STICKY: PINN - An enhanced version of NOOBS.

[procount]

For Pi4 compatibility I recommend using "Pi 4 Model B Rev" in supported_models of is.json ,/ os_list.json, just in case other variants are produced that are not compatible.

If it is compatible with ALL Pi3 models, you can just add "Pi 3", but if it is only for the 3b, use "Pi 3 Model B Rev".

You could remove "supported_hex_revisions" as it is no longer used and is only for backwards compatibility with really old NOOBS programs or OSes which won't run on the latest hardware anyway.

[MisterFloppy]

H,

I'm trying to use the composite output (PAL) of a RPi3B connected to an old CRT TV with the newest version of "Pinn lite". While it is no problem at all to get the composite output working with the OSs I installed ("Lakka", "LibreELEC"), doing the same with "Pinn lite" itself seems to be impossible!!
When I connect it via HDMI, I can see that "Pinn lite" is working absolutely normal, but I can't activate the composite output.

Things I've tried so far regarding setting a "display" for composite output (PAL):
- pressing 1,2,3 or 4 to change the output
- editing "recovery.commandline"
- editing "noobs.conf" (I made the partition containing this file visible by inserting the SD card in a reader on a linux system)
- creating a "config.txt" and adding "sdtv_mode=2"

Then I tried it with "NOOBS lite", and all the measures I mentioned above do work here!

I'm totally clueless: Is it possibe that the newest version of "Pinn lite" is lacking some kind of "driver" for composite output? I can't really imagine that, cause it's a standard CRT TV...

I'm thankful for any hints!

[procount]

See https://github.com/procount/pinn/issues/310 for details.
I will address this issue soon.

[MisterFloppy]

You can run PINN from the SD card and install the OS to the USB Hard drive. In this case, the boot partition will be on the SD card and the root partition will be on the USB hard drive. This works with all RPi models.
If the HDD is bootable (on a 3B or 3B+), then you can boot PINN from the HDD and install the OS to the HDD. In this case both boot and root partitions will be on the USB HDD and the SD card is not required. Not all USB HDDs are bootable.
Not all OSes will work in both of these modes, which is why the list of OSes sometimes changes when you change the target drive - OSes that do not work in that mode will be hidden.

Unfortunately, at the moment "Lakka" is hidden on the list of OSes when "Pinn Lite" "sees" no SD card in the RaspberryPie, so it can't be downloaded and installed via "Pinn lite"...

However, "Lakka" is one of the OSes that can be booted from an USB drive on a RaspberryPie 3B/3B+/4, so it should be possible to install "Pinn lite" and "Lakka" on it and should not need a SD card, but it requires a small modification of the cmdline.txt:

You just have to change its content into something like "boot=LABEL=LAKKA disk=LABEL=LAKKA_DISK quiet vt.global_cursor_default=0 loglevel=2"
Source: https://github.com/libretro/Lakka-LibreELEC/issues/611

(Of course there are other options than this, e. g. using "UUID" instead of "LABEL")

I've just tested this method on my "USB boot enabled" RP3B with no difficulties by writing an image file directly to my USB thumbdrive I downloaded from https://www.lakka.tv/get/ : it is booting and running perfectly from USB without having a SD card in the device!

Could you please remove "Lakka" from the "blacklist" in this situation so that it can be downloaded and installed via "Pinn lite?", too? Thank you in advance!

[XueHai8]

I can't get PINN to connect to my Wifi network.
Latest version of Raspbian Buster connects fine.
PINN doesn't see my 5Ghz network, only the 2Ghz one.
I select my Network name, enter its password, verify with 'Show Password', and click on connect.
The connecting progress bar just bounces back and forth forever.
Any idea?
Thanks!

[procount]

Could you please remove "Lakka" from the "blacklist" in this situation so that it can be downloaded and installed via "Pinn lite?", too? Thank you in advance!

Thanks for the notification. I will verify this and adjust as necessary. (May take a week before I can do this unfortunately).

[procount]

I can't get PINN to connect to my Wifi network.

Which model of RPi are you using?
Are you using the internal wifi or an additional wifi dongle? (If using dongle, which one?)

[Ulathar]

Hi there,

I am new to the Raspberry world as the new Pi 4 is my first one. Doing some research on how the things work i stumbled across PINN and thought it would fit my needs perfectly looking at my planned usecase for the Pi: LibreELEC + Raspian + RetroPie.

That said I found a how-to-tutorial on how to set up LibreELEC to be able to switch between all 3 systems (see here: https://www.matthuisman.nz/2017/03/retr ... -boot.html).

So far so good: I managed to get LibreELEC and Raspian but failed to install additional OSes like RetroPie. For some reasons they don't show up during PINN setup / installation.

Why is that? Looking at the screenshots in the linked guide there are many many OS to choose from but my PINN only lists like ~5 OS and no "Gaming Tab" at all.
Using PINN Lite 3.3c while my Pi is connected via WIFI. The download and installation of LibreELEC and Raspian work fine, though.

What am I doing wrong?

