BerryBoot with WD PiDrive support!

At WDLabs we’ve been using BerryBoot and we’d like you to check it out!

UPDATE: New version to support Pi 3, Pi Zero, and previous versions.
http://download.wdc.com/wdlabs/berryboot-20160130-r2.zip

For those unfamiliar with this software, BerryBoot is a bootloader and OS installer that lets you install multiple Linux distributions on an SD card or external storage. It supports installation to the WD PiDrive as well, which means you can install a LOT more distributions without worrying about capacity!

To install, just extract the files in the linked zip file to a newly formatted FAT microSD card, and boot up with the WD PiDrive connected. Note that on first install, BerryBoot will prompt you to reformat/erase your WD PiDrive, so make sure you’ve backed up any important files!

Let me know what you think!

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So I decided to try this out today, and i’m running into some problems…

When i boot the image up, It fails to mount the partition (showing up as passport). It fails with the error:

SD Card Broken - writes do not exist

I’ve followed the instructions on the berryboot site to image the SD Card, formatting it(fat32) and copying over all the extracted files. Using the SD card that was shipped with the WD PiDrive in a Raspberry Pi2.

Is it a bad SD card?
Do i Need to use special software to format it?

Has anyone else ran into this?

Right after i posted the above…I found a fix :wink:

As soon as I used the SD Formatter software to format the card, it worked just fine.

Here is the link: SD Memory Card Formatter for Windows Download | SD Association

Thanx fer hooking up with BerryBoot!!

I’ve been using their version with my PI2/1TB PiDrive for months, and yours with my PI3.
I like all of the additions in the WD version!

I can not seem to get openelec to load on either version - though all of the others work.

it starts to load - makes 2 cool sounds - then stalls in black.

Has anyone else experienced the same issue or is it just me?

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The WD Pi Drive FAQ says every Pi Drive comes with a uSD with BootBerry installed. I got 2 PiDrive 314, and neither had SD cards. In order to DL the latest I need to buy one - will 8GB do, or???

Boy, is that white LED annoyingly bright! I hate to just nip it out, but I sure don’t need a flashing flashlight! Thoughts?

Thanks for the cool documentation to get me started.

Yes it will.

BerryBoot is tiny, as long as you store the actual OS part on the pidrive.

WD should update the FAQ. If the Pi Drive does not come with an SD card, it’s a deliberate lie and could/should get 'em in hot water.

I’ll get BerryBoot.and begin the fun. Thanks!

I installed BerryBoot on an 8GB Sd, bootd, and see two options - a san and the SD. I get those two options whether or not I have the PiDrive attached. When I boot Raspian df -h shows the PiDrive_314, so I know the drive is ok. Any idea why I can’t see/select it when I boot BerryBoot - I’d rather install those things on the PiDrive, if possible.

Hi, if the SDcard is not fully erased, overwritten and reformatted, Berryboot may not be able to format the drive (although it should still see the drive in the menu selection). If possible, please try reformatting the SDcard first. Use SDformatter (free download on-line from SD Association), with format type set to full-overwrite and format size adjustment set to “on”. Then using a file manager, unzip the Berryboot files directly to the root directory of the freshly formatted SDcard. Then try the system again. If the problem persists, next step would be to get a photo of your set-up (if possible) to try to systematically debug. Sorry for the trouble. Thanks.

Dave Chew

Just used berryboot installer to install owncloud on my Pi with 1tb WD Blue drive (via usb3 adapter)

I love it! only criticism is that the owncloud installation is out of date, upload limit is set to 514mb (not 2gb) and still needs some tweaking but it works none the less and a lot better than installing manually! thanks :smile:

Hi Majorglory

The topic says the Pi3 is supported by WD berryboot-20160130-r2.zip well it does not seem to handle the internal wifi correctly. The actual berryboot that supports the WiFi will correctly take up the Xfinity WiFi password. The WD version does not successfully connect.

Now there is one additional issue. The BerryBoot stops when loading the larger new Jessie image. It would appear that the internal WiFi issue of inappropriate power down on the WiFi is causing this. This issue is documented in the raspberrypi.org forums and the solution is quite easy for the BerryBoot creator to turn off power down however this option does not appear to be available in Console.

Regards John

"by rwcooper » Wed Mar 16, 2016 1:07 am
Hi,

It appears that putting the post-up iwconfig wlan0 power off command in /etc/network/interfaces works for me.

Thanks for posting this tip.

Randy"

Hi Embeddedmicro,

Thanks for letting me know about this. I’ll look into the WiFi issues. Do you happen to know what sort of security your XFinity router WiFi uses (e.g. WPA2-PSK (AES), WPA2-PSK (TKIP), etc)? If not, that’s fine, I’ll try to replicate the issue you were having.

