To install the MoodleBox we don't need the extended features from PINN. So it seems to be better to use NOOBS from the Raspberry Pi Foundation. I just build an NOOBS installation which starts automatically and without any user input.
I edit the recovery.cmdline
file in the NOOBS directory and append select=MoodleBox_4.4.0 silentinstall
to the arguments list. https://github.com/raspberrypi/noobs#how-to-automatically-install-an-os
After the initial installation the Raspberry Pi should boot directly into the MoodleBox partition without starting the NOOBS splashscreen. The user should not notice any differences to the original MoodleBox image. Therefore I add an autoboot.txt
file to the root directory of NOOBS containing the parameter boot_partition=6
. At the initial start of NOOBS there is only one partition on the F32 formatted microSD. So this autoboot command will result an error but this error doesn't stop the automatic NOOBS installation.
After the NOOBS installation is finished the microSD card has some more partitions.
moodlebox@moodlebox:~ $ lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
mmcblk0 179:0 0 14.8G 0 disk
├─mmcblk0p1 179:1 0 585.4M 0 part
├─mmcblk0p2 179:2 0 1K 0 part
├─mmcblk0p5 179:5 0 32M 0 part
├─mmcblk0p6 179:6 0 256M 0 part /boot
└─mmcblk0p7 179:7 0 14G 0 part /
moodlebox@moodlebox:~ $
The partition 1 is resized to 585 MB and contains all the NOOBS files ... and also the autoboot.txt
file.
The partition 2 is a catalog for the partitions 5, 6 and 7.
The partition 5 contains the /home/moodlebox
directory.
The partition 6 is the original boot partition of the MoodleBox.
The partition 7 is the original root partition of the Moodlebox.
The autoboot.txt
file lets jump the Raspberry Pi directly to partition 6 to start up the MoodleBox immediately without any diversion in NOOBS. https://github.com/raspberrypi/noobs#how-to-bypass-the-recovery-splashscreen-and-boot-directly-into-a-fixed-partition
This MoodleBox installation works on every device which can copy files to a microSD card or an usb stick ... both must be FAT32 formatted. This installation is possible on all Android and iOS devices but also on Linux, macOS and Windows. You need no admin access to the device.
Yes, these are my first experiments with NOOBS and PINN but I just like them. :-)
