USB Boot Lakka

[imaginaryeast]

I use the alternative approach on all my pi devices. I confirmed this weekend that the same approach works on the pi 4b 4GB. I'm in the more complicated situation because I use BTRFS. So, on the SD card I'm storing a boot partition for the purposes of loading an initramfs that has BTRFS support so that I can then boot the USB BTRFS partition. I don't mind the added complication because it still gets me to the end goal of running the OS off USB.

Not sure if this is off-topic exactly, but I saw your comment and I'm interested in this "alternative" approach. Is this possible to get a Lakka image running off a USB drive if I use an SD card as the boot partition?

Thanks

[Andyroo]

...
Not sure if this is off-topic exactly, but I saw your comment and I'm interested in this "alternative" approach. Is this possible to get a Lakka image running off a USB drive if I use an SD card as the boot partition?

Thanks

Best place would be on the Lakka forum https://forums.libretro.com/c/libretro/lakka-tv-general
or give it a try.

Download the correct image for your machine, put it on the HDD / SSD with Etcher (Etcher will complain about the disk size as a warning - ignore it if you are happy its the CORRECT disk)
Format any sized SD card (up to 32Gb) as fat and copy the bootcode.bin file from your Pi image to the root of the card

Connect it all up and with luck off you go

[imaginaryeast]

...
Not sure if this is off-topic exactly, but I saw your comment and I'm interested in this "alternative" approach. Is this possible to get a Lakka image running off a USB drive if I use an SD card as the boot partition?

Thanks

Best place would be on the Lakka forum https://forums.libretro.com/c/libretro/lakka-tv-general
or give it a try.

Download the correct image for your machine, put it on the HDD / SSD with Etcher (Etcher will complain about the disk size as a warning - ignore it if you are happy its the CORRECT disk)
Format any sized SD card (up to 32Gb) as fat and copy the bootcode.bin file from your Pi image to the root of the card

Connect it all up and with luck off you go

Ok. Thanks. I'll give it a try.

[HawaiianPi]

Why is it that I cant use usb boot on this model.
Raspberry Pi Model B Plus Rev 1.2

Are you really asking about the old single core Pi1 model B+ or the newer 3B+ model (v1.3)?

If it's the older 1B+ model, it cannot boot directly from USB. However, you can write a Raspbian image to a USB drive, then copy the bootcode.bin file from the USB drive's "boot" partition to a FAT32 formatted micro SD card, and with that card in the system the USB drive should boot the OS.

If it's the 3B+ it should be able to boot directly from USB, however, not all USB mass storage devices are compatible with the boot-loader. If you find you have a USB drive that is not compatible, the same bootcode.bin only micro SD card technique above should work.