The “Le Potato” by Libre Computers is a $40 single board computer. That is incredibly cheap in 2022 as anyone who has tried to buy a Raspberry Pi recently can tell you. There aren’t a lot of guides out there for how to best utilize it though so today I’d like to publish a guide for it for one of the best upgrades you can do with any SBC: upgrade to SSD storage!
This method requires a sacrificial SD card to serve as the bootloader. After booting though it will use your SSD for the system’s root filesystem. We will then benchmark it to measure the improvement/gains.
Let’s begin!
Hardware Used
Libre Computers “Le Potato”
The “Le Potato” from Libre Computers is meant to be a fully open sourced alternative to the Raspberry Pi. It can run a huge number of flavors and has up to date images available for them. Contains a Quad-Core ARM Cortex A53 CPU as well as a Mali-450 GPU as well as 2GB of RAM. Make sure you click the $5 off coupon from Amazon!
The StarTech USB 3.1 to 2.5″ SATA adapter is one I have recommended for many years for use with all kinds of devices including the Raspberry Pi, Orange Pi, ODROID, Libre “Renegade” and Tinker Board. It’s widely compatible and works with gaming consoles as well.
The Sabrent powered USB hub delivers a whopping 2.5A of dedicated power for your USB attached devices. It will easily power the most thirsty of setups such as NVMe enclosures.
Note: Make sure Amazon doesn’t try to take you to the non-powered version and that it’s the one with the AC adapter that plugs in to provide extra power
Preparing SD Card
First you should have a completely working installation on a SD card of the OS that you would like to use. I used Armbian for this guide (recommended) so if your partitions are different it may be your flavor of Linux and need slightly altered instructions.
If you have an already working installation you want to move to your SSD you can use this as well most likely.
You should completely update first with:
sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade
If you are using a different package manager then update the image however you need to for your distribution.
Preparing SSD
Now we are going to connect your SSD to the “Le Potato”. First we are going to completely remove all partitions from the drive so it’s completely blank. If you only have one drive plugged into the “Le Potato” (and nothing else) this should be /dev/sda.
sudo fdisk /dev/sda
Now remove all partitions from the device. If you press “p” it will print out the partitions. Here’s an example on mine:
james@lepotato:~ $ sudo fdisk /dev/sda
Welcome to fdisk (util-linux 2.36.1).
Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
Be careful before using the write command.
Command (m for help): p
Disk /dev/sda: 232.89 GiB, 250059350016 bytes, 488397168 sectors
Disk model: CT250MX200SSD1
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x3cedfd53
Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sda1 2048 264191 262144 128M c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda2 264192 62550016 62285825 29.7G 83 Linux
Command (m for help): d
Partition number (1,2, default 2): 1
Partition 1 has been deleted.
Command (m for help): d
Selected partition 2
Partition 2 has been deleted.
Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered.
Failed to remove partition 1 from system: Device or resource busy
Failed to remove partition 2 from system: Device or resource busy
The kernel still uses the old partitions. The new table will be used at the next reboot.
Syncing disks.
Even though I got the device was busy error after unplugging and replugging the SSD the partition table was clear.
Once the drive is all cleared off you’re ready for the next step.
Cloning Installation to SSD
We’re now ready to clone your installation to the SSD. If you don’t have the eMMC attached your current root filesystem should be /dev/mmcblk0p1 (or /dev/mmcblk1p1 on some operating systems, check ls /dev or blkid).
We can now copy your drive to the SSD with the following command:
cat /dev/mmcblk0 > /dev/sda
Wait for the operation to complete (there won’t be any output but you will have a cursor again and be able to type new commands). It may take several minutes or longer. You are copying an entire drive from one to another basically with that one command.
Mine took almost 40 minutes (although I was using a 64GB SD card and the larger SD card you use the longer it will take to copy the whole drive).
If you are having any trouble with permissions try becoming “root” first with:
sudo su
Now try running the command again and as the superuser you should not encounter any permission errors.
