Resize /Boot mmcblk0p1 on SD?
#1
Does anyone have a clean solution for how to increase the size of the /boot partition on a Ubuntu Mate SD based image?

Issue: I'm trying to install updates and the free 35M (out of 50M) volume is insufficient for the requested 150M of space that Updater wants.

I have plenty of room on my SD card. However, unless I'm mistaken, /boot must be contiguous. Since Gparted will only work on non-mounted volumes...

I'm running into issues with an Ubuntu VirtualBox image mounting my SD card via USB adapter. And the USB based live Ubuntu image is not happy booting with my video configuration. So, I'm being thwarted from being able to manipulate the partitions on an alternate Linux platform.

Also, does anyone know if mmcblk0p1 must be located in a specific offset on the SD card? If I have read correctly, Pint64 support MBR type partition tables and should be somewhat flexible?
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#2
(06-26-2018, 03:31 PM)chadc Wrote: Does anyone have a clean solution for how to increase the size of the /boot partition on a Ubuntu Mate SD based image?

Issue: I'm trying to install updates and the free 35M (out of 50M) volume is insufficient for the requested 150M of space that Updater wants.

I have plenty of room on my SD card.  However, unless I'm mistaken, /boot must be contiguous.  Since Gparted will only work on non-mounted volumes...

I'm running into issues with an Ubuntu VirtualBox image mounting my SD card via USB adapter.  And the USB based live Ubuntu image is not happy booting with my video configuration.  So, I'm being thwarted from being able to manipulate the partitions on an alternate Linux platform.

Also, does anyone know if mmcblk0p1 must be located in a specific offset on the SD card?  If I have read correctly, Pint64 support MBR type partition tables and should be somewhat flexible?

Ouch. What Image is that with... all the pine64 images as of 0.6.2 should have had a 100MB /boot volume. And was this for a 'normal' update? On a pine64 or pinebook?

I resized mine via Gparted on another linux system to 100MB (back when it was only 70M, meaning you couldn't run the system updater GUI at all.) To capture that USB SD adapter, you may want to checkout out the machine -> settings -> USB -> USB Device Filters section, and add that card reader to the filters. That should make it be automatically captured by the virtual OS when you insert the device, and minimizing the likelihood of the host OS playing silly buggers.
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#3
(06-26-2018, 03:52 PM)pfeerick Wrote:
(06-26-2018, 03:31 PM)chadc Wrote: Does anyone have a clean solution for how to increase the size of the /boot partition on a Ubuntu Mate SD based image?

Issue: I'm trying to install updates and the free 35M (out of 50M) volume is insufficient for the requested 150M of space that Updater wants.

Ouch. What Image is that with... all the pine64 images as of 0.6.2 should have had a 100MB /boot volume. And was this for a 'normal' update? On a pine64 or pinebook?

I resized mine via Gparted on another linux system to 100MB (back when it was only 70M, meaning you couldn't run the system updater GUI at all.) To capture that USB SD adapter, you may want to checkout out the machine -> settings -> USB -> USB Device Filters section, and add that card reader to the filters. That should make it be automatically captured by the virtual OS when you insert the device, and minimizing the likelihood of the host OS playing silly buggers.

The Xenial image is named with the date of 20160528...This is for a Pine64 2GB. Yes, a normal update using the Mate GUI app.

Sounds like I either (a) try to start with a fresh image or (b) keep working to get the SD mounted on another system.
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#4
Bug 
Solved. With gparted via Ubuntu running on another PC, I was able to move the mmcblk0p2 partition and then enlarge mmcblk0p1. Unfortunately, gparted wouldn't go higher than 128MB with a FAT16 file system. But, this will do.
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#5
(06-26-2018, 10:33 PM)chadc Wrote: The Xenial image is named with the date of 20160528...This is for a Pine64 2GB.  Yes, a normal update using the Mate GUI app.

Sounds like I either (a) try to start with a fresh image or (b) keep working to get the SD mounted on another system.

Sounds like that is an older image still... so unfortunately it would have been broken from install as far as the GUI update app (although a command-line apt update worked just fine?! Huh )

(06-27-2018, 06:07 PM)chadc Wrote: Solved.  With gparted via Ubuntu running on another PC, I was able to move the mmcblk0p2 partition and then enlarge mmcblk0p1.  Unfortunately, gparted wouldn't go higher than 128MB with a FAT16 file system.  But, this will do.

Fantastic. Be interesting to know why the updater app thinks that much free spaces is needed for, because the kernel updates don't use that much space, etc... and updating from the command line used to work just fine.
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#6
(06-27-2018, 10:01 PM)pfeerick Wrote:
(06-26-2018, 10:33 PM)chadc Wrote: The Xenial image is named with the date of 20160528...This is for a Pine64 2GB.  Yes, a normal update using the Mate GUI app.

Sounds like I either (a) try to start with a fresh image or (b) keep working to get the SD mounted on another system.

Sounds like that is an older image still... so unfortunately it would have been broken from install as far as the GUI update app (although a command-line apt update worked just fine?! Huh )

(06-27-2018, 06:07 PM)chadc Wrote: Solved.  With gparted via Ubuntu running on another PC, I was able to move the mmcblk0p2 partition and then enlarge mmcblk0p1.  Unfortunately, gparted wouldn't go higher than 128MB with a FAT16 file system.  But, this will do.

Fantastic. Be interesting to know why the updater app thinks that much free spaces is needed for, because the kernel updates don't use that much space, etc... and updating from the command line used to work just fine.

Agreed. During the update, had a DF running and it barely touched the boot device. Something wrong with Updater.
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#7
(06-27-2018, 06:07 PM)chadc Wrote: Solved.  With gparted via Ubuntu running on another PC, I was able to move the mmcblk0p2 partition and then enlarge mmcblk0p1.  Unfortunately, gparted wouldn't go higher than 128MB with a FAT16 file system.  But, this will do.

I am new to using rock64 hardware, but wouldn't you be able to create a lvm file system via pv/lv commands in Linux? I play around with a lot of VM's at home and using the lvm file system has made life a lot easier when it comes to adjusting partitions. If its something your interested it you should give it a shot on a non production device.
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#8
I encountered this same problem last night when I installed the 18.04 release upgrade. Several attempts to extend the /boot partition failed miserably. Then it finally dawned on me that I already had a copy of /boot on my rootfs partition, so I just did a "umount /boot", and then ran the update. This time, the updater saw the "/boot" on rootfs, where there was plenty of room, and the upgrade continued just fine.
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