot be used on PINN to tar files due to buildroot limitations of using uclibc, although it can untar files.

Likewise, I use gzip instead of xz to compress archives on the Pi due to memory and performance constraints (think PiZero). Xz is used on a PC for ultimate compression, but gz files are adequate.

[jharris1993]

Simply, bsdtar cannot be used on PINN to tar files due to buildroot limitations of using uclibc, although it can untar files.

Likewise, I use gzip instead of xz to compress archives on the Pi due to memory and performance constraints (think PiZero). Xz is used on a PC for ultimate compression, but gz files are adequate.

OK, that makes sense - it's a software limitation.

Therefore, esoteric O/S's, (that require BSD tar), CANNOT be backed up using PINN, right?

As a corollary, can I say that "normal" operating systems, (like Raspbian), or other Debian clones like Ubuntu, could be packaged using plain-vanilla GNU tar, (without going down the "BSD tar rabbit-hole"), because they don't have strange and exceptional permissions?

Can I extend that corollary to say that "standard" Linux distributions like Debian, (and its clones) along with Red Hat, (and it's clones), should be packagable and also able to be backed-up using standard GNU tools?

And "in theory" esoteric O/S's might well be successfully packaged by using GNU tar with the extended attribute and permissions options? Though, knowing a little bit about how PINN works, IMHO "esoteric" operating systems that require exceptional partition formats or structures are a crap-shoot anyway. . . .

I'm not asking for a redesign of PINN, (at least not yet! ), but I'm thinking that it might be possible to eliminate the hard dependency on a different, "non-standard", version of tar. (I hope. This is a line of research that will have to go on the bottom of a long list of research projects I already have scheduled! )

What I ultimately want to do is eliminate as many variables as possible while I am examining why certain operating systems seem to restore "badly", though they worked correctly when originally installed.

[jharris1993]

A corollary question:

Given:
A file structure with numerous sub-directories.
Assume a second copy that should be identical.

Is it possible to somehow compare the two structures to see if they are in fact identical?

And if not, exactly what the differences are? (File differences? Permission differences? Etc.?)

What I want to do is to make an installation of an operating system, then back it up and restore it. I then want to see if the restored copy is identical to the one backed up.

Thanks?

[procount]

Google turned up this -> https://unix.stackexchange.com/question ... attributes

[jharris1993]

Google turned up this -> https://unix.stackexchange.com/question ... attributes

Thanks!

That's one of the fundamental problems with web searches - what you call things can have a drastic effect on how many, or even what, is returned.

This provided valuable information.

[yan]

i have a minor problem, not something special. When i start the Pi with the gamepad connected, the system boot on the screen where you have to choose OSes for install, Without the gamepad i don't have this behavior.

Gamepad: F310 Logitech. I have Raspberry Pi Os and RetroPie 4.7.1 installed .

Thanks.

[procount]

There are 2 possible screens that can come up on boot. One is the recovery main menu where you can install the OSes from a tabbed category list of General, Games, Media etc. The second is the boot menu, where you can only select the OS to boot from a list of installed OSes. Can you just confirm which of these is popping up when you have your gamepad connected? It sounds like the former, but just to check.
Have you ticked the sticky default tick box next to any of your installed OSes?
Are you able to control the PINN user interface with your gamepad?

[yan]

There are 2 possible screens that can come up on boot. One is the recovery main menu where you can install the OSes from a tabbed category list of General, Games, Media etc. The second is the boot menu, where you can only select the OS to boot from a list of installed OSes. Can you just confirm which of these is popping up when you have your gamepad connected? It sounds like the former, but just to check.
Have you ticked the sticky default tick box next to any of your installed OSes?
Are you able to control the PINN user interface with your gamepad?

It's the first screen with the list of General, Games... The OSes i have install are ticked and i can control the user interface with the gamepad but the move of the mouse pointer aren't so responsive .

[procount]

On the boot menu (that only lists the OSes you have installed), there is also a tick box there where only one OS can be ticked as the Sticky default. If one of these is ticked, it will result in the behaviour you mention with no gamepad installed, i.e. without any input (of keyboard, mouse , gamepad or touchscreen) the ticked OS will boot automatically. If you make any appropriate input, then the automatic boot process will be interrupted and the recovery menu will be shown.