Change SD card’s UUID
Now unplug the SSD and plug it back in. We need to change our SD card’s UUID so that it doesn’t try to boot from that partition. We can set it to a random one with the following command:
sudo tune2fs -U random /dev/mmcblk0p1
We can verify that it has changed with blkid like this:
Notice that /dev/sda1 and /dev/mmcblk0p1 no longer have matching UUIDs. This is exactly what we want.
Run fsck
Before we reboot run e2fsck on the drive like this:
sudo e2fsck -yf /dev/sda1
This will prevent you from having to run fsck on the CLI the first time you try to boot.
Reboot and Verify
Now reboot the “Le Potato” with:
sudo reboot
With any luck you should be booted using your SSD! We can verify this with the mount command like this:
james@lepotato:~$ mount
/dev/sda1 on / type ext4 (rw,noatime,errors=remount-ro,commit=600)
/dev/sda1 on /var/log.hdd type ext4 (rw,noatime,errors=remount-ro,commit=600)
/dev/zram1 on /var/log type ext4 (rw,relatime,discard)
Here we can see that our root partition (/) is indeed on /dev/sda1 and not /dev/mmcblk0p1. Success!
Wow, that’s quite a dramatic improvement. We went from 939 to 3,451. That’s about a 3.5x performance increase! You can also look at the raw IOPS and MB/s numbers on HDParm and the various test categories if you are more familiar with those to see the improvement.
Conclusion
Even though we are limited to USB 2.0 bus speeds we can still achieve about 3.5x the performance of the SD card using a SSD with a USB to 2.5″ SATA adapter. This is definitely worthwhile as it was on boards like the Raspberry Pi 3 that had USB 2.0 as well.
I haven’t tested the eMMC modules for the “Le Potato” yet because they are currently out of stock on Amazon. Because of the USB 2.0 bus there’s a chance that eMMC modules might perform faster than an SSD.
The SSD performance is substantially higher than SD cards though for sure as we’ve determined through our benchmarking!
Great guide. Using the process described here and the images from johang.se I managed to get bookworm on a 80GB HDD, before official release.
Few observations:
1. In my experience the lepotato does not have enough juice to power the usb 2 sata interface so I needed external power for that interface which in turn backfeeds the sbc via usb but not to the point the let it run. So booting needs a little care and some wire.
2. Next, I observed that in my case, I do not need to clone the UUID, just need to take out the boot flag on the sdcard and make sure the hdd has it on; as a matter of fact I cloned an already running hdd to a second lepotato. I am actually pretty sure one needs only the booting from johang.se which is written just before the dos partition, although it does appear the whole booting image contains that dos partition as well; all in all first 32MB from the sdcard needs to be cloned and I am pretty sure that is all that is needed along with a well powered usb to sata(or nvme? and also I do not dare to say usb memroy stick) interface and device.
Main reason I prefer this more convoluted way is because despite my best efforts (such as zram and or log2ram) I killed a number of sdcards and memory sticks that were supporting sbcs, or openwrt routers. Also this also explains why I also like the lepotato which despite its limitations is one of the best all purpose sbc (pihole,pivpn or all the time barely seeping juice and all awake master to a bunch of sleepy beefy slave PCs).
Great thoughts and observations! I’m very glad you got it working the way you needed to. The only thing I would add is that since the board is micro-USB the power is not negotiated like USB-C. That means you can use a bigger micro-USB power supply to get more power (up to a certain point). People have had success using larger ones to get issues like that to go away as well but your solution works as well.
Great question! So unfortunately the answer is basically no. The reason is that many single board computers are hard-coded to boot from SD card. This is basically why we can’t eliminate the SD card altogether and just boot from the SSD without the SD card.
In other words the reason it won’t work is the reason we have to use the SD card in the first place to boot with our SSD. The board doesn’t really let you pick and choose which storage device it will use to start the booting process. It’s after we get that far that we can take control and run things off a SSD instead (or even a USB drive).
Hello, here is a newbie, I have a question, if I do this method and then update the system with sudo apt update and sudo apt upgrade , will the system break? i want to use armbian as server, without desktop.
Not usually but it does with some boards and operating system flavors. If it’s a clean image I would say go ahead and try it and see if it breaks (most likely it won’t) but if it does then you know that your OS flavor is one that is sensitive to this.
