majestouch

[majestouch]

[majestouch]

8Bitdo SF30 Bluetooth Gamepad

Instruction Manual

[majestouch]

Installing Raspbian Stretch (full) and Retro Pie on a Raspberry Pi 3 B+ using PINN installer

Recently I purchased:

* A Raspberry Pi 3 B+

* An official Raspberry Pi 2.5 Amp power adapter

* An official Raspberry Pi case

* A Samsung 64 GB Evo Plus microSDXC card

Initially I went to:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian

and downloaded “Raspbian Stretch with desktop and recommended software” aka “Raspbian Stretch (full)”. I followed the installation guide:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/installation/installing-images/README.md

and used balenaEtcher (Etcher) to flash the image to the SD card. Once installed, I booted the Pi and had a look at/adjusted a few settings in the Raspbian Stretch OS.

Then I wanted to install Retro Pie. At first I thought I could just install Retro Pie like you would any other program on an OS. Even though I read that there were manual instructions for installing Retro Pie on top of Raspbian (I think that’s what they said you could do), they inform you:

“If you aren’t comfortable with the terminal you would be wise to just use the RetroPie SD image provided.”

So because I don’t know anything about terminal command lines or the Pi, I thought to myself: “OK, maybe the setup will know I want to install Retro Pie alongside Raspbian and not overwrite it”. But this was just naive wishful thinking.

So I download the Retro Pie stock image:

https://retropie.org.uk/download/

and followed the provided installation guide:

https://retropie.org.uk/docs/First-Installation

As instructed, I used Etcher to install the image to the SD card. Once installed, I booted the Pi and had a look at/adjusted a few settings in Retro Pie/Emulationstation.

When I exited Emulationstation (from within its start menu) it took me to the Retro Pie terminal. I was hoping from this terminal I could start/load/boot Raspbian. So I searched Google for the command to start Raspbian. All I could find was info on how to start PIXEL (I still don’t know what this is exactly). The command was “startx”, but it wasn’t working for me. I eventually found a post by someone having the same problem, and the reply was that it meant PIXEL wasn’t installed and they provided instructions on how to install it.

So at this point I realised Raspbian had been overwritten (the penny finally dropped). So I went looking for a way to dual boot between Raspbian and Retro Pie.

First I read that NOOBS could dual boot operating systems, but unfortunately Retro Pie wasn’t one of them. Then I found a page:

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/noobs-vs-berryboot-installing-raspberry-pi

talking about this installer called PINN, which could dual boot Retro Pie and a whole bunch of other operating systems NOOBS couldn’t.

All you have to do is go to the PINN site:

https://pinn.mjh.nz/

And just follow the steps/prompts.

Select your Pi model, select the size of your SD card, select the OSs you want to dual boot (it will tell you if you have enough space left on your card), and it even gives you this slider bar to adjust how much space is given to each partition. I just left mine at 50% for each, because I don’t know how much space either uses once they’re uncompressed and installed.

Then on the last page it links you to the site to download the PINN software and tells you to download this configuration file (all the info you just gave it automatically creates this config file). It tells you to uncompress the PINN .zip file, and paste the config file in the PINN folder. Then copy everything in the PINN folder to your empty FAT32 formatted SD card.

NB: I had to use MiniTool Partition Wizard to format the SD card because Windows Disk Management wasn’t able to do it for some reason.

Then you stick the card back into the Pi, boot the Pi and it will load up the PINN dual boot setup. It will then download each of the OSs and when it’s finished you can select which one you want it to boot from first.

When you want to switch to the other OS, you reboot within the one you’re currently in (as you would normally reboot within that OS) and when the PINN splash screen pops up, you have a few seconds to press the “Shift” key which will take you to the main menu. Here you can press “Exit (Esc)” which will take you to the list of installed OSs you can choose to boot from.

I’ll eventually write another post listing the Raspbian and Retro Pie settings that I have adjusted so far.

