Using an SD card for patches

Organelle Hacking
4

ok, so I have this working :slight_smile:

you will need a new version of mother to be able to use the sdcard for patches, which I now have, and will release a beta ‘shortly’… also the instructions below are for those happy with linux, Id hope later we will be able to script these for everyone, to just fire off from the organelle lcd (like the upgrading of OS)

steps required:
a) get a bigger SD card, make sure its fast - Ive used a 32GB I had lying around
(actually smaller are usually faster, so ideally use the smallest that has enough space for you - remember organelle os is currently using 4gb, so an 8gb card will mean you have 4gb for patches/samples etc)
b) install the Organelle image on this card, I use DD, but there are lots of tools that can do this, as @oweno mentioned
c) take the 4gb card out from your organelle and insert your new one
(this is cool, means you have a backup if this goes wrong :wink: )
d) power up organelle, all should be as before.

e) you now need to log into organelle using ssh , then do the following

run disk to create a new primary partition, you can accept the defaults

fdisk /dev/mmcblk0
   
n
p
w

then you need to reboot

reboot

you now need to create a filesystem on the new partition

mkfs.ext4 /dev/mmcblk0p2

now we need to check it works, so we need to create a mount point, which means we need to write to the main disk
by mounting it… then we mount it to check it works

~/scripts/remount-rw.sh
mkdir /sdcard

mount /dev/mmcblk0p2 /sdcard

ok, you can go to the /sdcard and check you can write files there ok

now we want it to mount automatically on startup, so alter fstab

vi /etc/fstab
/dev/mmcblk0p2 /sdcard  ext4 defaults,noatime 0 0

thats it reboot organelle, copy over your patches from your usb card,
then assuming your using my new mother, you can shutdown your organelle, remove the usbcard, and now organelle will use your sdcard :slight_smile:

dev note:.

  • we could script the above, so could be done without logging into organelle

  • @oweno - I think arch linux is using < ~2gb , so perhaps, we could even repartition the supplied sdcard, to give 2gb for patches? … this would be cool, so you know everyone is using sdcard… not sure how practical this is!?

  • Ive changed ‘mother’, so that if /usbdrive/Patches is present, it will use that, if not then it will look for /sdcard/Patches… if thats not present it will assume /usbdrive/Patches (i.e. to give current behaviour)
    this works well I think, since it means you can use the usb drive to ‘override’ the internal patches

Im also planning to do the same behaviour for system/scripts e.g. priority is /usbdrive/system → /sdcard/system → /root.

yes, I think this is a great idea… generally have a small web server on organelle, would open up a few options for configuring organelle etc…

also I think WiFi is invaluable , worth the USB slot , mine is so far permanently plugged in.
though I think its important, that we ensure we dont assume its presence when ‘playing organelle’ (e.g. not good idea at gigs ;)) - but great for ‘maintenance’

we probably will also need a ‘backup’ plan, in case the user doesn’t have access to wifi, or wifi network.
perhaps we have another option to do an rsync between /usbdrive and /sdcard
(this is useful for ‘backups’ too!)
this would work quite well, since when you plug in the usb stick, organelle will use patches off it (in preference to sdcard),
so then you to the ‘sync’ option, eject the usbstick… and now you’d be using the sdcard version.
(so users can view it as ‘transferring to internal memory’, which I think is an easy concept to grasp)

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