Wow. I have been racking my head around this and this guide is a life saver. Thank you for your time. This should be posted on the git website for the tool.
Great info, thanks for your time and effort in helpi6out people like me that are very new to sbc and programming. I’m 44 and self taught through the Open Source community and people like you. I’m very thankful for you and all who contribute. Hopefully one day I’ll be able to help someone else figure this stuff out.
Welcome and thanks for the kind words! I would definitely say you are on the right track and will definitely get there. I’m also self-taught for sure. The more you keep doing it the easier it gets.
Thank you for the great information about Le Potato. I have tried and tried, and failed and failed to get the SSD going with Le Potato unfortunately.
It seems that the latest Le Potato images ( Ubuntu 22.04.1 Jammy LTS & Raspbian 11 Bullseye ) both have differing file structures to what is described in this post. Both seem to have 2 partitions (/dev/mmcblk1p1. /dev/mmcblk1p2), with P1 being a FAT partition and P2 being a btrfs type partition.
I don’t suppose you can do a guide to get Le Potato (or renegade) working with the the P1 (FAT) and P2 (btrfs) configuration?
I used Armbian. I didn’t use the official OS at all. I have a lot of other SSD boot guides on the site that will work on partition schemes like this.
Let’s see. What’s one that has a FAT32 partition. Most of them do honestly.
How about the Radxa Zero one? Yep, that one has this partition layout. Follow that one if you don’t want to use Armbian and pretend it’s a “Le Potato” and that should work.
Basically this technique has nothing to do with the board. I have like 15 of these guides on the site covering every partition type and the board matters not. You can use this technique on any board.
For the FAT32 one we can use mtools to change the UUID.
It would only change the instructions slightly. I literally copy and paste them from other articles when I write these because it’s the exact same process.
Thank you for this great information! I recently bought “le potato” for gaming and love it. I’m so happy to see a community developing around it. By any chance, would you have experience with mupen64 emulator for n64? I’m having black screen issues and I’ve tried many fixes including gl video drivers, turning off shaders, and recent updates. Still stumped! Any thoughts are appreciated. Thanks again for posting!
That error code seems to be the driver, not m64p. Can you confirm that the same error occurs on RMG with GLideN64?
You can also just run the exe directly from a terminal in bash apparently by just typing bash mupen64plus-gui. This should print the debug output to the terminal.
This will be impossible to fix without going wrong though. The people in that thread noted that it might not even be mupen64plus-gui and might be completely related to your video drivers. We are flying blind though without looking at the log output. Once you have that things should get easier to research here and fix.
Great guide. Using the process described here and the images from johang.se I managed to get bookworm on a 80GB HDD, before official release.
Few observations:
1. In my experience the lepotato does not have enough juice to power the usb 2 sata interface so I needed external power for that interface which in turn backfeeds the sbc via usb but not to the point the let it run. So booting needs a little care and some wire.
2. Next, I observed that in my case, I do not need to clone the UUID, just need to take out the boot flag on the sdcard and make sure the hdd has it on; as a matter of fact I cloned an already running hdd to a second lepotato. I am actually pretty sure one needs only the booting from johang.se which is written just before the dos partition, although it does appear the whole booting image contains that dos partition as well; all in all first 32MB from the sdcard needs to be cloned and I am pretty sure that is all that is needed along with a well powered usb to sata(or nvme? and also I do not dare to say usb memroy stick) interface and device.
Main reason I prefer this more convoluted way is because despite my best efforts (such as zram and or log2ram) I killed a number of sdcards and memory sticks that were supporting sbcs, or openwrt routers. Also this also explains why I also like the lepotato which despite its limitations is one of the best all purpose sbc (pihole,pivpn or all the time barely seeping juice and all awake master to a bunch of sleepy beefy slave PCs).
Best Regards and Thank you for your guidance.
Hey Ispire2,
Great thoughts and observations! I’m very glad you got it working the way you needed to. The only thing I would add is that since the board is micro-USB the power is not negotiated like USB-C. That means you can use a bigger micro-USB power supply to get more power (up to a certain point). People have had success using larger ones to get issues like that to go away as well but your solution works as well.