[majestouch]

Clonezilla Pt. 7 - Restoring the Partition Clone

61) I've chosen to "poweroff"

62) It's unmounted the drives it was using and has powered off

63) I booted into Windows and checked the external IDE HDD. It now has one 130 GB partition

64) Up the top in Disk Management it says (G:) is 130 GB, but the bottom graphical representation of the drive doesn't show any partitions, just one 465.76 GB drive/partition?. I don't understand why it has done this

65) At this point I've tried booting from the externally connected IDE HDD, but the laptop won't boot from it. I figured I'll work it out later and tried partitioning the rest of the hard drive first. So I used GParted to view the drive

66) GParted is telling me there is 335.76 GB of unallocated space (within the partition... I'm not sure what that means?). So I did what it suggested and did that "Partition -> Check" thing to "grow the file system to fill the partition"

67) So now the 130 GB partition is a 465.76 GB partition. In hindsight I probably should have ignored the "fill the partition" message and just partitioned and formatted the empty space straight away. You will notice the little key icon is now gone. It meant the drive was mounted. I had to unmount it to do anything to the drive apparently (or something like that)

68) I partitioned and formatted the drive

69) I checked the drive in Disk Management again (but this time using my old Asus i5 laptop, that's why "Disk 0" is partitioned differently to the photo in step 64

70) So I've partitioned it the way I wanted it, but it still won't boot. The Acer laptop won't display any error messages, it would just skip it and boot from its internal hard drive. When I try booting it from the Asus laptop, it gives me the pictured error message.

I tried looking up what the problem could be, but other peoples problems didn't sound the same as mine. I downloaded "AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard Edition" to "Rebuild the MBR" but that didn't appear to do anything. I also used that program to make the (F:) "active", but all that did was make the Acer laptop freeze instead of skipping it when trying to boot.

Without really knowing what I was doing, I downloaded "EasyBCD". In the "BCD Deployment" section you can "Create Bootable External Media".

"EasyBCD can automate the process of creating bootable media. Select a partition below to begin."

So I did that, but it didn't help. I tried a few other things in EasyBCD (that I don't remember the details of)... and I hope I didn't stuff up the laptops MBR in the process. But yeah, nothing was making the external HDD boot.

I think maybe I needed to clone the "SYSTEM RESERVED" partition along with the (C:). This might contain the MBR... or something else relevant to booting the OS.

So not knowing anything about how a hard drive boots is obviously a problem. The next time I experiment with Clonezilla I'll just clone the entire disk. I think that would avoid the problem I'm in at the moment

[majestouch]

Clonezilla Pt. 6 - Restoring the Partition Clone

51) Image checked successfully. "The image of this partition is restorable: sda3"

52) I don't understand why it needed to say "Target disk sdc does not exist in the image saved from disk(s) ‘sda’". When and why would the target exist in the image? I'm confused

53) The following step is to restore an image to the hard disk/partition(s) on this machine: "/tmp/..." -> "sdc sdc1"

"Warning! The existing data in this hard disk/partition(s) will be overwritten! All existing data will be lost."

I'm assuming that if I had the IDE HDD partitioned to C: and D:, and I only wanted to restore the image to the C: partition (leaving D: untouched), that Clonezilla would allow me to do this. But I'm not sure

54) It asks and warns me again of what I'm about to do

55) Starting to restore the C: partition to the IDE HDD

56) "Partclone successfully restored the image to the device (/dev/sdc1)"

57) "Informing the OS of partition table changes...". I don't know what this means or if it's important

58) "Restoring extended boot record (EBR) in extended partition /dev/sdc4...". "Unable to find target partition 'sdc4'".

I'm not sure what this means. I think because the C: partition contains info about the other partitions on the hard drive, it's trying to update/correct/restore something that points or links to something I don't have on the target HDD (which is the extended partition sdc4).

If I'm right, then I wonder if this causes problems in some way

59) Now that everything has completed, it's reminding me what to do to power off/reboot properly

60) "ocs-live-general" finished with error! "Check /var/log/clonezilla.log for more details".

