Boot from USB use internal memory for storage CoreElec 19.3

[mm_half3]

Hello,

I’ve been running 9.28 legacy on a beeqel Y8max (s905x3) with coreElec installed on an external USB and the device internal memory used for the storage partition following the instructions in this discoure post .

I wrote the downloaded CE19.3 image to another USB stick and rebooted the beeqel device with this USB stick attached, and CE booted into a fresh installation. Everything seemed to go well with a quick configuration of the new install to get it on the network. However, when I logged into the CE19.3 OS using ssh, and ran the blkid command to see which devices needed to be modified to get the CE19.3 instance to also boot from the USB and use internal memory for storage, the command didn’t seem to list the internal storage device (/dev/data):

CoreELEC:~ # blkid
/dev/sda2: LABEL=“STORAGE” UUID=“07c22a62-1432-4521-84ba-4d223ba9a9c6” BLOCK_SIZE=“1024” TYPE=“ext4” PARTUUID=“931aaca5-02”
/dev/sda1: SEC_TYPE=“msdos” LABEL_FATBOOT=“COREELEC” LABEL=“COREELEC” UUID=“2410-3932” BLOCK_SIZE=“512” TYPE=“vfat” PARTUUID=“931aaca5-01”
/dev/loop0: TYPE=“squashfs”

Not sure if this is pertinent or not, but during the CE19.3 installation, there was one unexpected change to the fresh CE installation procedures used to install previous CE 9.x instances.

For all of my CE 9.x installations I would first boot into the native android OS of the device then attach the external storage (USB or SD) after the android OS finished rebooting. The CE 9.x installations would be initiated by issuing this command from an android terminal:

/usr/sbin/reboot update

If I didn’t boot into android first & issue the reboot update command, then the CE installation would always fail, never figured out why. When I powered up the device for the first time with the CE19.3 install image USB stick attached, I was able to complete the installation & configuration without first booting into native android.

Is utilizing internal memory for kodi data storage supported in CE19? If that configuration is still supported any suggestions/pointers on how to do this is appreciated.

Thanks

[vpeter]

Mount of /dev/data doesn’t succeed or only blkid doesn’t show it?

[mm_half3]

It can be mounted in the OS:

CoreELEC:~ # mount /dev/data /tmp
CoreELEC:~ # df -h
Filesystem Size Used Available Use% Mounted on
devtmpfs 1.9G 4.0K 1.9G 0% /dev
tmpfs 766.4M 13.8M 752.7M 2% /run
/dev/sda1 511.7M 223.1M 288.7M 44% /flash
/dev/loop0 200.5M 200.5M 0 100% /
/dev/sda2 13.8G 75.0M 13.7G 1% /storage
tmpfs 1.9G 0 1.9G 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 4.0M 0 4.0M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs 1.9G 2.3M 1.9G 0% /var
tmpfs 54.3G 3.1G 51.2G 6% /tmp
/dev/data 54.3G 3.1G 51.2G 6% /tmp

[vpeter]

So there is no real problem then?

[mm_half3]

No problem with CE19.3 seeing the internal storage, but I’m not clear on how to define it as the data/storage for Kodi. The only procedure I’ve been able to find in the CE forums that will boot CE from an external storage device and then use internal memory for kodi data storage is the very old libreElec link in the CoreElec post included in my first post.

I guess what I need now is the command to label /dev/data as “STORAGE” when blkid doesn’t see it. Will the e2label command work on /dev/storage even without blkid showing it?

[mm_half3]

hmm, e2label is showing /dev/storage with a label of STORAGE, so maybe all I need to do is remove the label “STORAGE” from /dev/sda2, and reboot?

[vpeter]

Try and see?

Why not use ceemmc tool? Doesn’t work for your device?

[mm_half3]

Yep, just needed to remove the “STORAGE” label from the installation’s default device, and after a few times of resetting the power to the bqeel (damn thing has never had stable power, even after replacing the default power supply), CE19.3 came up and migrated the CE9.2.8 kodi database(s). Thanks for nudging me in the right direction.

I ran a backup of kodi & the system from the CE backup tool prior to booting into CE19.3 after modifying the label, hopefully I can use that to restore the database(s) on internal memory back to something compatible with CE9.2.8 if I need to regress back because of problems with CE19.3.

The reason I’ve never used ceemmc tool was I didn’t see an option to create the same configuration (/dev/data using internal memory, CE boot from external storage) in the documentation examples for the tool, and I wasn’t sure if the dual boot option was supported for the bqeel.