Enjoy and take care!
Hi James, Thank you for the tutorial this is very helpful.
I came across the Tutorial when searching for a way to use a USB Stick instead of an SD card as the Filesystem storage device.
Would this same methodology work with a USB drive instead of SSD?
Hey Mileunderdude,
Great question! So unfortunately the answer is basically no. The reason is that many single board computers are hard-coded to boot from SD card. This is basically why we can’t eliminate the SD card altogether and just boot from the SSD without the SD card.
In other words the reason it won’t work is the reason we have to use the SD card in the first place to boot with our SSD. The board doesn’t really let you pick and choose which storage device it will use to start the booting process. It’s after we get that far that we can take control and run things off a SSD instead (or even a USB drive).
Hopefully that helps!
Hello, here is a newbie, I have a question, if I do this method and then update the system with sudo apt update and sudo apt upgrade , will the system break? i want to use armbian as server, without desktop.
Hey Apolo,
Not usually but it does with some boards and operating system flavors. If it’s a clean image I would say go ahead and try it and see if it breaks (most likely it won’t) but if it does then you know that your OS flavor is one that is sensitive to this.
Hopefully that helps!
Wow. I have been racking my head around this and this guide is a life saver. Thank you for your time. This should be posted on the git website for the tool.
Hey GregoryG,
Thanks so much for the kind words, I’m very glad it was able to help!
Great info, thanks for your time and effort in helpi6out people like me that are very new to sbc and programming. I’m 44 and self taught through the Open Source community and people like you. I’m very thankful for you and all who contribute. Hopefully one day I’ll be able to help someone else figure this stuff out.
Hey KillMoore96,
Welcome and thanks for the kind words! I would definitely say you are on the right track and will definitely get there. I’m also self-taught for sure. The more you keep doing it the easier it gets.
Take care!
Thank you for the great information about Le Potato. I have tried and tried, and failed and failed to get the SSD going with Le Potato unfortunately.
It seems that the latest Le Potato images ( Ubuntu 22.04.1 Jammy LTS & Raspbian 11 Bullseye ) both have differing file structures to what is described in this post. Both seem to have 2 partitions (/dev/mmcblk1p1. /dev/mmcblk1p2), with P1 being a FAT partition and P2 being a btrfs type partition.
I don’t suppose you can do a guide to get Le Potato (or renegade) working with the the P1 (FAT) and P2 (btrfs) configuration?
Hey Spoon,
I used Armbian. I didn’t use the official OS at all. I have a lot of other SSD boot guides on the site that will work on partition schemes like this.
Let’s see. What’s one that has a FAT32 partition. Most of them do honestly.
How about the Radxa Zero one? Yep, that one has this partition layout. Follow that one if you don’t want to use Armbian and pretend it’s a “Le Potato” and that should work.
Basically this technique has nothing to do with the board. I have like 15 of these guides on the site covering every partition type and the board matters not. You can use this technique on any board.
For the FAT32 one we can use mtools to change the UUID.
It would only change the instructions slightly. I literally copy and paste them from other articles when I write these because it’s the exact same process.
Hopefully that helps!
Thank you for this great information! I recently bought “le potato” for gaming and love it. I’m so happy to see a community developing around it. By any chance, would you have experience with mupen64 emulator for n64? I’m having black screen issues and I’ve tried many fixes including gl video drivers, turning off shaders, and recent updates. Still stumped! Any thoughts are appreciated. Thanks again for posting!
Hey Dan,
I think we need to look at the log output. It’s not clear to me how you would do it with this application though from their GitHub page.
People here said you find the log files like this:
In mupen64plus-gui: Emulation -> View LogOr use bash...
That error code seems to be the driver, not m64p. Can you confirm that the same error occurs on RMG with GLideN64?
You can also just run the exe directly from a terminal in bash apparently by just typing bash mupen64plus-gui. This should print the debug output to the terminal.
This will be impossible to fix without going wrong though. The people in that thread noted that it might not even be mupen64plus-gui and might be completely related to your video drivers. We are flying blind though without looking at the log output. Once you have that things should get easier to research here and fix.
Hopefully that helps!