Patch to maximize SD Card patch storage

Organelle Organelle 1
1

Ive just released a patch that will maximise the patch storage on your SD Card,
without any technical linux wizardry , to fully utilise your sdcard size!

what does this mean?

the standard C&G SD card image, will use 8GB of your SD Card, 4GB for the OS, and 4GB for patch storage regardless of the size of your SD Card, so if you have a 16GB card, your limited to 4GB for patches/samples.

After running ResizeSD, e.g. a 16GB card will now have 4GB for OS, and 12GB for your patches and samples :slight_smile:

FAQ

  • before you run ResizeSD , you must have already installed the C&G OS 3.1 SD Card image ( if you have not see bottom of post), this will mean you have 4GB for OS and a 4GB patch partition, regardless of the size of your SD Card.
  • this is a non-destructive process, so your patches/samples will not be hurt in the process.
  • it’ll work on any card size, though only useful if the card is > 8gb (see notes on sdcard below)
  • once done, it’ll persist thru updates etc… only re-flashing the sdcard will require you to do it again.
  • I tested on OS 3.1, but should work on any OS > 3.1
  • I cannot think of a reason why it would ever fail,
    but the rollback would be be download the C&G OS 3.1 image and flash, and try again.

Using ResizeSD

first install it…

I repeat this is not a destructive process, but Id recommend you patch patches/samples if they are important to you… I take no responsibility for anything that might go wrong.
(standard disclaimer really… and you are backing up regularly anyway aren’t you :wink: )

now to run it
this is a two stage process, so you will run it twice.

  • run it - first time it will tell you its going to “Recreate the Partition”, then tell you reboot at the end…
  • shutdown your organelle, and restart it
  • run it again, this time it will tell you its going to “Resize the partition”

thats it your done (you don’t have to reboot after second time)

you can/should now delete the ResizeSD patch, as you won’t need it anymore :slight_smile:

how do you know its done?
unfortunately the patch manager doesn’t report size, so if you really feel like you need to check you will need to connect a monitor to HDMI, and keyboard and type

df -h /sdcard

this will report a bit less that you expect, e.g. 16gb will report 11gb rather than 12gb, but much more than the previous 3.7gb :slight_smile:

happy patching

Mark

Installing the C&G OS 3.1 SD card image

if you have not, you need to do this first!
pre-requisite:

  • minimum of 8gb sdcard, but your going to want more, to get > 4GB patch/sample storage
  • you’ll need an computer sd card reader.
  • you’ll probably want to have a wifi stick, so you can transfer patches using the built-in patch-manager
    (otherwise you’ll have to use the linux command line to transfer patches from USB to SDcard, which is no fun ;))

i) download from : http://thepeacetreaty.org/organelle/diskimages/20180529-v3.1.img.zip
ii) unzip it!
ii) download etcher.io , from http://etcher.io
iii) remove sd card from organelle, and insert into sdcard reader attach to you computer
iv) run etcher.io, select image you prepared in steps i & ii
v) insert new sdcard into your organelle …

at this stage you will probably then want to move patches from USB to SDcard using wifi/patch manager

A note on micro SD cards

before everyone runs off to buy huge size SD cards :slight_smile:

I recommend you buy good quality micro sd cards with fast read and write speeds ( I use SanDisk Ultra SDHC class 10) - nothing is more frustrating that having your Organelle behaving erratically because its silently having read/write issues!

that said, you don’t need the the fastest cards in the world, as the patches are loaded into memory at startup (and theres limited memory) - and there is also a limit at how fast samples can/need to read in.

heres some background info

also my understanding is that large sd cards can have slight poorer performance (due to block sizes), so go for a card that is large enough for your needs - rather than the largest you can get your hands on.

Axoloti users have tested quite a few cards, which might give you some ‘real world’ numbers etc.

7 Likes
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Mega utility ;-)!!

Thanks for all the work or the “work around” this issue.

I have tried with a 16Gb sdcard; previous to running ResizeSD

IMG_0459%2Cjpg
IMG_0459,jpg.jpg4015×1529 1.21 MB

ResizeSD ( @thetechnobear wizardry)

IMG_04600
IMG_04600.jpg3024×4032 1.62 MB

an end result (again on a 16Gb sdcard)

IMG_0461
IMG_0461.jpg4019×1539 1.14 MB

1 Like
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fantastic! thanks a lot for this mark.
after successfully running the resize - i copied over some older patches from my old usb drive.
i found that the organelle could not run any .pd files with capital latters in them (yielded ’ could not create’ in dialog box)
after changing these .pd filenames to lower case both in folder and in-patch (subpatches), they worked fine.
is this an inconvenient quirk of running from the sd card that I somehow missed until now - or something to do with resizeSD?

