NOOBS Distro

There is a bug in the NOOBS distro (version 1.1 and version 1.2) for the Raspberry Pi that only allows RISC OS 128Mbytes. On my 512Mbtes Pi, I get 448Mbytes for RISC OS when using RC8 but only 128Mbytes using the NOOBS distro.

Copying recent firmware onto the NOOBS card (FIXUP.DAT, BOOTCODE.BIN and START.ELF) or the firmware from an RC8 image sorts this problem out.

NOOBS FAT partition v1.1:

BOOTCODE/BIN     WR/     DOS       11:53:24 14-May-2013   17 kbytes
CONFIG/TXT       WR/     Text      11:53:24 14-May-2013   72  bytes
LICENCE/BROADCOM WR/     DOS       11:53:24 14-May-2013 1447  bytes
RISCOS/IMG       WR/     DOS       10:14:48 08-Jul-2013 2396 kbytes
START/ELF        WR/     DOS       15:07:44 16-May-2013 2625 kbytes

NOOBS FAT partition v1.2:

BOOTCODE/BIN     WR/     DOS       02:31:30 17-Jun-2013   17 kbytes
CONFIG/TXT       WR/     Text      11:53:24 14-May-2013   72  bytes
LICENCE/BROADCOM WR/     DOS       11:53:24 14-May-2013 1447  bytes
RISCOS/IMG       WR/     DOS       11:53:24 14-May-2013 2396 kbytes
START/ELF        WR/     DOS       02:31:38 17-Jun-2013 2626 kbytes

RC8 FAT partition:

BOOTCODE/BIN     WR/     DOS       19:34:10 13-Feb-2013   17 kbytes
CONFIG/TXT       WR/     Text      01:00:00 01-Jan-1980   72  bytes
FIXUP/DAT        WR/     DOS       20:59:22 19-Mar-2013    6 kbytes
LICENCE/BROADCOM WR/     DOS       12:15:42 27-Sep-2012 1447  bytes
RISCOS/IMG       WR/     DOS       23:38:10 27-May-2013 2396 kbytes
START/ELF        WR/     DOS       20:59:22 19-Mar-2013 2632 kbytes

Ah now that is interesting I thought I was seeing things when the version of NOOBS OS I installed seemed to say I only had 128Mbytes, where can I get the recent firmware you mention to fix my copy?

Also not sure its using the entire SD cards memory either.

Also not sure its using the entire SD cards memory either.

AIUI NOOBS stores all the different OS’s in a ‘recovery’ partition, when you choose which OS you want, it is decompressed to a.n.other partition and then run. RISC OS has the added complication of also having its filecore formatted partition. Flavours of Linux can on being first run expand to fill all the space left apart from the recovery partition. RISC OS has to stick to its 2GB (actually slightly less as not all 2GB cards are 2GB!)

Looking at the SD card it is more complicated than this. RISC OS sees an SDFS filecore partition with a capacity of 3750 Mbytes but about 1500 Mbytes are ‘hidden’, see here

Will this issue be resolved with the newer version of NOOBS and RISC OS 5.20 ? So it expands to all the available space on the Card apart from the recovery partition?

My RISC OS 5.20 on my beagleboard/ARMini has 29 Gb of a 32 Gb card available.

My RISC OS 5.20 on my beagleboard/ARMini has 29 Gb of a 32 Gb card available.

Don’t you mean Mbytes ?

No I mean Gbytes I have a 32 Gbytes SD card of which has 29 Gbytes is available for use by RISC OS. Hence my question about the theNOOBs version of RISC OS using less then available card capacity excluding recovery partition.

Hence my question about the the NOOBs version of RISC OS using less then available card capacity excluding recovery partition.

I don’t know what plans there are afoot to improve things, but the complexity of the SD Card’s format for RISC OS — as part of “how to expand it to fit a 4GB card” — was covered in some detail in July’s WROCC (with a kind-of follow-up in August)¹.

In fact it must be “even more complicated than that” with NOOBS, as presumably Filecore doesn’t have the card as much to itself as it does in the standard RISC OS image which was covered in the aforementioned article. Is there any documented info on how it works on NOOBS?

¹ That’s not much use to most on this forum, admittedly, but I know that Chris has a copy and so am surprised that he hasn’t twigged that it’s “a bit more complicated than that” WRT using the available space on the card for Filecore. :-)

Is there any documented info on how it works on NOOBS?

Smoke and mirrors.

:-)

From what I can understand, the entire card is formatted “FileCore”. On top of this there lies a smaller FAT partition. This works because the stuff FAT needs and the stuff RISC OS needs don’t lie in the same places.

FAT needs a few sectors at the beginning of the device to set itself up, and then the FAT part runs as a contiguous block. I think it runs from the start of the storage, but it may be offset slightly to cope with any specifics that FileCore may impose. You’d need to read the partition table to see. The rest of the storage is FileCore.

