On 16/07/2024 18:19, Liam Proven wrote:
On 03/05/2024 8:28 pm, Richard Porter wrote:
RISC OS Open 5.30 is here - with Pi Wi-Fi support - The Register
Ah, yes, that was my story. :-)
I really enjoyed experimenting with it on a Pi 400 and Pi 3. Sadly, I
can't find any straightforward way of expanding the filesystem to use
all my card, and in copying stuff off my old RISC OS Direct card, I have mostly filled the disk now.
I am aware that there is some paid-for tool, but I very rarely use the
OS and as El Reg's FOSS chap, paying for software is something I have
not done in about 3 or 4 decades now, I'm afraid.
Hi Liam,
Unfortunately the situation is far from ideal. Currently the only way is
to get a new larger SD card, run Elesar's SystemDisc tool on it, which
formats it with a special variation of the RISC OS FileCore format, that
leaves room at the start for the FAT partition containing the Raspberry
Pi start up code. You then need to copy all the RISC OS files over from
the old to the new card.
However, there is now a new free RISC OS Partition manager program, see
https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/5/topics/16064 which aims to
create the necessary FileCore/FAT partitions to allow the card to be
used to boot RISC OS. I'm not sure of the state of this feature at the movement.
But why isn't there a way to expand the card?
As the author of DiscKnight, the repair tool for the FileCore format,
(an assuming I can remember anything about Filecore after 25 years) I've
been asked to make a tool which can expand the file system several
times. Each time I've looked in to it, come up with a number of options,
but eventually declined, as there isn't really a good or safe solution,
that I'd be happy to deliver, although that shouldn't stop anyone else
from trying.
The Filecore disc format is very size dependent. It's main unit of
granularity, the LFAU (large file allocation unit) is chosen to be as
small as necessary for the size of disc, as the minimum size of file is currently 22x larger than this unit. Each time the disk size doubles (as
SD cards tend to do), the LFAU must also be doubled, leading to a trade
off between disc size and the wastage which storing small files.
The problem this give is that just about every file is aligned to the
LFAU, and changing it would mean shifting most of the files on the disc
to the new alignments, and re-writing all the directory entries and
recreating a new disc map. It could be done, but it would be a long
process during which any interruption would leave the card in a
partially completed and non recoverable state. Copying everything to a
card, is over twice as fast, completely safe and leaves you with a handy
backup at the end of the day.
I have looked in to several Franken-formats, which would use the LFAU
and alignment of a much larger disc, so it could be expanded either on
first use or later (more difficult). But the drawback is that with
people using anywhere between 8GB and 256GB SD cards, you don't really
want to be stuck with an LFAU suitable for 256GB if only using a 16GB or
32GB and end up a few hundred MB of small files taking up many GB.
My personal solution is to use a small SD card to hold RISC OS and it's applications, which are invariably many thousands of small files, and
use a different USB drive or network based storage for larger data files.
---druck
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