Procedure for enlarging filesystem on CM4

Hi,

is there a procedure on how to enlarge the internal eMMC storage of a CM4? Have the version with 32 GB eMMC and want to make use of the whole space – the downloadable 5.30 for the Raspberry Pi has only a 2 GB filesystem on it.

With kind regards,
Egon

Once RISC OS is on the CM4 SystemDisc can be used. Copy RISC OS onto a second device first, an NVMe here. That is how I fully utilised the 32GB eMMC here. Not having SystemDisc might be considered an obstacle though.

I already had a 32GB SD card with RISC OS on it, that will be easy I thought, use Imager or rpiboot to write that to the 32GB eMMC. The flaw in that is the obvious one, some 32GB devices are more 32GB than other 32GB devices!!

You need to do some preparation first. For example take a RISC OS formatted USB drive and put on it !SystemDisc and a directory containing the firmware from SDFS::eMMc4.$.Boot.Loader as well as the HardDisc contents on the eMMc.

Run !SystemDisc from the USB drive (which completely wipes the eMMc storage and adds a single DOS image file Boot:Loader), then without resetting your machine, copy the firmware into Loader and copy the HardDisc contents (except Boot:Loader) onto the eMMc.

Remove the USB drive and reboot.

Alternatively, if your CM4 is already ’net connected you could use Partition Manager to initialise a Pi boot drive.

Unfortunately, because you can’t format the drive RISC OS booted from without RISC OS breaking horribly, it is a bit of a convoluted process:

1. Download the latest Partition Manager
2. Plug in a USB drive that will be wiped and become a temporary boot drive
3. Run Partition Manager, middle-click on the physical USB drive in the left pane and select “Initialise Pi Boot drive”. Accept the defaults and click Initialise. It will then partition the drive, format the FAT / FileCore partitions, download the Pi firmware to the FAT, download/extract the latest HD4 contents to the FileCore area, along with the latest WiFi/NVMe drivers, PackMan, NetSurf and all their dependencies. Essentially the bare minimum you need to have a ’net connected Pi.
4. Once the drive initialisation has finished, right-click on the newly formatted drive icon and copy Partition Manager across to it. If you mistakenly left-click and open the FAT partition by mistake, reboot as FAT32FS/RISC OS can lock up when you try to dismount the FAT partition
5. Boot from the USB drive. I don’t have a CM4 to test, but I guess you might need to remove the eMMC until RISC OS has booted
6. Ensure the Pi is ‘net connected – PM attempts to auto-configure DHCP on either wired or WiFi when it built the drive. Go into Configure / Network / Internet / Interfaces if required and manually configure if you can’t browse using NetSurf
7. Load Partition Manager and repeat the process on the eMMC, adjusting the FileCore size if you want to leave space for a Linux partition

This will get you a bare bones RISC OS machine with PackMan and NetSurf. It will not contain all the extras the SD image comes with as ROOL do not provide them in ZIP format.

If that’s an issue, instead of using PM to create the temporary boot drive:

1. Use the latest ROOL SD image to create the USB boot drive
2. Boot from the USB drive and configure the network
3. Download the latest Partition Manager
4. Run Partition Manager, middle-click on the physical eMMC drive in the left pane and select “Initialise Pi Boot drive”. Select “None” for the “Harddisc contents”
5. Once initialised, copy the contents of the temporary FileCore drive to the eMMC FileCore drive, but don’t copy !Boot.Loader

Boot from the USB drive. I don’t have a CM4 to test

For some reason RISC OS will not boot from the CM4’s USB A sockets, it stops at a black screen. Some video is there, the monitor light is green not yellow, but there is no other sign of life. RISC OS can however see them once from elsewhere.

Raspberry Pi OS on the other hand will boot from those USB A sockets.

USB boot priority is set on my CM4 to enable a Raspberry Pi OS boot, overriding the default eMMC boot in case it was to get garbaged somehow, for example by installing a beta ROM image that fails to start. Raspberry Pi OS can see the eMMC FAT partition.

For some reason RISC OS will not boot from the CM4’s USB A sockets

I had that problem until I upgraded the bootloader to the latest version.

*vcgencmd bootloader_version
2024/05/17 12:26:58
version 72caf66729df313801bcefe9b1ff7099c71bb5ce (release)
timestamp 1715945218
update-time 1716393896
capabilities 0x0000007f

Thanks for all the information, will go the Partition Manager way!

@Chris Grandsen

Can you please share your boot.conf (especially the BOOT_ORDER variable) – I can’t get my CM4 to boot from USB even with the eeprom updated to 2024/05/17 (the same you run)

I can’t get my CM4 to boot from USB even with the eeprom updated to 2024/05/17

Neither can I.

*vcgencmd bootloader_version
2024/05/17 12:26:58
...

*vcgencmd bootloader_config
[all]
...
BOOT_ORDER=0xf145
*

Previously with a Jan23 eeprom it was possible to boot Raspberry Pi OS from a USB device but not now.

With no USB devices connected the splash screen does show the boot mode as :-

BCM-USB-MSD 5 order f145

Then it tries f14 before starting eMMC.

f15 should be sufficient but didn’t work either.

Previously with a Jan23 eeprom it was possible to boot Raspberry Pi OS from a USB device but not now.

Boot order is set to f15.

On the CM4 the last eeprom that allows Raspberry OS on a USB device to start is 24-04-15, eeproms after that fail and hang the CM4 so that the eMMC does not get to start. So far, RISC OS never boots from USB. It is possible different IO boards may behave differently, here it is a Waveshare PoE Board (B).

Hi,

just wanted to quickly outline the way I used to get it up and running without being able to boot from USB:

1.) Set jumper J2 to force the CM4 into bootloader mode
2.) Attach the CM4 to a PC (Linux/Windows/Mac) and boot it into USB mass storage mode using rpiboot
3.) Unplug the CM4 from the PC and plug it into a running RISC OS machine without unplugging the power from the CM4 (RPI 1 with RO 5.28 in my case)
4.) Run the steps from above with Partition Manager to finish setting up the CM4
5.) Unset J2 when finished

With kind regards,
Egon

I have my CM4 at the ready. Just waiting for the direct version to get the 5.30 treatment.
Is there a reason for the 2GB maximum size? Seems somewhat cumbersome to deal with as a new user.

Is there a reason for the 2GB maximum size?

Yes. It is within the maximum file size under RISC OS. It means the download is small. It works with pretty much any SD card.

Given that most machines have 2GB or more RAM it is a pity that we don’t have a utility that will read in the contents of the SD card to RAM and offer to reformat the SD card to a size that you require and copy the files back again.

Is there a reason for the 2GB maximum size?
Yes. It is within the maximum file size under RISC OS.

I am pretty sure Jeffrey extended the maximum file size limit to 4GB quite a while ago. Or was that only in FileSwitch and FileCore is still tuck to 2GB?

bq. Is there a reason for the 2GB maximum size?

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