I don't know what this error means, or how to check that log file for more info

[majestouch]

Clonezilla Pt. 5 - Restoring the Partition Clone

41) Chose "Beginner mode"

42) Chose "restoreparts - Restore an image to local partitions"

43) It's asking me to choose the image file to restore

44) It's asking me to choose the partition from the image file to restore

45) It's asking me to choose the target partition to be overwritten. I have selected the Seagate 500 GB IDE HDD (ST350063)

46) It's asking if I want to check that the image is restorable, before attempting to restore it. I selected "Yes"

47) The action to perform when everything is finished. I selected "Choose - reboot/shutdown/etc when everything is finished"

48) I don't understand what these "Do NOT" messages mean

49) Starting to check the image file

50) Finished checking the image file

[majestouch]

Clonezilla Pt. 4 - Restoring the Partition Clone

OK, so since Pt. 3, I have moved the cloned image from the 500 GB IDE HDD to a 64 GB Samsung USB flash drive. I didn't format the IDE HDD, because Clonezilla will do that anyway when we restore the cloned image to it.

31) Used GParted to view the partitions on the HDD inside the Acer i3 laptop

32) Used GParted to view the external Seagate 500 GB IDE HDD

33) Started Clonezilla live disc

34) Selected "device-image - work with disks or partitions using images"

35) Selected "local_dev - Use local device (E.g.: hard drive, USB drive)"

36) Preparing to search for the drive Clonezilla will be restoring from

37) The Samsung flash drive is where we will be restoring the cloned image from

38) Mounting the Samsung flash drive so that it can be read

39) It's asking which directory holds the image we want to restore. There is only the one directory on the flash drive

40) We have selected the directory

[majestouch]

Clonezilla Pt. 3 - Cloning a Partition

21) I think I chose the highlighted option in the photo ("Choose reboot/shutdown when everything is finished")

22) Copying of the C: partition is ready to begin

23) Copying of the C: partition has begun

24) C: successfully cloned

25) The image file is being checked that it's restorable

26) "Partclone successfully checked the image"

27) Summary/confirmation screen

28) I'm pretty sure I selected "poweroff" from this "Choose Mode" screen

29) I removed the Clonezilla Live CD from the tray and pressed enter like it asked, but it didn't power off, it presented this "freezing execution" error message. I don't know why. I had to hold the power button down till it turned the laptop off

30) I turned the laptop back on and it booted into Windows 10 without any problems. I checked the external IDE hard drive and there was the 15.6 GB image folder

[majestouch]

Clonezilla Pt. 2 - Cloning a Partition

11) Second screen regarding the directory you want the image to be saved in

12) Chose "Beginner mode" to accept default options (cause I don't know what I'm doing)

13) I chose "saveparts" to save just the C: partition as an image and not the entire disk

14) It's asking for a name for the image file

15) The image file is named "2018-11-10-00-imgaceri3win10"

16) It's asking which partition I want to clone

17) I chose the C: partition (130 GB)

18) It's asking me if I want to check and repair the file system before saving it as an image. It also tells me this option is not available for the file system I am working with (NTFS). So I just select the "skip" option

19) This screen asks if I want to check if the image is restorable after it's created. I selected "yes"

20) I don't want to encrypt the image

[majestouch]

Clonezilla Pt. 1 - Cloning a Partition

1) Acer i3 Laptop

2) Digitech SATA/IDE to USB 2.0 Hard Drive Adaptor (with a Seagate 500 GB IDE hard drive attached)

3) C: partition is 129 GB

4) BIOS set to boot from CD

5) Boot from Clonezilla Live CD (clonezilla-live-2.5.6-22-amd64.iso)

6) Selected "device-image" option. But I'm a bit confused about the difference between this and "device-device"

7) Selected "local_dev" so I can save the partition image to the 500 GB IDE hard drive

8) The scan thing recognised the IDE hard drive (ST350063)

9) Selected the 500 GB IDE hard drive as the device to mount as "/home/partimag"

10) It was asking for a directory on the hard drive to save the image in. But the hard drive was completely empty, so there was nothing to browse/select