[fruitoftheloom]

Hi there,

I am new to the Raspberry world as the new Pi 4 is my first one. Doing some research on how the things work i stumbled across PINN and thought it would fit my needs perfectly looking at my planned usecase for the Pi: LibreELEC + Raspian + RetroPie.

That said I found a how-to-tutorial on how to set up LibreELEC to be able to switch between all 3 systems (see here: https://www.matthuisman.nz/2017/03/retr ... -boot.html).

So far so good: I managed to get LibreELEC and Raspian but failed to install additional OSes like RetroPie. For some reasons they don't show up during PINN setup / installation.

Why is that? Looking at the screenshots in the linked guide there are many many OS to choose from but my PINN only lists like ~5 OS and no "Gaming Tab" at all.
Using PINN Lite 3.3c while my Pi is connected via WIFI. The download and installation of LibreELEC and Raspian work fine, though.

What am I doing wrong?

You will only be offered Operating Systems that are suitable for the Raspberry Pi 4B.

Considering it is only 2 months since the release it will take time for developers to update their Operating System to be compatible...

[sakaki]

Hello,

I'm pleased to announce that the v1.5.0 release of gentoo-on-rpi-64bit - a full 64-bit (kernel + userland) OS for the RPi4B (and RPi3B/B+) - is now also available for download via PINN (called gentoo64 there):



You can read more about this release here. Screenshot of the installed image (click for a higher resolution view):



Other 64-bit OSes for the Pi4 (Arch, Ubuntu etc.) will no doubt also be available via PINN in the very near future.

Thanks to procount for his assistance getting this live!

Best, sakaki

PS: there are two 64-bit Gentoo images shown above; the second, gentoo64pt, is for use with a Pi-Top v1 chassis only (a DIY laptop system).

[Ulathar]

You will only be offered Operating Systems that are suitable for the Raspberry Pi 4B.

Considering it is only 2 months since the release it will take time for developers to update their Operating System to be compatible...

Ah ok so I did nothing wrong... Good to know, thanks for the hint! I think I will start with just LibreELEC + Raspian and will redeo the setup in a few months when RetroPie is available, too.

Is it possible to prepare the SDCard with PINN now in order to be able to "add" RetroPie later on? Or will i have to redo everything in a few weeks / months?

[fruitoftheloom]

You will only be offered Operating Systems that are suitable for the Raspberry Pi 4B.

Considering it is only 2 months since the release it will take time for developers to update their Operating System to be compatible...

Ah ok so I did nothing wrong... Good to know, thanks for the hint! I think I will start with just LibreELEC + Raspian and will redeo the setup in a few months when RetroPie is available, too.

Is it possible to prepare the SDCard with PINN now in order to be able to "add" RetroPie later on? Or will i have to redo everything in a few weeks / months?

So you never bothered to read the ReadMe ,?

https://github.com/procount/pinn/blob/m ... ME_PINN.md

[Ulathar]

So you never bothered to read the ReadMe ,?

https://github.com/procount/pinn/blob/m ... ME_PINN.md

Not sure what you are referring to, but if you mean the "Project Spaces": yes i read about them but i did not understand how a 100 mb Fat32 partition would be sufficent to add another OS later on (Raspbian with Desktop for example is ~5 GB in size). Even if I add those 500 MB ext4 it wouldn't be enough.
Thats why I asked.

[procount]

A projectSpace creates 2 empty partitions: a 100MB FAT32 boot partition and an ext4 rootfs partition, the size of which depends on how many OSes you install and the size of your SD card as all free space is shared equally between the OSes. So it is suitable for reserving space for many standard 2 partition Linux OSes. But these are not suitable for winIoT or lakka or Android etc.

I can't remember if Retropie is suitable to be installed in a projectSpace or not. IIRC it is based on raspbian so it might be ok.

But in any case you could install an old version of Retropie in place of a projectSpace (use the showall option to make it visible). Then when a suitable version for the Pi4 becomes available, simply reinstall the new version over the top.

[Ulathar]

Will give it a try, thanks a lot!

[thatchunkylad198966]

Thanks a million for this!
It was the only way I could get / on my USB3 device and /boot on my SDCARD.

Love it.

[MisterFloppy]

At the moment, regarding "LibreELEC" the "stable" version is 9.0.2 - but there are two alpha versions in the wild, "9.1.001" and "9.1.002", too. "PINN lite" considers "9.1.002" to be the "most recent" version. Unfortunately, this alpha version has problems with the composite output, it is causing a bootloop when HDMI is not connected. I already reported this problem at https://forum.libreelec.tv/thread/20153 ... -002-when/ and the devs are currently looking for a solution.

According to the manual, "when OSes exist on multiple sources, PINN selects the most recent one (or the local one if they are equal)" and "If the same OS is available on the SD card, the USB stick, and the network, only the most recent version will be displayed."

Since v."9.1.001" is working fine, I tried to install it via "PINN lite" - but it seems to be impossible, as "PINN lite" denies it because of the "higher" available version number "9.1.002". The only "work-around" was to let "PINN lite" install "9.1.002" (with HDMI connected to prevent the bug mentioned above) and then downgrade it by manually copying "9.1.001" into KODI's ".update" folder and rebooting.

