I have a really nice working copy of Debian and Octoprint and I want to save the SD card so I can duplicate it in the future.
What did you already try to solve it?
I used Win32DiskImager. It read my SD card fine, but when I wrote the image file to another sd card, that card hung up on the Pi boot.
I also tried to clone the card using various cloning tools such as AOMEI Partition Assistant, etc. Nothing I tried would produce an image that would successfully boot into Octoprint (my original SD card did).
Have you tried running in safe mode?
Not applicable
Did running in safe mode solve the problem?
Not applicable
Systeminfo Bundle
You can download this in OctoPrint's System Information dialog ... no bundle, no support!)
If you are looking for a complete solution - a quick google search found this GitHub - RichardMidnight/pi-safe: Create your own custom image files
It looks pretty complete, but I haven't tested it. Pro: you don't have to set up Linux on you desktop
Con: you need a second SD card
It I'm pretty sure it would also run on a PC desktop image or a VM as link it's connected to a card reader.
I bought a USB to SD (and microSD) adapter. I use this to initially flash the microSD card using the Raspberry Pi imager while plugged into my desktop.
I also use it on my RPi along with rpi-clone to make a copy of the running system. This script uses rsync so while the first copy takes a while, subsequent copies are much faster.
I have no problem making a clone or copy. The problem I have is when I try to boot that clone (or copy after burning it to an sd card) is that the cloned card won't boot properly.
I'm not sure why rpi-clone didn't work for you but I just used it to copy my RPi 4B OS running on a 32GB USB flash drive to a 32GB microSD card. The microSD card booted successfully. I then copied that microSD card to another 32GB microSD card and that second copy booted successfully.
pi@octopi:~ $ lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 1 29.8G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 1 256M 0 part
└─sda2 8:2 1 29.6G 0 part
mmcblk0 179:0 0 29.8G 0 disk
├─mmcblk0p1 179:1 0 256M 0 part /boot
└─mmcblk0p2 179:2 0 29.6G 0 part /
pi@octopi:~ $ sudo rpi-clone /dev/sda
[sudo] password for pi:
Booted disk: mmcblk0 32.0GB Destination disk: sda 32.0GB
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Part Size FS Label Part Size FS Label
1 /boot 256.0M fat32 -- 1 256.0M fat32 --
2 root 29.6G ext4 -- 2 29.6G ext4 --
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
== SYNC mmcblk0 file systems to sda ==
/boot (48.0M used) : SYNC to sda1 (256.0M size)
/ (4.0G used) : SYNC to sda2 (29.6G size)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Run setup script : no.
Verbose mode : no.
-----------------------:
Ok to proceed with the clone? (yes/no): yes
Syncing file systems (can take a long time)
Syncing mounted partitions:
Mounting /dev/sda2 on /mnt/clone
=> rsync // /mnt/clone with-root-excludes ...
Mounting /dev/sda1 on /mnt/clone/boot
=> rsync /boot/ /mnt/clone/boot ...
Editing /mnt/clone/boot/cmdline.txt PARTUUID to use 9b99a359
Editing /mnt/clone/etc/fstab PARTUUID to use 9b99a359
===============================
Done with clone to /dev/sda
Start - 13:17:36 End - 13:23:30 Elapsed Time - 5:54
Cloned partitions are mounted on /mnt/clone for inspection or customizing.
Hit Enter when ready to unmount the /dev/sda partitions ...
unmounting /mnt/clone/boot
unmounting /mnt/clone
===============================
The framps version has some additional code to handle an eMMC or M.2 drive which are available on some other SoC computers like the Libre Le Potato. The original code will be fine on all Raspberry Pi systems unless you have an RPi 5 with a M.2 hat.
First a couple of useful commands. script filename will capture the commands and output to the file filename. WinSCP is a good tool to help move files (like the filename) to the system you are using to communicate here. man script (or man fdisk) will help with command options and syntax.
Is rpi-clone installed as recommended on your RPi? which rpi-clone will show that. It should be in /usr/local/sbin.
What is the output from sudo fdisk /dev/mmcblk0 option p? (option q to quit)
What is the output from sudo fdisk /dev/sda option p?
Try script -c "sudo rpi-clone /dev/sda" rpi-clone-output and if it fails, try again with script -c "sudo bash -x rpi-clone /dev/sda" rpi-clone-debug which will give us some insight into that error message.
What I did was take the sd card over to my Windows machine and used AOMEI Partition Assistant to delete all the partitions on that sd card, create one big partition, and format the thing with EXT4. I then plugged it into the Pi, and rpi-clone successfully cloned the entire system onto the sd card, which I then put in the pi, and it booted and ran Octopi fine.
That was the secret: Clean off the target SD card and make one big partition, and format it with EXT4.
Again, thank you.
I now have a complete Octopi box with a touchscreen that will shut down the printer after the job is complete, and allow me to control the LED lights for the camera. I can also control Octoprint from the touch screen using the Chromium browser.
FYI, I have a Prusa MK4, and am getting ready to build another one of these boxes for my newly-arrived Prusa XL. The only problem is that there seems to be a shortage of 7" touchscreens for the Pi.
