STICKY: PINN - An enhanced version of NOOBS.

[ShiftPlusOne]

No nudges necessary.

[procount]

[Patrick76]

PINN has been updated to v2.5.1

V2.5.1

• firmware - New firmware for Rpi 3B+
• Kernel - Update to kernel 4.9.80
• OS firmware - Latest firmware is slip streamed onto old OSes
• wifi drivers - Some wifi drivers temporarily removed until they can be upgraded
• Arora - Prevented multiple instances of Arora browser running

Sorry for the wait, but finally PINN is suitable for the Pi3B+.
Thanks to those who left positive comments about the previous beta versions.

PINN v2.5.1 includes new firmware, kernel and drivers to support the new Pi3B+ model. This latest firmware may prevent older OSes from booting from PINN if they have not been upgraded to the latest firmware, even on the older RPi models. PINN will therefore automatically upgrade the older firmware of any OS during installation. This is a bit of an experimental feature to avoid having to upgrade all the OSes individually, as there are just far to many to test. If this causes a probem, this firmware upgrade feature can be disabled by adding `nofirmware` to recovery.cmdline.

The new firmware is stored in /firmware.override. If it is newer than a version on an installed OS, it is automatically copied on installation. If it is older, or it does not exist in the OS, it is ignored.

Many OSes that support the Pi3 will need updating to support the new Pi3B+ model, so the list of available OSes for this Pi3B+ may be limited until the maintainers can release newer versions. Adding the `showall` option may allow the older version to be selected, and PINN's new firmware upgrade feature may allow them to boot, but the kernel and drivers will still need to be updated to allow the new hardware features to be used (LAN, USB, wifi etc).

If you are aware of any distros that have already been updated, but PINN still refers to the older version, please let me know, preferably with a link, and I will endeavour to update them.
Also let me know if there are any OSes that will no longer work with PINN.

Unfortunately, some of the previous drivers for Realtek wifi dongles have not been included in this release. I will add them into a later version when I have upgraded them.

On RasPi3 (not plus) after this PINN update my Recalbox 18.03.06 (newest version) is not starting anymore. Reinstall option forces kernelpanic after booting Recalbox then again.
Any help?

[procount]

This is apparantly due to a different firmware incompatibility. Recalbox will fix this in their next release.

EDIT: In the meantime, if you haven't got a 3B+, I suggest sticking with the latest v2.4 of PINN until the OSes are upgraded to catch up with the latest firmware etc. You can find the old versions on sourceforge in the /archive folder.

[procount]

PINN has been updated to v2.5.2a

V2.5.2a

• OS firmware - Better firmware slip streaming timestamps
• cmdline BUGFIX - The list of PINN OSes are now restored

Well, it seems busybox unzip is not as compatible as I thought it was, and my deployment script was not quite rebuilt correctly after a disk crash.
Hopefully, this release fixes those little bugs!

[alectronic]

Hi,

first of all - I'm a noob even if I'm trying to install things with PINN... bought the latest RPi 3 B+ a few days ago, have a 32Gb Samsung SD in it... with PINN on it...

the install menu does not show all names, I'm mainly looking to install the latest LibreOS(KODI) along with RetroPie...

LibreOS is available, but no sign of RetroPie,

and I have tryied everything... reformated the card several times, with the SD Formater, made the card normal with copy/paste, made a custom partition file, connected the RPi to wired network, etc etc etc... all being individual tries ... nothing worked...

what am I doing wrong / missing ?

[ShiftPlusOne]

Hi,

first of all - I'm a noob even if I'm trying to install things with PINN... bought the latest RPi 3 B+ a few days ago, have a 32Gb Samsung SD in it... with PINN on it...

the install menu does not show all names, I'm mainly looking to install the latest LibreOS(KODI) along with RetroPie...

LibreOS is available, but no sign of RetroPie,

and I have tryied everything... reformated the card several times, with the SD Formater, made the card normal with copy/paste, made a custom partition file, connected the RPi to wired network, etc etc etc... all being individual tries ... nothing worked...

what am I doing wrong / missing ?

Are you sure you've got PINN and not NOOBS?

[procount]

See viewtopic.php?f=91&t=209150#p1292679
I'll try and convert the test version of Retropie in the next couple of days.

[alectronic]

Hi,
.....

