Root filesystem available to download

[Tass]

So - any rough idea how many downloads so far (from the official source at least)?

1 + 10 = 11

[PhilS]

Quick change to my mirrors address, just set it up to mirror more as and when it arrives.

http://78.129.232.50/rpi/

[Joe Schmoe]

I got the file (from a nearby mirror).

Couple quick questions:

1) It is an 835M file that expands to a (almost) 2G file (the .img file).  Correct?  This means that you need an (at least) 2G SD card to "dd" it to, correct?  I assume that a 2G card would work - i.e., you don't need any slack.

2) Is there a publicaly available (I.e., not the one in the ZIP file) SHA1 number for the big file?  Not that I am particularly paranoid about these things, you know - but there should be  some way to independently verify that the file is unaltered and intact.

[grumpyoldgit]

It creates a 79MB fat partition, a 1.7GB ext4 partition and a 200MB  swap space. The rest of you SD card is labelled as unallocated space. So yes, it is based on a 2GB SD card.

The SHA-1 is on the download page.

[Miskatonic]

I am seeding too ! And I sure will for the Fedora 14 image.

[liamfraser280]

The hash for the zip is on the downloads page, the main reason for that one is verifying any files from a non official source.

The second hash inside the zip is just to double check that the zip file has extracted correctly.

Cheers,

Liam.

[Joe Schmoe]

@liam: Yes.  I got it all sorted now.

[jamesh]

Some people may find that even with an 2GB SD card things don't quite fit (when using Win32DiskImager.exe for example to put the image on the card). We're not quite sure why - some 2GB cards just seem to be just slightly under 2GB!

You can put the image on a 4GB card no problem, then use some partition program to define the unused space at the end as, for example, a data or swap partition. Pretty easy with the disk utility program in Ubuntu (palimpsest?)

[Bad Wolf]

Although most manufacturers of hard disk drives and flash-memory disk devices define 1 gigabyte as 1000000000bytes as per International System of Units (SI)

Some manufacturers use the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) capacity of 1073741824bytes, as 1 GiB as opposed to 1.074 GB.

add to that Microsoft Windows reports size in gigabytes by dividing the total capacity in bytes by 1073741824,

Hence some cards seem smaller smaller than others

10+11 = Twenty one today! (I wish - that"s long gone-)

[jojopi]

Flash memory chips are sized as exact powers of two.  But all SD/UFD controllers reserve a significant amount of space for things like wear levelling, bad block reallocation, controller firmware.  Often it is around 7%.

The debian-pi SD image is exactly 1886MiB, so that is about 8% less than the 2048MiB capacity of a raw 16Gibit flash chip.  Not surprising that this fits most cards but might fail on some.

[Tass]

liz said:


You can use WinDD.



I've taken a look but there doesn't appear to be a way to select the image as a source - the only options are to select an existing disk (or partition).  Any pointers?

[Themroc]

Tass said:


liz said:


You can use WinDD.


I've taken a look but there doesn't appear to be a way to select the image as a source - the only options are to select an existing disk (or partition).  Any pointers?


Install cygwin, then you have a real dd...

[jamesh]

Try Win32DiskImager.exe (Google will find it) - that's pretty easy to use.

[Tass]

Thanks for all the suggestions.  I found that Win32DiskImager didn't display my SD Card in the device list, and still haven't had any luck with WinDD after an extensive google session.

In the end I found USBIt which looks like it's done the trick.  Well, the SD can't can't be read by Windows anymore, so that's a promising sign (until I formatted it again).  I don't have an SD Card reader in my Ubuntu machine so will have to wait until get my hands on my very own RPi (I have a feeling this is going to be harder that getting my hands on Glastonbury tickets!! )

[liamfraser280]

Just to let you guys know, I'll be doing a video tutorial on using WinDD and probably also resizing the partitions at some point in the week .

[S0litaire]

Tass said:

...
In the end I found USBIt which looks like it's done the trick.  Well, the SD can't can't be read by Windows anymore, so that's a promising sign (until I formatted it again).  I don't have an SD Card reader in my Ubuntu machine so will have to wait until get my hands on my very own RPi (I have a feeling this is going to be harder that getting my hands on Glastonbury tickets!! )



That's one thing about Windows i don't like (well one of many!! ^_~) , it fails to see anything but the first partition on a SDcard.

Though it's good for hiding files if you are using Mac's or Linux and you have friends that are nosy and use windows... ^_~ lol

[Themroc]

Tass said:

Well, the SD can't can't be read by Windows anymore, so that's a promising sign
Er... i'm afraid thats a rather bad sign. The 1. Partition on this image is a


W95 FAT32 (LBA)


so windoze should be able to see it.

[Tass]

Ah, crap...  back to square 1 I suppose.  Windows wouldn't recongnise ANYTHING on the card - saw it as 0KB in size, wanted to format it, etc.

Liam - that would be great, thanks.  I can see my various disk partitions, can add my SD card as the destination, but can't seem to figure out how to specify the image as the source.  Looking forward to it!

[Davespice]

Sorry if this has been asked already.  Liz, just curious to know.  What kind of hit levels have you been seeing on the http downloads?  The torrent has just under 2000 seeds from what my client is telling me.

[rrolsbe]

Hopefully this has not been asked before (I searched the forum), will the EXT4 root file system be mounted noatime, nodiratime, and with the EXT4 journal capability disabled in the currently downloadable .img file?  I am not very familiar with the (De-fragmentation function of EXT4) but maybe that should also be OFF by default if possible.  After-all, minimizing writes to low-end flash boot devices not only increases useful life but should also improve performance somewhat.

Thanks for any Brain cycles in advance!!!

Regards, Ron

[RaTTuS]

Tass said:


Ah, crap...  back to square 1 I suppose.  Windows wouldn't recongnise ANYTHING on the card - saw it as 0KB in size, wanted to format it, etc.


just re-format the SDcard back to a windows system

[liz]

Davespice said:


Sorry if this has been asked already.  Liz, just curious to know.  What kind of hit levels have you been seeing on the http downloads?  The torrent has just under 2000 seeds from what my client is telling me.


I've leant on poor Liam (who is administering the downloads) to write us a blog post about what he's up to. He's come up with some clever load-balancing stuff for those hosting mirrors; there should be something on the front page later today.

[grumpyoldgit]

I'm not even sure how much these mirrors are necessary. I presume they are for people who can't torrent. People on torrents have been generously staying on-line to the extent that any demand seems to be soaked up easily. Like many here, I only have a low capacity ASDL but can keep it running 24/7. In fact, there are so many seeds I've not been able to upload to parity yet!

[itsonlyme]

So many seeds I have hardly had any uploads (Upload total about 2.1 Mb).  Stopped seeding for the time being, but will resume if / when needed. Checking 2 or 3 times a day.

[RaTTuS]

I've left mine seeding and have managed a 1:1.1 Ratio so uploaded a bit more than it is ... ;-p