I would like to make a dual-boot Raspian and OSMC system on a 64GB card.
I have done this before but Raspian expanded to use up nearly the entire empty space on the card,hardly leaving any room for OSMC.
How can I stop Raspian from doing this and set it to partition only say 20GB’s of the card and leave the other 44GB’s for OSMC?
Do I need to edit the .json file in the Raspian Image in Noobs before copying it to the card?
Help would be appreciated
I think you’d find much more relevant and timely information asking this question of the developers of NOOBS. Seems to be some documentation regarding your question in the Custom OS section here noobs/README.md at master · raspberrypi/noobs · GitHub
Yep – we only claim 2GB of space for OSMC, which is a bit tight.
Sam
Ha!Yes indeed,so tight that I can’t upgrade…!
I’m doing a new build on a 64GB card and want to have 40GB for OSMC
So if I edit the .json for Raspian to say 20GB (which I don’t know how to do yet!) won’t OSMC still only use 2GB unless I edit the .json for OSMC aswell?
Yes – unless you change that in OSMC’s os.json.
If you grab all the files, you can effectively create a NOOBS install locally (I know OSMC is fetched online at the moment).
Some helpful resources:
http://download.osmc.tv/installers/noobs/
If you take a look at how Raspbian is set up (it’s bundled on the SD already) and its directory structure, you may be able to work out how OSMC should be packaged on the SD. You could then edit our partitions-pi*.json and fix things up to your liking.
Let me know if you need some pointers. I’ll have a chat with the NOOBS maintainer and see if something can be done. I know that add-ons and large libraries take a bit of space, but, conversely, we don’t want to consume space unnecessarily that some users may never use, and we like to fit on some smaller (4GB) cards.
As an aside, I believe you also posted on the Raspberry Pi forum. If you find this solution satisfactory, I’d appreciate a link to it from the Pi forum as I am sure that other users will stumble upon this problem.
Best
Sam
Thanks for the info Sam,very valueable indeed.I have asked around on the Raspberry forum etc and don’t really get very detailed responses regarding this.
I was literally just looking into how to make my own Noobs build,something that I didn’t envisage doing though I must admit!I can download OSMC from here,which I assume is the correct version for Pi3 also:
http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/osmc_pi2/
In terms of pointers,it would be a great help if you could tell me how to set the partition size to a set value for the OSMC .json file as I can’t find any info on this.
I understand the reasoning behind a 2GB partition fully,but I guess I am the exception because I am installing RetroPie within OSMC and thus has eaten all my space up!
You will always be better off sourcing installs/images directly from us.
Edit "partition_size_nominal": 2048,
Sam
I’m looking at the partitions.json file for the latest OSMC and it says “partition_size_nominal”: 1500 .I’m assuming that’s what I’d change?
{
“partitions”: [
{
“label”: “boot-rbp2”,
“filesystem_type”: “FAT”,
“partition_size_nominal”: 80,
“want_maximised”: false,
“mkfs_options”: “-F32”,
“uncompressed_tarball_size”: 21
},
{
“label”: “root-rbp2”,
“filesystem_type”: “ext4”,
“partition_size_nominal”: 1500,
“uncompressed_tarball_size”: 506,
“want_maximised”: true,
“mkfs_options”: “-F -I 256 -E stride=2,stripe-width=1024,nodiscard -b 4096”
}
]
}
This is what I am going to make the settings for the Raspian partition,which should give me a 20GB partition if I’m correct?
{
“partitions”: [
{
“filesystem_type”: “FAT”,
“label”: “boot”,
“partition_size_nominal”: 63,
“uncompressed_tarball_size”: 21,
“want_maximised”: false
},
{
“filesystem_type”: “ext4”,
“label”: “root”,
“mkfs_options”: “-O ^huge_file”,
“partition_size_nominal”: 20000,
“uncompressed_tarball_size”: 3188,
“want_maximised”: false
}
]
}
Yes – your reasoning is correct.
The latest NOOBS with OSMC uses 2GB, not 1500M, so make sure you have the latest version.
Sam
Could I just set the OSMC partition to what size I desire and then leave Raspians .json untouched and it will then only maximise to whats left after OSMC has taken the share I’ve allocated?
Yes
OK.
Now I’m a bit stuck as the file’s contained with OSMC’s latest image file differ drastically from the Raspian structure.I cannot even locate the partition.json file…
what I get from the image direct from the OSMC website:
2016.05-1 e28486733e116c67deb8b5aebb456ffe
is very different to this (which is much closer to the Raspian file structure):
Icidently the partitions.json here which it states as being from 13-May-2016 09:06 is set to a partition size of 1500 Not 2000.Just so you know.
The one here Index of /osmc_pi2 that is
According to information on the Raspberry Pi forum I simply need to set the Raspian partition.json nominal size to the desired amount,say 20GB and then download OSMC via Noobs and because OSMC’s partition.json maximise=true it should then use up the remaining space,rather than the apparently 2GB it is set to?Is this also correct?
If anyone could could provide a definitive answer to this so `i can get on and install then that would be fantastic…