I suspect that having your gamepad plugged in is generating some unexpected keypresses, causing the automatic boot process to be interrupted. Since the mouse emulation is not working smoothly, then maybe you need to create a custom mapping for your gamepad, see https://github.com/procount/pinn/blob/m ... oy_keys.md. Or maybe it needs a new driver for it.

[typxxi]

Hi,
I am working with PiNN installations for several years back then when I had send you a USB dongle for integration to the UK. It was the pre Zero W era when WiFi was missing on most raspberry.

Time to say thank you again - for all the improvements you brought over the years especially the browser that works now so much better than back then cause I had to use it yesterday cause I had to read something up and PiNN was there on a TV screen, so much easier to read then on a smartphone.

And "Time" is the right key word cause I have a tiny point that needs some improvement or freedom cause you can set the time inside PiNN and that might seem to work for all - but it only seems.

For the half of the world eastwards UK or GMT it does not work cause in case these eastward PiNNERs are already on the new day they can not adjust the time to their local time, cause it seemed to be limited to max. UK time.

In germany we are usually 1 hour ahead so at 0:30 am I had to adjust the time to 0:30 am but I was not allowed to, I could not get further than the day before 23:30 pm which made me think that it must be a safety feature to prevent users from setting the time to far - into the future or MARS AGE ...

Might be tough to understand and looks like it could not be but it was reality and I used the latest PiNN cause I had updated at that point a few minutes earlier.
I can not tell you if that is a new bug or feature introduced by that release cause I had not paid attention since the first time bug I found had been fixed around 2017 or so.
It might be also worth to think about of getting the time date from the web that would fix it for most people too cause once connected (which you need to get the full choice of PiNN) it should be easy to get the "right" time. But I am no time zone expert, just have a lot of experience from the early days fighting the calendar and scheduling things in a multinational company around the globe.

Funny side note off topic: I had also updated the raspbian on that particular pi after 6 months or so. And since then the WiFi to the router is broken, I mean the raspbian software has broken the link cause I can not get it to work again. It always tries to connect and then stopps.
Nothing funny I guess cause I had announced a funny side not, but the funny point is that PiNN showed me that the Zero W hardware and my router are working the right way and nothing was broken or changed since about november 2020 cause PiNN got his full update from the web over that same WiFi. And now I am stuck in the Zero limits cause my Keyboard uses USB dongle and I do not have a micro USB hub anymore since I went to USB Type Mini Hub .... the only way around to get the connection under raspbian is a USB WiFi dongle that hopefully might work but again I will loose the keyboard. So I had to switch the raspbian install to another hotsport to get remote access via Smartphone. Worked like a charme till I switched from the Hotspot connection (using the internal WLAN modul) to the Dongle Wifi cause when I switched a message appeared and asked for an OK for the password which was in there but I could not longer touch it cause WiFi connection was at that point already gone. Funny to find a PiNN proof that Zero was not broken but Raspbian somehow over improved.

Thanks for listening

[procount]

@typxxi - welcome back!

Q. Why do NOOBS/PINN need time?
A. The only reason NOOBS needed the time was for secure HTTPS connections as the protocol relies on knowing a vaguely accurate notion of the current time. To save the complexity of NTP configuration, NOOBS obtains the current UTC time from the servers that it connects to. For this it needs a network connection. If you have no network connection, then it does not know the time, and does not care anyway.

Q. What about PINN?
A. Same reason for PINN. However, PINN now has the added feature of being able to backup an OS. For this, I thought it would be good to provide default backup names based on the current date/time, although these can be edited as you see fit.

Q. Why did I add the time dialog?
A. If you have a network connection, you have the current UTC time. But if you are working offline, then the time is set to the default of 1 Jan 1970, which is not very useful, hence the addition of the dialog to allow the current date/time to be set manually. But this is only a convenience function. You can name your backups whatever you like. If you try to backup an OS with a current date of 1970, you will be prompted to set the current date & time.

Q. Why only UTC time?
A. Because timezones are complex to setup. Then you have to deal with daylight savings time. This is far too much effort to include in PINN for a default backup name that is only there for convenience, anyway. There was a similar request to allow local times, but this is not going to happen. I have added some text to clarify that time is displayed as UTC

Q. Why can't I set the time to whatever I like?
A. You can. At least you should be able to. I don't see any problem to set any valid date/time you like. Just tab between the fields and use the cursor keys to update the field accordingly. Or use the mouse. If you are setting the time for offline use, I suggest to use UTC time so that all your backups are consistently timestamped, otherwise you may get confused if you don't remember to set the time to local time every time you backup.

