Upgrading Raspbian Stretch to Raspbian Buster for Picochess

[Henri Spijkerman]

I am still waiting for my Pi 4 to arrive, it's in backorder for over a month now. In the mean time I have updated Raspbian Stretch to Raspbian Buster (stable). The version of Picochess I used was PicoChessV201. Here a few observations:

First of all you should at least a 8gb sdcard to upgrade. I found out (after an hour in the process) that 4gb is not enough anymore, the disk was full. So burn the image to at least a 8gb lcard and use the Expand Filesystem option in rasp-config to have enough space before upgrading.

The upgrade itself was no problem at all. You can find it on the web, but Scally kind enough posted me the whole process, here goes:

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Check available disk space:

df -h

Check package status (should be blank results):

sudo dpkg --audit

sudo dpkg --get-selections | grep hold

Update system:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Modify Release:

sudo sed -i /deb/s/stretch/buster/g /etc/apt/sources.list

sudo sed -i /deb/s/stretch/buster/g /etc/apt/sources.list.d/*.list

Updating package lists:

sudo apt-get update

Update to “Buster”:

sudo apt-get upgrade

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Clean up installation:

sudo apt-get autoremove

sudo apt-get autoclean

For Picochess:

cd /opt/picochess

sudo pip3 install --upgrade -r requirements.txt

sudo python3 ./picochess.py

 add -w to end for WebServer 

 add -pi for dgt pi (can have both  i.e:

 sudo python3 ./picochess.py -w -pi

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After the upgrade-process, which took me about 70 minutes, Buster basically works well on my Pi 3B+. There are two issues however, purely speaking about software. The first one is the voice option, which is broken. This is not a Buster thing, the same occurs after upgrading Stretch. The second issue is that the three Lc0 versions, lc0v0210, lc0v0220 and lc0v0220-dev-rpizw-gcc8 don't work any more. Hopefully a fresh compile under Buster will fix that problem.

Greetings,

Henri

[Scally]

Hi Henri,

I’m back from my cruise ....

The speech problem on Stretch is fixable by stepping back with rpi-update but with Buster you can’t go far enough back. I’ve updated my Buster system again and the slow speech is now no speech.
We may have to think of using something other than ogg123 and Vorbis-tools which will mean converting the speech files.

As for Lc0, mine are working fine. I can’t remember having a problem with them but you could try re-installing these:
sudo apt-get install --reinstall libprotobuf10
sudo apt-get install libopenblas-dev

I won’t be compiling anything for Buster unless we fix these problems and Buster becomes the default operating system. Engines compiled on Stretch should work, but I haven’t tried them all yet.

Al.

[Henri Spijkerman]

Hi Al,

Fixing the speech issue on Stretch by rolling back is not really the solution, is it? So converting ogg-files to mp3 and use OMXplayer (or another player) instead of ogg123 seems to me a way to get rid of the problem once and for all. Problem is, someone has to program it....

I'll try and re-install the Lc0 engines, hopefully this evening.

I think the Pi4 will only work standalone with Picochess, and not stashed away under a DGT clock. I've heard that an idle Pi4 heats up to 80 degrees C. in a locked case, it really needs active cooling.

Henri

[Al]

Hi Henri,

The Stretch speech problem only happened shortly before Buster was introduced. So rolling back is not that much of a problem. We’ve already stopped updating requirements like Python-Chess and something else. Some of the shop DGT Pi’s are still on Jessie.

My DGT Pi with a RPi 3b+ has active cooling with a Noctua fan, If I did swap to a RPi 4b it should be sufficient, I have several holes in the case for air movement. The connectors will probably not fit the case though.

I still have Bluetooth connectivity problems with my RPi 4b so am a long way off using that as my main Picochess system and compiling on that.

As for using a different speech utility, that’s something I’ll experiment with soon.

Al.

[Henri Spijkerman]

Got the Pi4 yesterday, and everything in Picochess with Buster installed is working ok, except for the voice of course. The Lc0 engine is performing well too, after I got BLAS installed (thanks for the tip Al!).

For the temperature, with a small fan and a aluminium heatsink in place there are no problems at all, I overclocked the Pi to 1.8 Ghz and the highest temperature I got is 63 degrees C.

Henri

[RadioMan]

Yeah, I am glad it worked for you, but I think I can't follow the above instructions since I can't run any older OS before buster on my pi 4, just to check the above commands before the actual update to buster, can they be given in buster too?

[Henri Spijkerman]

Send me a PM and we will work things out.

Henri

Op zaterdag 21 september 2019 18:25:07 UTC+2 schreef RadioMan:

[RadioMan]

I will send you a pm, but I think it's allready working, atleast I got to think this because I guess picochess doesn't have a GUI and I'm still awaiting the board and  clock so I can't check to be for sure.

Op zaterdag 21 september 2019 23:53:33 UTC+2 schreef Henri Spijkerman: