Hello RobH!

Thursday November 07 2019 15:44, you wrote to me:

 > On 07/11/2019 00:56, Vince Coen wrote:
 >> Hello Chris!
 >>
 >> Thursday November 07 2019 13:10, you wrote to RobH:
 >>
 >>   > On 07/11/2019 12:52, RobH wrote:
 >>   >> I'm having a hard time finding the information I want , so I
 >> ask
 >>   >> here:
 >>   >>
 >>   >> Has anyone had success using an external disk with the pi 4,
 >> and
 >>   >> preferably booting from it.
 >>   >>
 >>   >> The other option I thought about was to put some other version
 >> of
 >>   >> Linux on it, ubuntu?, but using etcher in linux doesn't do it,
 >> as
 >>   >> it's an iso.
 >>   >>
 >>   >> Thanks
 >>
 >>   > Not a Pi4 but I have Pi3+s booting from SD card (holding only
 >> the
 >>   > /boot partition) and 128/256Gb SSD (mSATA in mSATA to USB3
 >> adapter) as
 >>   > root. Quite easy if you follow the instructions. I never had
 >> much luck
 >>   > booting directly from the USB SSD, hence the above arrangement.
 >>
 >>   > --
 >>   > Chris Elvidge, England
 >>
 >>
 >> I use a 3B+ sitting in a x830 box and card with a 1TB dasd  .
 >> The drive has the Rasbian installed and it powers up, boots to the
 >> the USB drive.
 >>
 >> Every thing works - so far but I do not run it daily just as a when
 >> as I use a server system for day to day development and other
 >> activities such as BBS, FTP, SQL, Apache, IBM m/f server or
 >> services. This hold a lot of dasd unit giving over 10+ TB storage
 >> all in 16GB Ram with a modular PSU so it is light on power needs but
 >> a Pi is a heck of a lot less :)
 >>
 >> Did want to get a Pi4 but will not fit into the current X830 case so
 >> will wait until a revised X830 combo comes out.
 >>
 >>
 >>
 >> Vince
 >>
 > Thnks, and are there any simple instructions for doing that for a
 > simple lad like me.

Using the x830 it is simply a matter for using the s/w Ercher (spelling ? ) 
with the USB DASD loaded to copy
over the iso Rasp image to the drive as I did not find an easy solution for 
copying the SD card to the
drive.

Once done then remove the SD card and turn on - it will boot to the USB drive 
which is quicker than using a
SD card and more realiable.

That said another poster has said that there is a problem with the bootloader 
in the pi 4 that does not allow
this at the moment and here is the details of the current state of play with 
it (Bootloader EEPROM) :


-!-   From url 
https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-eeprom/blob/master/firmware/release-notes.md
  TODAY.

Raspberry Pi4 bootloader EEPROM release notes
2019-10-17 - rpi-eeprom-update + recovery.bin

* New beta recovery.bin which can update the VLI EEPROM before
  start.elf is loaded. This is the recommended and default method
  because no USB devices will be in use at this stage.
* Extend the USE_FLASHROM configuration to use the vl805 tool
  to program the VL805 directly.
* Generate SHA256 checksums in .sig files for the bootloader and
  and VL805 images. This is required by the new recovery.bin to
  guard against corrupted files being flashed to the EEPROM(s).
* Various variable renames to distinguish between the bootloader
  and the VL805 images.

2019-10-16 - Git 18472066 (BETA)

    Ignore trailing characters when parsing in PXE boot menu option.
    Improve error handling with unformatted sd-cards.

2019-10-08 - Git 26dd3686c (BETA)

    TFTP now uses RFC2348 blksize option to get 1024 byte blocks if the server 
supports it.
    Fix DHCP handling of SI_ADDR
    TFTP_PREFIX and TFTP_PREFIX_STR options for mac-address or string literal 
prefix.
    Improved support for standard capacity and SDv1 cards.

2019-09-25 - Git 4d9824321 (BETA)

    Increase TFTP timeout to 30s as default & bootconf.txt
    Fix intermittent boot freeze/slowdown issue after loading start.elf
    Don't load start.elf during network boot if start4.elf exists but the 
download times out.

2019-09-23 - Git c67e8bb3 (BETA)

    Add support for network boot
    Configurable ordering for boot modes (BOOT_ORDER and SD/NET_BOOT retries)

2019-09-10 - Git f626c772

    Configure ethernet RGMII pins at power on. This is a minor change which 
which may improve reliability of
ethernet for some users.

2019-09-05 - Git d8189ed4 - (BETA)

    Update SDRAM setup to reduce power consumption.

2019-07-15 - Git 514670a2

    Turn green LED activity off on halt.
    Pad embedded config file with spaces for easier editing by end users.
    Halt now behaves the same as earlier Pi models to improve power behavior 
at halt for HATs.
    WAKE_ON_GPIO now defaults to 1 in the EEPROM config file.
    POWER_OFF_ON_HALT setting added defaulting to zero. Set this to 1 to 
restore the behavior where 'sudo
halt' powers off all PMIC output.
    If WAKE_ON_GPIO=1 then POWER_OFF_ON_HALT is ignored.
    Load start4db.elf / fixup4db.dat in preference to start_db.elf / 
fixup_db.dat on Pi4.
    Embed BUILD_TIMESTAMP in the EEPROM image to assist version checking.

2019-05-10 - Git d2402c53 (RC2.1)

    First production version.
-!-

Look like I will wait some what longer for this to be fixed before I consider 
getting the newer Pi as in 5
months not a lot has happened on this front.


Vince

--- Mageia Linux v7.1 X64/Mbse v1.0.7.12A/GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20180707