Booting existing RPi3b from USB rather than SD
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monmul
Apr 7, 2020, 3:45:23 AM4/7/20
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I have weewx running, very happily and very successfully, (thanks to all here who helped me!) on a Rpi3B. The Pi is running Raspian and the standard SD card. Now, I got to thinking that this is probably not the most secure long tern setup - due to wear and tear on the SD card etc. So, I was thinking of setting up the Pi to run off a USB drive, I have all the Weewx folders backed up. What would be the most sensible way of transferring the whole boot and Home directory etc to the USB drive. As the system is running so well, I am a tad reluctant to go fiddling with it.....but I know I will have to sooner or later. Your thoughts and suggestions would be appreciated.
vince
Apr 7, 2020, 12:04:00 PM4/7/20
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On Tuesday, April 7, 2020 at 12:45:23 AM UTC-7, monmul wrote:
I have weewx running, very happily and very successfully, (thanks to all here who helped me!) on a Rpi3B. The Pi is running Raspian and the standard SD card. Now, I got to thinking that this is probably not the most secure long tern setup - due to wear and tear on the SD card etc. So, I was thinking of setting up the Pi to run off a USB drive, I have all the Weewx folders backed up. What would be the most sensible way of transferring the whole boot and Home directory etc to the USB drive. As the system is running so well, I am a tad reluctant to go fiddling with it.....but I know I will have to sooner or later. Your thoughts and suggestions would be appreciated.
I would suggest asking Google. This is VERY well documented in dozens of Howto documents online for many years, and has nothing specifically to do with weewx. The procedures online work fine. I used to run my pi3+ that way.
Wes Witt
Apr 7, 2020, 12:38:39 PM4/7/20
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for usb boot i recommend using an MSATA drive. 100% reliable, easy to install. i'm using the following products:
monmul
Apr 7, 2020, 9:18:16 PM4/7/20
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Yes, I agree some parts of my question are answered (and I already know that part....apologies if I did not make myself clear) by a Google search. I have no problem (I hope - fingers crossed) with the hardware part ...rather it is software part (and specifically the Weewx part) that concerns me. Can I just a) set up the USB boot b) copy and paste all the weewx folders from the SD card to the USB and, c) expect it all to run just as smoothly as before (at least in theory?).
monmul
Apr 7, 2020, 9:18:52 PM4/7/20
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Thank you for that Wes, very interesting, I had not come across that particular solution before!
Rob Cranfill
Apr 8, 2020, 12:21:13 PM4/8/20
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monmul,
I’ll go ahead and answer your question even though I have nothing of great value to add, because I happen to have done exactly this about 2 weeks ago.
Yes, you can copy your SD card-based filesystem that is running weewx to an SSD, as detailed in various places on the ‘net, and it works just fine. Nothing special about weeex there.
(I will add that I was unable to get this box, a “Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Rev 1.2”, to boot entirely without an SD card, as is supposedly possible. That is, I still have an SD card with the /boot partition on it, where cmdline.txt then points to the /dev/sda1 (or whatever it was) for the rest of the filesystem on the SSD. So in that sense I’m not doing a full USB boot, but for the most part the filesystem is on SSD, not SD, so I’m happy. Not sure why this is, but I’ve given up trying to fix it.)
I’ll go ahead and answer your question even though I have nothing of great value to add, because I happen to have done exactly this about 2 weeks ago.
Yes, you can copy your SD card-based filesystem that is running weewx to an SSD, as detailed in various places on the ‘net, and it works just fine. Nothing special about weeex there.
(I will add that I was unable to get this box, a “Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Rev 1.2”, to boot entirely without an SD card, as is supposedly possible. That is, I still have an SD card with the /boot partition on it, where cmdline.txt then points to the /dev/sda1 (or whatever it was) for the rest of the filesystem on the SSD. So in that sense I’m not doing a full USB boot, but for the most part the filesystem is on SSD, not SD, so I’m happy. Not sure why this is, but I’ve given up trying to fix it.)
monmul
Apr 8, 2020, 5:30:24 PM4/8/20
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OK! Thank you for that!
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