How to move Octoprint and assoc. to larger mem. Card?

General
21

About using dd in any linux-environment, there is a simpler way to make a backup and then later put that on a new micro-sd card to use. I use this all the time, also to make duplicates of an install to run for example octoprint on multiple pi's (of course you need to change the name of the system so you don't get double names on the network).

First go to a shell and use "blkid" to see which filesystems are listed. you will probably have the sd-card listed like /dev/sdb1 or /dev/sdc1 (and /dev/sdc0).
Well, that sdc1 or sdc2 are the partiotions, and you want a copy of the whole drive (card): sdc or sdb for example.

if it is on sdc for this card, you can use to make an image:

dd if=/dev/sdc of=myimage.img bs=2048K status=progress

explained:
if: input file (so in this case the whole sd-card)
of: output file (so the name you choose)
bs: blocksize. 2048K is going much faster then without specification and if you have more memory you can make it larger to get faster copies
status=progress : makes sure you can read how far the copy is.

After it it finished, you use umount or unmount it in the filemanager and put the new card in

if it is listed on the same drive (as usual), to put the image to the card:

dd of=/dev/sdc if=myimage.img bs=2048K status=progress

So, just reverse the order.

And then yes, boot up, expand the filesystem and change the name if wanted in raspi-config, reboot and ready.

By the way, on some cheap cards, the size is listed wrong so that it seems to be for example 64GB but in reality it is only a 4 GB card so it fills really quickly after a while.
That is a known selling-trick....

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22

Thanks for the extra tips, and yes, using the image copies of the whole drive at the device level is faster than at the partition level, and if the sd card isn't already partitioned, makes things a whole lot easier.

23

re bootable SD cards. I really don't understand whats going on here, I used Win32DiskImager with OctoPi .img file "2019-09-26-octopi-buster-lite-0.17.0.img" to create my bootable copy of OctoPrint.

But if I image that SD card and clone to another card the OctoPrint doesn't boot and I can't SSH to it.

I also tried Paragon HDM which is normally dead solid.

Is there the equivalent of windows MBR or something on the SD card?

24

Something like that.
There is a fat32 partition with the bootloader and configuration files. (It's the one with the octoprint wpa config file on it)

25

Does the Pi even see the Fat32 partition?

Anyway, I seem to have resolved my problem which seems to be down to dodgy SD cards. I don't usually run the Pi with the HDMI connected so I didn't see the message "end kernal panic".

26

Boots off the FAT partition, then the EXT4 partition is mounted as part of boot. That's why ssh is on the /boot along with config.txt, they are used to configure the O/S as it comes up - along with feeding the WiFi settings with the WPA.
If there's an MBR on the partition, that would definitely bork the Pi booting. It just wants a plain FAT partition. MBR's are for hard disks, I'm not even sure there's a possibility of having one on an SD card without checking.

27

If anyone is going the 'dd' route, there's also a project called ddrescue which gives you more feedback of what it's doing.
sudo apt-add-repository universe && sudo apt install gddrescue
I use it whenever I'm needing to clone a card. Mostly because it tells me how long it's going to take :slight_smile:

28

Ubuntu? I'm sure things are much easier for you, then. Linux obviously has native support for the EXT4 format standard whereas Apple/Microsoft have purposely prevented its inclusion.

Cloning a microSD in Ubuntu (or any Linux-like o/s) might be as simple as mounting both and then some sort of copy/paste like behavior. Otherwise, I might recommend the excellent/free GPartEd program.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=how+to+clone+with+gparted&t=osx&ia=web

It's probably worth noting that the Desktop version of the Raspberry Pi OS has a program under Accessories called SD Card Copier.

29

My god, thanks you, honestly it's disturbing how simple that was lol

30

I just cloned my 4gb card to my 8gb card and it worked but my 8gb card thinks it has only 4gb of space on octoprint? Any idea how to fix this. Thanks

31

SSH to the pi and run sudo raspi-config and there's an option in there somewhere to expand the filesystem.

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32

This also works for migrating to a SSD, in my case the Argon One SSD addon.

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33

You also need to open raspi-config and enter the ADVANCED tab. Hit the "Expand File System" command to take advantage of all the new free space.

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