Feature Request: enabled guided auto-grow partition 4 if there is space left on first run

[nanderer]

just as the raspberry pi offers to do just after you imaged it to the card, you could include some code that grows the main partition ( partition 4 at /mnt/) at the first run, after a little comfirmation dialog thingy*. For me it was no problem to do that myself but for newbies it would be a good thing if you could strike this setup step after imaging the disk, and growing a fat32 dosnt requiere much code or computing power...

*dont do it without asking, there are people which are using bad-sd-cards intentionally, and dont ask every time but only on first run (like with a little .firstrun file that is deleted afterwards). Maybe add the option also to the system menu do do it later...

thanks a lot and keep up the good work

[cricri-pingouin]

I just rebuilt a card this morning and though of this. But then I decided against it because:

• It would be a lot of work that I'd rather see spent fixing bugs or improving performance.
• Seeing that you would have installed "MiniTool Partition Wizard" anyway, and that your card is already in your PC, doing it there and then is not really more effort from the user.
• I imagine that doing it on the device would take a lot longer, and would be more risky ("MiniTool Partition Wizard" is tried and tested, and your PC is less likely to run out of battery mid way!).

[nanderer]

thanks a lot for all the replies:

Seeing that you would have installed "MiniTool Partition Wizard" anyway,

how are you seeing this, i have but mostly to manage my NTFS partitions, i don't like putting sdcards or other external memory with linux fs'es plugged into windows machines, allays to many misleading, i cant get it do you want to reformat it, dialogs that can be quite dangers. Also the miniTool can take ages for initialising and scanning all disks, much worse then gparted, but parted is still the fastest...

of cause i would also categorise this as not as important then speeding up emulation or other things

edit: quote syntax of github not handled as i am used to from other software ;(, "fixed"

[cricri-pingouin]

I'm assuming that you're installing the CFW on the original card, so you will have to delete all the partitions, and the guide suggests to use "MiniTool Partition Wizard" to do so.
So when the subsequent step in the guide says to use the same tool to extend the partition, you should have it?
If you started from a blank card, I suppose you won't have to delete the partitions, but the next time you want to install a MiyooCFW update, then you'll have multiple partitions as well.
I'm sure there are other tools that let you extend the partition, but as I was following the guide, I just did what was suggested, and it was rather straightforward.
Also note what I said in my previous reply: it took several minutes on my PC using a USB 3.0 reader to extend the partitions and then copy the files to the extended partition, so I'd imagine that the same process on the console itself would take way longer! You might even run out of battery, so I'd say that doing it on a PC is probably quicker and safer anyway.

[TriForceX]

This is already working on the upcoming next version, so tools like MiniTool to expand main partition will not required anymore.

I will leave this issue opened until we release the next cfw version.

[technicalpickles]

If anyone is looking for a way to do this on macOS, I had success using iPartition.

brew install ipartition

The company since shutdown, but you can find licenses on their website: Coriolis Systems, scroll to the bottom and click license under the latest version (on the right)

[elmimmo]

brew install ipartion

I guess that was brew install ipartition. Still, I could not get the software to accept the license file. The version downloaded by brew (3.6.2) would not even allow me to select it or accept it in the drop zone. The latest version in their website (3.4.5) would not be able to save it into ~/Library/Application Support.

[Asppire]

So here is a way of resizing the SD card partition on a Mac:

I use Apple Pi Baker version 1.9.9 to install/“bake” the CFW image (Balena Etcher keeps giving a verification error). Once the SD card is finished re-insert it and launch iPartition (3.6.2) - I use it on Sierra and just downloaded the app from their website, installed it and added the license (no messing with brew).

Now important: Don’t try to resize the main partition by dragging it to the appropriate size (this makes iPartition move the partition order and then the card won’t work).

Instead do this: on the iPartition menu under “View”, select “Show Inspector” and the also under “View” select “Show Pending Operations”.
Now click on the image of the “Main” partition of the SD card and then in the “Inspector” window click on the “Partition” tab.
Under “Extended Properties” where it says “Maximum Size” click on the blue encircled “blocks” and choose “GB” from the drop down list. This should give you the maximum size this partition can be grown to in GB.

Now under “Basic Properties” (in the Inspector window) look at the “Size” box (it will be something around 1.4 GB - make sure to choose GB instead of blocks). Now delete the value in “Size” and type in the new value from “Maximum Size” in GB. (I round off. For example on a 32GB card I type “28.9”). Now under “Pending Operations” there should only be one operation which should begin with “Grow …” - (if it has added any “Move” commands, begin again).

Now click on “Go” (the green and black play arrow). It should now resize the partition without messing up the partition order. Be patient when it comes to “Initializing the FAT” bit - it seems to take a few minutes whilst showing no progress, then suddenly jumps to 50% and then again nothing until completed).

Then eject your card and use it.

I have tried it with several 16GB cards, one 32GB, one 128GB and one 64GB. For some reason I had to do the 64GB in two stages, first to 32GB and then to the full 64GB, because the first time it only allowed a maximum size for the main partition of 28.9GB.

It sounds a bit long winded but is actually fairly easy once tried.

Apple Pi Baker (v1.9.9): https://www.tweaking4all.com/downloads/raspberrypi/ApplePi-Baker-1.9.9.dmg
iPartition: https://coriolis-systems.com/
(Note the license is a small link under the app download)

[elmimmo]

The latest version in their website (3.4.5)

iPartition 3.6.2 is indeed available at https://coriolis-systems.com/. One has to horizontally scroll the list of downloadable software.