In order not to cause an explosion – the FAT partition is small and the RISC OS partition is marked off in the partition table (I think? confirm?) on order to stop something else stamping on it. As we all know, Windows will only see the FAT part.
Likewise, from the RISC OS side, the !Boot.Loader virtual file is vitally important as it looks and feels like a DOSFS image file within RISC OS, but it also marks off the FAT partition. You see, FileCore thinks it is the only filing system on the media, so if the media filled up, it would dump data all over the FAT part. What saves us from that unhappy eventuality is the Loader file, placed at the physical location corresponding to the FAT partition. Now data won’t be written on top of it!

That’s rough and subject to a lot of vague interpretation (I’ve not yet had the inclination to take the image apart at disc-layout level), but it’s a rough idea of what is going on.

Hairy, but functional. In fact, the only real drawback that I can see is that we’re mostly stuck with 2GB drives. While that’s plenty for RISC OS, for many of us, it does mean having 2/6/14/30 GB sitting there completely empty and unusable.

You know, the SD card in my Pi is actually a micro-SD supplied “as standard” with one of my Android phones. It’s getting hard to find 2GB SD cards these days. It’s a shame the image doesn’t have a tool that can be run in the beginning to probe the SD card and offer to expand the partition to fill it…though given various technicalities (placement of $, LFAUs, free space map size/position, etc) this is easier said than done!

Will this issue be resolved with the newer version of NOOBS and RISC OS 5.20 ? So it expands to all the available space on the Card apart from the recovery partition?

AIUI from Ben @ ROOL The special overlapping partitions used are currently each custom created. The current 2GB dual image is slightly too big to fit some 2GB SD cards ROOL have been aware of this for about six months but because of the considerable amount of work to create an image they haven’t changed it. They have been commissioned by two commercial customers (ourselves being one of them) 32GB dual SD images. I believe automating this process so that you could input your chosen size/fill a particular SD card is in the plan for Piccolo Systems !CloneDisc II.
Auto expanding partitions is I would expect very significantly more work.
I think of auto expanding partitions being a bit like changing the wings on a plane mid flight!
We do offer 32GB cards with a commercially Licensed RISC OS on them. http://cjemicros.co.uk/micros/individual/newprodpages/prodinfo.php?prodcode=VAR-32GB-RISCOS We could offer the same dual partition 32GB cards but less the RISC OS ROM image and Drive image at a lower price if people are interested.

So the answer is possibly yes but not any time soon.

I sometimes make posts like this hoping to be proved wrong on time scale

Ok I am now more confused.

RISC OS on NOOBS and possibly on the download will only use 4GB max. of SD Card space regardless of size of the SD Card?

But I can buy a 32 Gb card from CJE and use all of it for RISC OS on a Pi? Which seems to contridict the first question.

There are 16 and 32 Gb cards available from R-Comp with RISC OS 5.20 on and I can use all of the available space on the card for RISC OS.

So is this a specific Raspberry Pi issue?

NOOBS is a Raspberry Pi thing, designed for a 4Gbyte SD card, so that it can contain all (six?) operating systems for the Pi, amongst which is the 2Gbyte dual-partition RC11 for RISC OS (compressed to around 200Mbytes). The recovery partition is present on whichever of the six systems you choose to be decompressed, along with the chosen system. In the case of RISC OS the 2Gbyte dual partition is fudged to hide the recovery partition as well.

The 16Gbyte and 32Gbyte SD card dual-partition filecore/FAT are each manually created and available only as a purchasable SD card. CloneDisc may offer such an option in the future. Using a fast SD card, these offer excellent speed (about 18Mbyte/s read and write) on a Pandaboard ES.

Ok I am now more confused.

Did you look at the reference I gave you?

RISC OS on NOOBS and possibly on the download will only use 4GB max. of SD Card space regardless of size of the SD Card?

More likely 2GB, but yes: it will only use the fixed amount that it has been set up to use.

But I can buy a 32 Gb card from CJE and use all of it for RISC OS on a Pi? Which seems to contradict the first question.

Chris Evans explained that in his post above: “They have been commissioned by two commercial customers (ourselves being one of them) 32GB dual SD images.”

You can have an image of any size that you want, but you have to create each size uniquely. That WROCC article which I suggested that you read explained what hoops you have to jump through to get an image set up such that both systems co-exist. You should see from that how you can’t ‘just’ grow the image to whatever size you want.

There are 16 and 32 Gb cards available from R-Comp with RISC OS 5.20 on and I can use all of the available space on the card for RISC OS.

Given that there’s no 5.20 for the Pi, I’m assuming they’re for the ARMini? That said, I’d hazard a guess that they’ve come via that same route as CJE’s: a commercial commission for a specific image size (or sizes).

So is this a specific Raspberry Pi issue?

Yes and no. It first showed up on the Pi, but it applies to any system where the same SD Card is used in FAT32 mode for the system’s bootloader and in Filecore mode via SDFS once RISC OS is up and running.

Given that there’s no 5.20 for the Pi, I’m assuming they’re for the ARMini?

ARMini (5.20) or ARMiniX (5.19 (30-Sep-2012)). But if you adjust the firmware and ROM image in the FAT partition you can use the (free) Raspberrry Pi 2Gbyte image on the ARMini/ARMiniX and the (paid for) 16G/32G ARMini/ARMiniX SD card image on the Pi.

Just don’t delete the file SDFS::0.$.!Boot.Loader