PINN and pi-topSIRIUS: Official image request

pi-top Software pi-topSIRIUS
#1

Greetings everyone :wave:

Would it be possible for us to get an official PINN installation image for Sirius?

It would be a great addition to have Sirius available for PINN for those of us who wish to boot between multiple OS’s and pi-topSIRIUS using PINN along with pi-top hardware.

Is this something that could be considered by the development team?

In my own use-case I have tried archiving an installation of Sirius and creating the tarballs and associated .json files required by PINN but no matter what I do – following PINN documentation – when I try to boot Sirius (currently C178 2020-12-22) I am presented with only a black screen after PINN initializes booting of Sirius.

At this point, I am wondering if I need to change something in partition_setup.sh. Is there anything that I would need to specifically add to the shell script for Sirius to boot successfully? I’m currently using a vanilla Raspbian partition_setup.sh.

Thoughts and comments are as always warmly welcomed.

Many thanks!

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#2

Would love to see this! Started trying to create the same files as you on an old PINN set up but ran out of space so never even got to the point you have of finding out it doesn’t work :frowning: Have you tried asking Procountsf on GitHub?

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#3

Hi @Yliannyx, I’ve not had any experience with PINN but it looks great - I’ll get one of the team to look into it and see if we can offer any advice, would be great to have instructions on how to use it with pi-topOS! :+1:

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#4

Have you tried using Sakaki’s PINNIFY script? https://github.com/sakaki-/pinnify

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#5

I just spoke to the OS team on this and it won’t be possible to use PINN with pi-topOS. Essentially, we created some functionality for schools to allow them to reinstall the OS from a USB stick without needing to remove the SD card - this means we have our own bootloader (based on PINN fundamentals) and the partition table is not compatible with the PINN or NOOBs bootloaders.

We may choose to change this in future as we’re not currently using the functionality I’ve described since it’s not completely finished yet - we’ll keep you updated!

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#6

@PhiPi, I’ve not tried Pinnifiy, as I wasn’t aware of it but from reading, it’s a valuable tool that will certainly come in handy! I’ll properly look into it this weekend!

@duwudi, Thanks very much for talking with the team! Indeed, PINN compatibility would be great, but I certainly understand the design decisions surrounding pi-topOS’s boot loader and it’s main target audience.

I’ll do some investigation my end to see if I am able to get pi-topOS working with PINN, and if successful, I’ll release those steps here for those that would like to multi-boot their Pi with pi-topOS and associated pi-top hardware. Of course it would mean that an update is certainly liable to break something, but I’ll definitely give it a look until there is something more official — it’s every bit worth the effort!

I do very much like the way pi-topOS is headed as a development platform which is why I’d prefer to use and support it rather than installing the additional pi-top hardware support packages to another OS. Something which has been my workaround thus far.

I’m just about to order the FHD screen and keyboard to add to my pi-top kit, so very much looking forward to working with those — and more opportunity to test and make sure things work like they should in my own testing.

Thanks very much for your time though, and yes please keep me updated on any future progress regarding this topic!

All the best!

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#7

@Yliannyx no problem! Do let me know what you find when looking into it :+1: I’ll also keep the conversation moving internally and get you involved when necessary.

Not sure if you’ve seen our pi-top Sessions event happening in just over an hours time, one of the OS engineers will be on that call so sign up if you have time to join!

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