Flashing recalbox and roms onto new sd card?

[hughesadam87]

Let me first say that I LOVE recalbox and really appreciate your team! You've done such a great job with this project; it's what open source is all about.

I built a recalbox on a pi3, and my friends are super jealous. They are buying the kits now, and I promised I'd help them get setup. Rather than starting from scratch (flashing OS, uploading roms etc...) is it possible for me to simply flash an image of the current state of my system on their formatted cards? In that way, they'd have the OS and roms right away.

Wondered if this had been done successfully before, or if it's not so simple?

[supernature2k]

@hughesadam87

Never done that but it may be quite easy.

There are tools to create images of a drive and then burn it on another device (ghosting).

[hughesadam87]

@supernature2k Do you think state information like my network settings would screw up when flashed over? Or would recalbox OS simply wipe them when my buddy's wifi connects.

I will try it out and report my findings, thanks!

[supernature2k]

@hughesadam87

If that's a clone, all settings will remain.

Result will be if network is not found, Recalbox won't connect. They will just have to fill their correct NW info for Wifi (via ES interface with a keyboard).

[Brad]

I followed this method for cloning a 16GB SD card on a Mac - https://computers.tutsplus.com/articles/how-to-clone-raspberry-pi-sd-cards-using-the-command-line-in-os-x--mac-59911

It seemed to work ok but I noticed that the roms didn't copy over and it seems the config is set back to default (for example, the 360 controller light was flashing instead of being on player 1).

Any ideas?

[Substring]

We can't stress enough to use USB sticks for storage. Making images has the despicable habbit of freezing partitions size. So, if you flash your 32GB on a 64GB, it's useless.

If you want to switch to a USB stick, it's quite easy if you're ready to run a few commands to sync your key with your SD (i.e. copy everything useful). Then, you'd just need to copy the key, up to them to prepare the SD card.

[Brad]

@Substring Thanks - makes sense and will definitely look to do that in the future.

Would you have any ideas why though cloning from a 16GB card to a 16GB card results in the roms not being copied over? The partitions look the same once the clone is finished but the partition with the roms is smaller on the cloned card. Perhaps because Mac OSX can't read the EXT4 partition natively?

Details below.

Cloned card:

/dev/disk2 (internal, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: FDisk_partition_scheme *15.5 GB disk2
1: Windows_FAT_16 RECOVERY 649.8 MB disk2s1
2: Linux 33.6 MB disk2s5
3: Windows_FAT_32 boot 62.9 MB disk2s6
4: Linux 2.1 GB disk2s7
5: Linux 12.7 GB disk2s8

Source card:

/dev/disk2 (internal, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: FDisk_partition_scheme *15.9 GB disk2
1: Windows_FAT_16 RECOVERY 649.8 MB disk2s1
2: Linux 33.6 MB disk2s5
3: Windows_FAT_32 boot 62.9 MB disk2s6
4: Linux 2.1 GB disk2s7
5: Linux 13.1 GB disk2s8

[Substring]

@Brad cloning through .img has nothing to do with partitions or file systems. For instance, win32 disk imager can perfectly clone Recalbox SD cards. So a img is supposed to be a true bit-to-bit image. Now I wonder if you're doing it the right way .... Alas, i can't help you on mac OS

[paradadf]

@Brad I had one user that had the same problem, and everything ended up being a problem of the built-in card reader. Using an external reader solved it.

[Brad]

Thanks for the help. It turns out that the Sandisk 16GB micro SD cards bought from different stores were reporting different storage capacities - one being 14.4GB and the other 14.8GB. Both are confirmed as genuine but with different manufacturing dates - one June 2016 and the other October 2016 and from different locations - China and Taiwan.

I ended up just rebuilding the Recalbox on the second card.

Thanks again.

[hughesadam87]

I'm going to try this on wednesday using the configuraiton sold on recalbox website (the Vilros 32gb kit) and report back. Glad to see others have been thinking about this.