Are you sure you've got PINN and not NOOBS?

no THAT of a noob, I'm very sure about this...

in the meanwhile I managed to tri-boot using BerryBoot with berryboot images,

with PINN I was not able to do anything, the darn OSs just did not apper in the install menu

[Topper]

I'm not a noob but must admit - PINN blows my mind Congrats for the amazing system at first.
That's second time I try PINN. First install was 3-4 OSs and all (except Lineage) works great on my RPi3B (not B+ !).
Because of that I try to remove Lineage to free-up space for Rasbian.
But realize that "change in configuration" is not possible - only RE-install all OSs.
First question: Is that right ??

So decide to make USB stick install, not mixed SD+USB stick because RPi3B allows me and bought 64Gb stick.
Here comes the second question - I've tried v2.4.5f and v2.5.2a and in both of them there isn't anymore Ubuntu Mate.
In my previous (SD+USB stick) install there was Ubuntu Mate, could be missing due to USB only install ?
If look here http://noobs.matthuisman.nz/ there is Ubuntu Mate 16.04.2 LTS install maintained by PINN.
Second question: Where is Ubuntu Mate for RPi3B? Could be only temp repo problem?

Edit: Yes, when start SD+USB stick install (PINN on SD) there is many more OSs include Ubuntu Mate

Thanks in advance for A's and again - Great job !!!
Edit:OSMC_PI2 has an error in install: /settings/os/OSMC_Pi2/partition_setup.sh: line1: arithmetic syntax error

[procount]

Thanks for the praise.

Q1 - Yes. You must install all your OSes in one go, which fixes your partition layout. To change them you must start again. But at least the re-install option now allows you to refresh each OS individually, which is a step up from NOOBS. I have some other plans to improve this in the future, but PINN is not a replacement for gparted(!) You can use that to manually delete and move partitions around, but you need to adjust the partition layout in /settings and probably adjust each OS's cmdline.txt & fstab entries. Once you've done that you'll realise why I haven't put it in PINN.

Q2. Ubuntu Mate 16.04 is one of my conversions. I haven't removed it. But accessing the sourceforge site today has produced a number of error messages so maybe there is a problem with their access again. I suggest you wait a day and try again. Not all OSes support installation to USB. Installing to SD card may make it appear again. Same for Retropie.(Complain to the OS maintainers).

EDIT: But it looks like it may be possible to adapt Ubuntu Mate to run from USB. See viewtopic.php?f=56&t=209324

OSMC_Pi2 - Not maintained by me - try it again with 2.4.5f and if there is still a problem I suggest you ask on their forum.

ALL - If you don't have a 3B+, it's better to stick with 2.4.5f for now. A new version to better support this transitory period whilst the 3B+ is still very new will hopefully be out soon. The benefit of p2.5.2a is only that it works on the Pi3B+

[Topper]

Thanks for the quick and vast answer.
I'm 25y sysadmin and know something
A1:Yes I've deleted with GP 9th and 10th partion, edited fstab but not so familiar with PINN and didn't know about necessary changes in cmdline.txt
Anyway that's gained experience so next time will make it right. Understand you about not-implementation in PINN!
A2:Could be smart to put a button "Retry" and not just "Ok" at error couse after install 5 OSs to have such error due to download miss...
Will check out how-to run UM from USB+SD mixed install and report back.

Thanks again for the effort.

Edit: Just a thought - could be possible to make first step install X OSs on USB and second step re-run PINN install procedure and install Y OSs on SD card? I guess no but must ask

[Desty12]

Hello!
Sorry for the stupid question , but is it possible to install Volumio on the Raspberry using PINN?

[procount]

A2:Could be smart to put a button "Retry" and not just "Ok" at error couse after install 5 OSs to have such error due to download miss...
Will check out how-to run UM from USB+SD mixed install and report back.

During install it downloads, extracts and installs an OS all at the same time, so it is not easy to resume.
If download errors often occur, it may be better to download each OS individually and install them locally from a USB stick. (See README_PINN.md)
(improvements are on my roadmap)

Edit: Just a thought - could be possible to make first step install X OSs on USB and second step re-run PINN install procedure and install Y OSs on SD card? I guess no but must ask

Err..... No.

[douglas5962]

Has anyone else seen PINN crashing to a command prompt with an error about not being access tty? It seems to happen with all pre-built PINN-Lite versions I've downloaded and run on my CM3.

If I try building the latest code available on the Github repository it seems to ignore the recovery.cmdline option not to download the default OS list but atleast it doesn't crash to a command prompt.

[procount]

Do you have anything attached to (what would be the equivalent of) GPIO pins 3, 5 or 6? Maybe you are entering the rescueshell and the error message is just a warning from entering that? What is the output of `cat /tmp/debug`?
Which specific PINN versions have you tested with?
I've never had the opportunity to test PINN with a CM3, but I assume NOOBS has. Did you try if NOOBS worked or does it do the same thing?