Sorry, I have no idea why your Raspbian wifi has broken. Maybe posting in a separate thread will yield some more specific help from more knowledgable users.

[typxxi]

@typxxi - welcome back!

Q. Why can't I set the time to whatever I like?
A. You can. At least you should be able to. I don't see any problem to set any valid date/time you like. Just tab between the fields and use the cursor keys to update the field accordingly. Or use the mouse. If you are setting the time for offline use, I suggest to use UTC time so that all your backups are consistently timestamped, otherwise you may get confused if you don't remember to set the time to local time every time you backup.

Sorry, but I could not go further than "today" and I was able to change the time cause I had pushed the time with the mouse but could not get any further than that date.
I had updated PiNN before so I had the latest version.

Regarding WiFi I have already posted ... it ran till the raspbian update and it is zero W and it even works with Huawei and other smartphones but not with my router anymore while all other devices still work with that router. I doubt it is just a coincidence cause the Hardware is working properly only raspbian is refusing ... except they had started changing policies as I assume cause

[jochene]

Hello,

Lineage17-ATV was displayed on my PI 4 with SSD (without SD card) and works very well. The Lineage18-ATV is unfortunately not offered to me for installation. Is there a reason for that?

Thanks

Jochen

[disorder]

Hi,

PINN can install local images that are found in the /os folder on the SD card. These can include any of the original NOOBS images or any other OS that is formatted with a .tar.xz file for each partition.

It may sounds dump but I have a little question.

Creating .tar.xz from .iso and putting them /os can be work? I have some OSes only .iso or .zip and need them for my multiboot.

[procount]

If you want to put any OS in /os of the SD card, you must make sure there is enough room on there first. That depends on how you install PINN in the first place (unzipping the zip file, or dd'ing an image etc.)
Alternatively, you can put OSes in the /os folder of a FAT32 formatted USB drive instead.

Converting an OS for use in NOOBS/PINN is not as easy as just reformatting a single image file.
A PINN OS installation consists of a separate file for each partition (.tar.xz or .img.xz) and a whole bunch of metafiles to describe that OS to PINN so it knows how it can be installed in its multi-boot environment. You can find more information at https://github.com/procount/pinn/blob/m ... os-version and there is a tutorial in my wiki at https://github.com/procount/pinn/wiki/H ... using-PINN which leads you through an example.
Many OSes follow a similar pattern, but there are the odd ones that are different and use only 1 partition, or 4 partitions, or strange files systems, or can't use PARTUUIDs for references etc. If you want to convert your own, it would help you to read all of the README_PINN.md file and the wiki to understand how it all works first.

[zephus]

Hi Procount. I have two images os preconfigured ( batocera with retrogames and another one , lineage with flipper). I d like to make dual boot on the sd card of a bartop. I tried to install new batocera and new lineage from pinn lite and copy files into them. It s ok for batocera but for lineage, I don t know where are flipper 's files . How can I take them? I burnt lineage image with flipper on a sd card and put it into pc but I see nothing . Can you help me please. Thanks.

[procount]

I burnt lineage image with flipper on a sd card and put it into pc but I see nothing . Can you help me please.

I fear you might be a bit stuck here.

1. Discussion of retro games (ROMS etc) on this forum is frowned upon for copyright reasons, so I doubt you will be able to share a link to this image for anyone to convert it for you.
2. You will not be able to do much on a Windows PC with your SD card as it will be formatted in a way that Windows does not understand. You will need to process it on a Linux PC (even a Raspberry Pi using Raspbian would be ok with a USB SD card adaptor). This suggests to me you are not that experienced with Linux and different filesystems, so you may struggle with the instructions to convert the image yourself.
3. There are instructions on my wiki on how to do it, but Lineage it a bit odd. It has been done already, so you could re-use a lot of that, but you would still need to create an image of two of the partitions and tar files of the other two.

