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The past couple days I've been trying to figure out why my raspberry pi wouldn't boot. I use the USB boot method to boot without the sdcard. I found out there's been some updates and disabled this feature. I'm sure there's some configuration needed but since this was a new and big update, I decided to go back to my old method I did using the sdcard and USB storage. I'll get into that later.

PIXEL stands for “Pi Improved Xwindows Environment, Lightweight.” It is the new official desktop environment for the Raspbian OS.

Changes:

• Desktop Pictures

• Icons

• Windows

• Fonts

• Login

• Wireless Power Switching

• New Applications

• Updates

• Chromium!(Now default browser)

I like the changes. Overall it's faster and smoother and hard to believe the performance on such a small hardware. The design changes are really nice on the eyes I think and I recommend trying out this update.

Screenshots:

Instructions on trying out PIXEL and other screenshots can be found from source: https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/introducing-pixel/

Warning:

Doing this update will use the new configurations and backup the old ones so you will have to reconfigure your settings after you update.

To update an existing Jessie image, type the following at the command line:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

sudo apt-get install -y rpi-chromium-mods

sudo apt-get install -y python-sense-emu python3-sense-emu

sudo apt-get install -y python-sense-emu-doc realvnc-vnc-viewer

and then reboot.

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If you want to boot from your usb mass storage, but still have to use sdcard: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/bootmodes/msd.md

My method is a little different in the end compared to the reference page. If you follow the source page and want to boot with my method, make sure you do not do the last command to power off.

Install the lastest raspbian image on sdcard.

Update using the above method.

Programming USB boot mode is not necessary with my method but if you want to just:

echo program_usb_boot_mode=1 | sudo tee -a /boot/config.txt

PREPARE THE USB STORAGE DEVICE

sudo parted /dev/sda

mktable msdos

You will see:

Warning: The existing disk label on /dev/sda will be destroyed and all data on this disk will be lost. Do you want to continue? Yes/No?

Type y then press Enter

mkpart primary fat32 0% 100M

mkpart primary ext4 100M 100%

print

You should see this:

Model: SanDisk Ultra (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 30.8GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags:
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 1049kB 99.6MB 98.6MB primary fat32 lba
2 99.6MB 30.8GB 30.7GB primary ext4 lba

Hit ctl+c to exit

Next:

sudo mkfs.vfat -n BOOT -F 32 /dev/sda1

sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda2

Mount the target filesystems and copy the running raspbian system to it:

sudo mkdir /mnt/target

sudo mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/target/

sudo mkdir /mnt/target/boot

sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/target/boot/

sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install rsync

sudo rsync -ax --progress / /boot /mnt/target

Regenerate ssh host keys:

cd /mnt/target

sudo mount --bind /dev dev

sudo mount --bind /sys sys

sudo mount --bind /proc proc

sudo chroot /mnt/target

rm /etc/ssh/ssh_host*

dpkg-reconfigure openssh-server

exit

sudo umount dev

sudo umount sys

sudo umount proc

Edit /boot/cmdline.txt so that it uses the USB storage device as the root filesystem instead of the SD card:

sudo sed -i "s,root=/dev/mmcblk0p2,root=/dev/sda2," /mnt/target/boot/cmdline.txt

Also fstab:

sudo sed -i "s,/dev/mmcblk0p,/dev/sda," /mnt/target/etc/fstab

Finally, unmount the target filesystems

cd ~

sudo umount /mnt/target/boot

sudo umount /mnt/target

Here is where my method is different. You want to edit the /boot/config.txt file on the sdcard:

sudo nano /boot/cmdline.txt

Change root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 to root=/dev/sda2

Add rootdelay=5 to the end of the file

Hit ctl+x,

y,

Enter

sudo reboot

It should boot from the sdcard first, then switch over to your USB drive and boot from there. The only thing with this method, you are using the sdcard just for the initial boot. I do this so I can utilize my pidrive and whenever I update the distro, I wont have any problems booting from the USB.

Enjoy :)

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