This example shows that is better to stick with the "stable" version of an OS, and thus I would suggest to implement an option into "PINN lite" that allows to "hide" unofficial versions on the list which are offered...

[procount]

PINN pulls in LibreELEC from NOOBS, so it always references the latest version. If you want to install an older version you can download it to usb and install from there. But to avoid the network version over riding the older local version, there is an option to disable network OSes that you should use.

[Sentinel]

logo.png (84.82 KiB) Viewed 8517 times

My fake bios wallpaper which I created couple months ago for PINN boot screen
Download: https://www.pling.com/p/1322577/ (via download button)
Very nostalgic and works beautiful with disabled rainbow splash ("disable_splash=1") - Pi is booting like old PC.
As I remember installation is by simply replacing wallpaper.jpg file on the PINN boot partition.

Cheers!
.

[g55]

Hi there,
1st, thx. a lot @procount for continiously updating PINN

now, I got the RPI4 recently, and as on my RPI3 I'm already using PINN sucessfully since about a year, I just checked PINN on the PI4 ...

• installed v3.3c on SD
• installed RasbianLite on SD
• converted to root on SSD incl. LVM and initramfs
• all fine so far similar to RPI3, where I'm still running v3.2.4b with same configuration

Just cloned the root to another LV, manually changes "installed_os.json" accordingly as i did many times on RPI3.
and it's working so far

Now, as I have on PI4 3 OS installed, I tried to reboot to another image, f.e. running image from boot partition 8 and want the Image defined in boot partition 7 ... so I entered "reboot 7" ... actually this does not work as on PI4, I'm still getting :

• shutdown on console as usual
• but then the PINN screen and the selection of the image to boot
• preselected is the image, which is definied in noobs.conf

on RPI3 I don't see any PINN screen at reboot ans system is just rebooting from new boot partition .

Anyone with same experience ? if further infos are needed, just let me know.
10x in advance.

[procount]

This is due to the new sd card interface.
See https://github.com/raspberrypi/noobs/issues/551 for full details and a workaround.

[sakaki]

The v1.5.1 bugfix release of gentoo-on-rpi-64bit - a full 64-bit (kernel + userland) OS for the RPi4B (and RPi3B/B+) - is now also available for download via PINN (called gentoo64 there).

Also, as of this v1.5.1, the Pi-Top v1 specific image (gentoo64pt) has unfortunately had to be withdrawn (as, due to a hardware failure of my own Pi-Top chassis' hub, I can no longer test it).

On a happier note, a new, 'lite' Gentoo image (gentoo64lite), which boots to a CLI, has been added (find it under the 'Minimal' tab in PINN).

You can read more about the v1.5.1 release here.

pinnify

Given a compressed, full-disk image of an OS (such as one might use with Etcher), the creation of appropriate per-filesystem tarballs, and matching JSON metadata, sufficient to allow PINN to install it, is a slightly tricky process.

For a while now, I've been using a simple, templated script called pinnify to automate this. The basic workflow for using it is as follows:

• create a baseline template for your OS (once only, if it does not already exist);
• edit that template (ditto); then
• have pinnify automatically create a release from the template and a compressed release OS image.

Subsequent releases of the same OS generally only require you repeat the last step, significantly saving time (and reducing the potential for deployment errors).

pinnify allows you to use Bash variables and arithmetic in your JSON metadata templates, and creates (and checksums) the PINN-compatible partition tarballs for you automatically.

Although likely to be of interest only to a vanishingly small percentage of the population ^-^ (those who would like to host their own PINN images, mostly), I have just released the pinnify script on GitHub, here.

Its project page contains a full worked example of creating and using an OS template, with embedded metadata variables etc.

Still very early days for this, and a bit rough round the edges, so feedback most welcome.

Best,

sakaki

[g55]

This is due to the new sd card interface.
See https://github.com/raspberrypi/noobs/issues/551 for full details and a workaround.

many 10x for the hint here, although I probably have to read that more than once to understand ... currently after the first "fly over" I only understand "Bahnhof" ... will take some time for me

[procount]

@g55
TL;DR

"You need to boot with sdhci.debug_quirks2=4 in cmdline.txt of each OS for it to work, but it will sacrifice SD speed (I don't know how much)."

[procount]

@Sakaki - Many thanks for pinnify. It looks very promising and I hope to incorporate it into some of my own scripts.

Some minor points:
1) The readme is a bit ambiguous concerning "..normal practice or a bootfs" which refers to being a fixed size, but someone could infer it applied to the "maximize it to take up all remaining free space".
2) Perhaps more detail could be added about the "supports_backup" keyword that is added in your worked example and the use of the $RESTORE variable, so that it is more comprehensive?
3) The gentoo64 template for partitions.json has fixed "boot_gen" and "root_gen" file names, whereas it would be better if they were parameterized to match the partition label name parameters (if supplied). (Or are these file_names inserted to match the partition names when the template is created?)