[procount]

PINN has been updated to v3.6

V3.6

• Firmware - Updated firmware and wifi to match NOOBS 3.6
• Language - Updated Italian translation
• pinn_init - Fixed pinn_init.sh for USB boots
• Provision - Added option for manual SSD provisioning
• runinstaller - Maintain network settings during runinstaller
• self-check - Manual check for PINN upgrade removes ignore flag. #497

The main change in this version is the fix to allow pinn_init.sh to work when PINN is booted from USB.
In addition, pinn_init.sh is passed the boot drive as its first parameter (e.g. /dev/sda1) to allow better customisations.

The runinstaller option will now maintain any wifi configuration across the re-partitioning so that if this is performed over a network (e.g. VNC) the connection is not lost.

Support for SSD provisioning is now provided so that it is possible to reserve some space at the end of the drive that can be used by the SSD firmware. It is debatable whether this is necessary but it's there for those who need it.

Manual checking for a new version of PINN will now also clear any ignore flag so that notifications for new releases are turned back on.

[gn77b]

Hi procount, I received and installed the latest PINN update today and it overwrites cec_keys.json. Is this intended behavior?

[procount]

Ah, sorry about that. I'm not surprised, but it's probably not what you want. I'll have to look into changing that.

[gn77b]

OK, thanks a lot.

[polykiss]

I have been running PINN Lite on my Raspberry Pi 4 for a while now without any issue, booting Kodi / LibreElec and Rasbian / RetroPie - the other day while booting up the system I received a message about a new version being available. My keyboard battery was dead so I did not press anything and it continued to boot into Kodi.

Ever since I get the message "Invalid Format" while booting up and see nothing for PINN. Kodi boots fine afterwards.

Any idea whats going on and how to fix it? Driving me a little crazy since I cant boot into RetroPie any longer.

[procount]

No idea.
You might be better to post an issue on github here -> https://github.com/procount/pinn/issues

Ever since I get the message "Invalid Format" while booting up and see nothing for PINN.

Where about does this message pop up? Is it the first thing you see?. Is it on a text screen?
So you don't see the "black with coloured wavy lines" wallpaper from PINN at all? So there's no opportunity to press shift to get into PINN?

You could try putting your SD card into a PC and looking at PINN's RECOVERY partition (DO NOT accept any suggestions to reformat the drive from Windows, because it doesn't understand Linux partitions). Are all the anticipated files there? Is there an autoboot.txt file present? What is the content of recovery.cmdline and config.txt?

[polykiss]

PINN is definitely booting, and it is launching KODI which is working fine.

I see no trace of the PINN interface, my TV is what says "Invalid Format" which means that it is getting some kind of a signal over HDMI but not a valid one. If I hold down shift on my keyboard it does not boot into KODI which indicates to me that it is working fine, its just sending a video signal my TV recognizes.

I am on Mac running extFS for mac so I can read/write the volumes.

RECOVERY partition looks fine to me.

There is no autoboot.txt present.

recovery.cmdline looks like this:

Code: Select all

quiet ramdisk_size=32768 root=/dev/ram0 init=/init vt.cur_default=1 elevator=deadline repo_list=http://raw.githubusercontent.com/procount/pinn-os/master/os/repo_list.json loglevel=2 sdhci.debug_quirks2=4

there is also a recovery.cmdline.new which looks like this:

Code: Select all

quiet ramdisk_size=32768 root=/dev/ram0 init=/init vt.cur_default=1 elevator=deadline repo_list=http://raw.githubusercontent.com/procount/pinn-os/master/os/repo_list.json loglevel=2 sdhci.debug_quirks2=4

so the same.

config.txt appears like this:

Code: Select all

gpu_mem=16
start_file=recovery.elf
fixup_file=fixup_rc.dat

[pi4]
start_file=recover4.elf
fixup_file=fixup4rc.dat
max_framebuffers=2

If it is of any help: my TV is fairly recent LG B9PUA (4K OLED) so it should be able to handle quite a few video modes.

Thanks again for your help. My assumption is that the hdmi output mode in PINN somehow got changed?

[procount]

Did PINN upgrade (when you didn't/couldn't press any button on your keyboard because the battery was dead)?
If it did, it will have overwritten config.txt. Did you have anything in there previously to configure the display for your monitor? (This bug is about to be fixed).
If you hold the shift key to enter PINN at startup, wait a few seconds until PINN has stopped booting and try pressing the number keys '1' and '2'. This changes the HDMI resolution. When you do this it will pop up a dialog asking if you want to make this permanent, so wait a couple of seconds for it to appear and then press 'n' to answer No to the question.