Solved: Failing To Install OSMC On USB Stick

Help and Support Raspberry Pi
#1

Hi,

I’m trying to install OSMC on my Pi2 Model B, and I want it to run from a USB stick (SanDisk nano-fit, 16GB).
I’ve tried it multiple times, but it keeps installing it on my SD card. How am I sure of this?

  1. It crashes if I pull out the SD card, even long after it’s done booting, which it shouldn’t as far as I understand.
  2. The USB stick has 8 KB of data on it and the SD card has 113MB on one partition and 220MB on another.

In the installer, I chose “on a USB stick”, and the chose the SD card when prompted to choose the device.

It seems to me like I did everything ok. Maybe someone more experienced can shed some light on possible mistakes I made?

Thanks in advance.

#2

This just occurred to me while writing the post - maybe the SD card is formatted with 2 partitions and that’s a problem. I’ll try again and update.

#3

This can not be a full install.
Did you boot from the SD card and let the installer run? Installation depending on you device can take 10 to 30 minutes

#4

I didn’t touch it until OSMC was up. Maybe I mistyped the numbers, but the SD card is 1GB so it couldn’t be much more. I think the problem is with partitioning as I stated in my reply, and the system recognized the 2nd SD partition as an external device. I’m retrying it now and will update soon.

#5

Well try the reformat but definitely the second partition would not be recognised as external USB stick.
Did you use the current installer from osmc.tv?

#6

Reformatting didn’t help.

I downloaded the installer from osmc.tv less than a week ago, so it’s supposed to be the current installer.

The numbers were wrong, I was quoting the available memory.
The memory used is 20MB on the 1st partition, and 533MB on the 2nd one.

Thanks for the replies fzinken :slight_smile:

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#7

Ok, Thanks for the info. Need to check with the team.

1 Like
#8

If you select a USB installation in the OSMC installer, it doesn’t matter how the USB stick is formatted, as the installer will format it to be a single ext4 partition.

Before inserting the card in the Pi, check preseed.cfg and the contents and post them here. After installation, re-insert the SD card in to pc and post ‘install.log’ here.

Sam

1 Like
#9

Ok,
So I downloaded the Installer again (from the same place), used the same settings (for the 5th time), read the preseed file (which seemed ok), booted up my Pi - and it worked!

Pure magic :slight_smile:

Thanks everyone for the help!