As for your second issue: unfortunately, I think BerryBoot does not ship with the iwconfig tool, which means you can’t use that method to set WiFi power management. I have a ideas to get around that, but I need to test them out first. For now, the easiest solution would be to use a physical Ethernet cable instead of the built-in WiFi.

I’ll update you when I have some more answers!

Hi Thanks for helping since the Pi 3 is a useful tool.

I was testing against a Comcast Aria X1 modem that carries HOME-3892 SSID as is Xfinity’s Habit.

Currently it is configured as WPA2 Personal AES (WPA2–PSK AES). Raspberrian March 18th Jessie handles this perfectly well on Pi3 internal WiFi.

You will note that there was some initial consternation with the power down characteristics of the Pi3 with Jessie in the Raspberry Pi.org forums because large downloads such as Jessie itself stop at about 6%. A developer was trying to conserve power incorrectly in the Broadcom driver. Hence the instruction to disable “power off”.

Cheers John

I now have 3 PiDrives, cables, cases, etc. I also have a small fleet of various Raspberry Pi. I am an Electronic Engineer. I also teach Computer Science at a Community College. One of my courses is Linux System Administration wherein I teach the entire class using Raspberry Pi kit, I require my students purchase them in lieu of purchasing textbooks. All of their textbooks are provided online as free PDFs, a variety of which are available from the Open Source community for free. I became a Raspberry Pi Evangelist of sorts when I got my hands on my first Raspberry Pi in early 2012. Being a grey beard, I have way too many years of experience in computers and electronics.

Anyway, enough about me. My problem with BerryBoot is simply the extraordinary amount of time that it takes to download and install Raspbian onto a PiDrive. Raspian is the original and preferred Debian based Linux provided globally for all Raspberry Pi. Now the BerryBoot download/install program conveniently provides a download/install speed indicator. And herein lies the problem. The indicated download speed and simultaneous USB Hard Dist write proceeds at a glacial ~1.0 mbit regardless of what I do. This means it is taking over 2 hours to install stock Raspbian. Once BerryBoot installs Raspbian, Raspbian boots up much faster than it ordinarily does from an SD card. That is good; very good! So it is just the install speed which is the problem.

There must be something I am doing wrong. I have tried both wired and wireless, Pi 2 and 3, any one of my 3 PiDrives, your cables, my cables, several different power supplies, etc, etc, etc. I have tried 2 versions of BerryBoot, including the latest one which I just downloaded and used this morning. I have stable Fiber-optic internet connectivity which always speed tests symmetrically at 95 mbit, both up and down, including this morning. Please tell me if this is the normal pathetic install speeds that this BerryBoot software provides.

The reason I suspect that there is some unresolved problem is that one of the screen saves on your web page shows this same “indicated download speed” to be moving along at 45 mbit. Take a look at BerryBoot v2.0 - bootloader / universal operating system installer [BerryTerminal] about halfway down the page in a frame labeled “Download”.

Well enough said. This should get you started in the right direction in looking into this problem.

Thanks for your assistance, and for supporting our Raspberry Pi community with this product.

Thanks, Gary

Hi, I’m on the WDLabs product team. Thanks for your post. The slow download is likely on the CDN provider side. For Berryboot Raspbian, the repository is on sourceforge.net. I’ve also experienced slow and aborted downloads and it correlates to time of day, which is why it’s likely the CDN. We’ll try to pin it down and look for improvements.

If your issue is classroom application of Berryboot, we recommend that you create a local Berryboot repository (using a NAS or RPi with HDD) to host the OS images. Local repository support is already integrated in Berryboot. This will also enable you to create your own Berryboot-compatible OS images and distribute them from your local repository.

We’re interested in your classroom deployment of RPi and would like to explore collaboration on pilot projects! Let me know if interested. Thanks.

I love BerryBoot’s Raspberry Pi multi-boot capability. But… (there is always a but) I cannot swami out the user name and password for signing into Ubuntu Core 15.04. Numerous Google searches say that the ubuntu/ubuntu is the ticket, but (again) it is not. Please give it a quick try and if you figure out what the requisite user and password are, please post it in response to this blog post.

I have been promoting this device to my Computer Science students. Hopefully they will be able to divert some or the “Top Ramen” money into this excellent piece of kit.

Thanks for the help (again).

Gary H. Baker, EE

Hi Gary, you can (at least) log in as root by typing “root” . I’m a Linux noob so don’t know if you can find the user login data once logged in as root.

Thanks.

Thanks, I’ll give that a try…