[douglas5962]

There's nothing connected to those pins on the header but there is a TXS0108E level translator between the CM3 and the actual header. Supposedly the level translator is totally transparent. This is ComfilePi, which is basically just a CM3 and a waterproof touchscreen. Here's the link to a little more info on it :
http://comfilewiki.co.kr/en/doku.php?id ... cellaneous

I tried v2.5.2a, 2.5.2 and 2.4.5f off Sourceforge and all three dumped me to the command prompt about 5 seconds after seeing the list of available OSes. I did have the command line option not to download the OS list so only my image was showing up. The version of NOOBS I compiled from scratch didn't dump me to the command prompt. What's odd is that if I download the PINN source code from Github I can build 2.4.5g and it doesn't dump me out of the UI but it does completely ignore the command line options to not download the OS list or check for updates.

Just an FYI, this ComfilePI does have some odd display settings so that's why I was building NOOBS and PINN from scratch with the right display settings.

[procount]

@douglas5962 - at the moment, the LibreELEC mirror is down, so it is taking ages for the PINN Initialising dialog to disappear,
Are you by chance hitting 'Esc' to cancel this dialog box early, and then installing other OSes? If so, please wait til the initialising dialog has disappeared before trying to install the OSes.

[douglas5962]

Nope, I've just been letting sit there and then after the 5 or 10 seconds it was crashing to the command line. Over the weekend I recompiled everything fresh from Github and it's been working totally fine. The only difference is that I didn't have the module connected to the internet... I'll experiment a little tonight to see if the lack of an internet connection has anything to do with it.

[procount]

When it crashes, please note if the dialog box disappears beforehand, leaving just the raspberry wallpaper.

Also, you could post the output of 'cat /tmp/debug'

[procount]

PINN has been updated to v2.5.3

V2.5.3

• Switch firmware - Enable PINN's firmware to be upgraded/downgraded for RPI3B+ or other models.

As new models of RPi are introduced, newer firmware is required that is compatible with all models.
This version of PINN contains the latest firmware so that is suitable for all RPi models, including the RPI3B+.

However, in order to multi-boot, PINN also requires the firmware of each OS to be compatible with its own. If this is not the case,
the OS will not boot. A lot of the existing OSes that PINN can install for older RPi models use older firmware that is not compatible
with this latest PINN firmware or the 3B+. PINN tries to solve this incompatibility in 2 alternative ways:

1) When PINN is first installed, it uses the new firmware that is suitable for all models including the 3B+. If it detects it is running on a
RPi model that is older than the 3B+, it will downgrade its firmware to a previous version that is compatible with the older OSes so they
will all boot. However, doing so will not allow it to run on a RPi3B+ anymore.

2) If PINN uses the latest firmware, it will upgrade the firmware of older OSes as they are installed. This may or may not work depending on each OS, so this option can be disabled by using the `nofirmware` option.

There is a new button in the Archival menu to Upgrade or Downgrade PINN's firmware manually to cope with the majority of use cases.
Once PINN's firmware has been upgraded or downgraded, it will remember this setting. So if you move your PINN SD card from an older RPI model
to the 3B+ or vice versa, please remember to change the firmware appropriately. In particular, before moving it to a RPi3B+, make sure the
firmware is updated first otherwise it will not boot. After a self-update, PINN will use the latest firmware, but downgrade if it is run on an older RPi model.

Please note that a lot of OSes still need to be updated to work with the RPI3B+, so the list of available OSes will be quite limited.
Using the `showall` option, it is possible to list all available OSes for all models and install any of them. PINN's firmware upgrade
feature may allow them to boot on a RPi3B+, but this will not be sufficient to use the OS properly. In addition, the kernel may need to
be updated and the new drivers for the new hardware need to be installed to use them. This situation will improve as more OSes are made
compatible with the RPi3B+.

[douglas5962]

@procount it looks like the issue has to do with the no_default_source option being used. A Segmentation fault is occurring just after downloading overrides.json from Github. I've attached an image of the debug log, I couldn't get it exported from the unit.

[procount]

@douglas5962 - please try v2.5.3 that I just released.
If it's still a problem, please open a github issue and we'll discuss it there.

[douglas5962]

@procount I'll give v2.5.3 shot, but did you happen to do release with that source code? The latest release I see on Github is 2.4.2f or 2.4.2g if I clone the repository.

[procount]

No I've not had time to do it yet. Needs a little tidy up first.