4

yes, nothing to do with resizing, its using the sdcard using ext4

thats not accurate :wink:

it can use capital letters, but its case sensitive, that means that
if its referred to in the patch in lowercase it must be lowercase as a filename,
if its uppercase in the patch, must have the same filename
thats just how Pure Data works.

unfortunately, patch developers using mac/window don’t see this because they are case insensitive (and the USB stick was formatted to FAT32, so a windows format) - so really its ‘sloppy programming’ :wink:

the ext4 used on linux is case sensitive( and much better than fat32 ), so it becomes evident.

there are a few factory patches which have this bug, which Id like to get fixed… but its not really that many, and its pretty quick to resolve once you see it… (as you’ve seen your told in PD console)

1 Like
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i see! quick for some, could be very inconvenient for others - might be worth adding a disclaimer about this in here @oweno

thanks again dude

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Ive actually already mentioned it in on quite a few threads… including the latest PD 49 thread.

I don’t think really its an issue beyond the factory patches, which either C&G or I will fix :wink:

note: Ive been using sdcard exclusively for a very long time, (nearly a year?) and only saw it on a handful of patches, and I fixed the C&G ones in about 30 minutes… unfortunately, Ive forgotten which, so would need to do again.

i don’t think its worth a disclaimer, as frankly its just going to confuse,
we should just treat it as a bug in patches (as that is what it is!) and fix where needed.

and i guess, also try to raise awareness to patch developers, which ive also been doing,
(Ive already told a number of developers when they have had this issue in their patches, then its up to them to fix it or not :wink: )

7

@thetechnobear hooray for the great work you are contributing!! :tada:

Am here to mention something.
I read about the ResizeSD on your patchstorage.com profile.
There is a mistake on you description that is not on the description here.

"you can not delete the ResizeSD patch, as you won’t need it anymore :slight_smile: "

I thought i was weird not to be able to delete it afterwards so i run on the C&G forum to check about it and mention it in order misinterpretations to be avoided.

Atb!

Ps: hope i am not off-topic (too much)

1 Like
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oops typo, was suppose to say “you can now delete the …”.
Odd thing is I fixed it in top post here on the forum.
fixed now on patchstorage too :slight_smile:

1 Like
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While trying to check the SD card before running the ResizeSD patch, I have found myself unable to access it even though it is physically inside: /sdcard does not exist. I’m pretty sure it’s not normal. SD Card is also not accessible in the web server interface. However, ResizeSD has been able to run correctly. Any idea what is wrong?

10

please re-read this install notes, I spent a lot of time writing them!

if /sdcard was not present, this is because you are trying to run on an image that has not been configured for sdcard patchstorage - this is discussed in the installation notes, on how to do this.

this patch is only to increase the size of patch storage on the sdcard configure it for use.

my advice is: ( as per install notes)

  • get a 16gb sdcard
  • install latest 3.1 image, this allows for sdcard patch storage
  • get wifi working
  • run this maximise patch to increase patchstorage

this will probably also help your issue with remote VNC which might be caused by something in your current installation.

1 Like
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Thank you very much for your explanations. I had read all your instructions but wrongly understood that since I had the 3.1 update installed on my Organelle, I had a 3.1 SD card image.

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no, unfortunately - there is a split here…

OS 3.1 update for sure will run on any Organelle, but the C&G supplied sdcard is 4GB , and is fully occupied with the operating system, there is no room for patches.

so C&G provided an image for OS3.1 for 8gb+ cards, that has room for 4gb of patches etc, this patch allows that space to be extended to the full capacity of the card.

13

Thank you again Techno Bear, with a newly installed SD card image on a brand new 128GB Sandisk SDXC Class 10 U1 A1, I can finally access the SD card and get 114 GB which is great.

1 Like
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@thetechnobear Thanks for this patch and for clarifying the difference between the OS update patch and the image. I should add one more clarification which is that the Organelles have been shipping with 8GB cards for some time now.

1 Like
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Hey @thetechnobear would this patch work on the OrganelleM?

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No, not at the moment!
(and in patchstorage now it should fail to run or an Organelle-m, but don’t try as it will kill you OS :wink: ) )

but its not hard to update, as the process identical for the organelle-m,
however, needs to delete and recreate partition 3 (not 2, as on the organelle-1)

you can do this manually if you wish, using fdisk and resize2fs … I think i detailed this in another post somewhere

a few notes about the organelle-m

note: the supplied SD card with the organelle-m is 8gb, so its already maximized, this would only be useful if you were to be buy and use a bigger card on the Organelle-m

the posts above are about the organelle-1, so things like the image details above are not appropriate for the organelle-m

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AH I’ll see if I can dig up that post then!

I’ve actually already cloned the image onto a larger card, now currently just attempting to expand the available storage space :slight_smile:

19

ive now tried to flash a new and larger sd card for my organelle-1 and it has failed repeatedly. When i unzip the disk image in win rar it says the file is corrupt. Ive also tried using the native windows10 extract function and it too fails.

is the image corrupt or am i missing something?

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I assume we are taking about the resize patch?
( not organelle os image?)

You should just transfer zip file to organelle patches directory , then menu will offer install.

Does that not work ?

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no i mean the disk image, not the patch

20180529-v3.1