[PROBLEM] Cannot flash moode onto sd card

[Musicman52]

Hello I am new here, if this has been asked and there is an answer I'd be glad to go there. I did a search. I have 3 brand new sd cards. I have tried flashing moode onto any of the 3 using Balena etchr and consistently get failed. I am using Volumio with no problem. I really want to try moode. any suggestions before I order a pre downloaded sd card from a vendor. Thank you, otto

[Tim Curtis]

Post the error message from the utility you are using to write the image to the SDCard.

[Musicman52]

Hi Tim, in the ensuing time, I googled and found a fix. I also could not format the sd cards which was of course error #1. I am listening to streaming radio. I wanted to get something going. I have a Pi 4. I am using headphones as the output. NO HAT with the Pi4. Now my frustration if not being to listen to the attached SSD USD drive. I am reading and rereading the set up notes and it's just not working. I know the answer is probably simple, but I just am not seeing how to connect and listen to the USB drive.

My main music system is using a Pi3+ with an Allo digit one signature with Volumio. I now want to take this SD card to it and use Moode, with all it's dsp , Eq, and other items than Volumio does not have. Once I get the usb drive mounted and can get audio from it, I will move this all over to the Pi3+.

Thank you,
musicman52

[Miss Sissy Princess]

Hi Tim, in the ensuing time, I googled and found a fix. I also could not format the sd cards which was of course error #1. I am listening to streaming radio. I wanted to get something going. I have a Pi 4. I am using headphones as the output. NO HAT with the Pi4. Now my frustration if not being to listen to the attached SSD USD drive. I am reading and rereading the set up notes and it's just not working. I know the answer is probably simple, but I just am not seeing how to connect and listen to the USB drive.

My main music system is using a Pi3+ with an Allo digit one signature with Volumio. I now want to take this SD card to it and use Moode, with all it's dsp , Eq, and other items than Volumio does not have. Once I get the usb drive mounted and can get audio from it, I will move this all over to the Pi3+.

Thank you,
musicman52

How is your external USB drive partitioned and formatted?  

This thread might be of help:  http://moodeaudio.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=894

[DRONE7]

How is the USB drive powered ? from the Pi's USB or self powered ?

[Musicman52]

How is the USB drive powered ? from the Pi's USB or self powered ?

It is not partitioned at all. It's an SSD drive 2 TB simple. When I hook it up to the Pi3+ Allo Signature and Volumio works perfectly. The drive is powered by the Pi4's usb out. I have a USB Stick currently with the Pi3+ same library connected to the USB 2.0.

On the Pi 4 I tried both 3.0 and 2.0. I'm really not that bad with this stuff, Moode is just different to learn. Like to try Max2 play and others but if the learning curve is like this, no way, I'm stopping here with Moode, LOL.

I will follow the link. Really looking forward to conquering Moode to hear the difference many extoll are there, especially the add on's dsp. I was using Jriver with a Windows laptop and really enjoyed the room correction, and DSP modes. The Alllo/ Pi3+ blew it away and have not used laptop/ JR since. 

Thank you all for helping a newbie out.

[DRONE7]

A Pi4 has a much greater current draw than any of the previous models so itwouldn't be surprising if the power supply is insufficient to run both it and the ssd.
Check by using a powered USB hub between the Pi4 and the ssd.
I recall some comments about the Pi4 and certain ssd.. I will see if I can dig those out... meanwhile what is the make and model of your ssd ?

[TheOldPresbyope]

@Musicman52

As I understand what you've posted so far, you have an SSD with music on it connected to your RPi4B running moOde and a USB stick with the same music on it connected to your RPi3B+ running Volumio.

What happens if you unplug the SSD from your moOde player and plug in the USB stick instead? Can moOde update its library with the USB stick contents? I'm guessing it will. That's the same thing that should happen with the SSD. If it doesn't then something is going wrong. FYI, for most users moOde is basically plug-n-play.

As @DRONE7 suggests, one possible problem is inadequate power. From the command line in moOde you can look for undervoltage warnings in the output from the Linux dmesg command or in the syslog. With my SSDs, I haven't experienced the alternative possibility he suggested, where the RPi4B didn't like certain SSDs---IIRC the issue specifically had to do with booting---but I wouldn't rule it out.

Assuming the power is adequate and the drive is acceptable, then another possibility is that the SSD isn't formatted the way you think it is (as an aside, once formatted, every drive has at least one partition).

With the SSD plugged into the moOde player (USB2.0 and USB3.0 ports have both worked for me with my SSDs), you can try various LInux commands to examine it.

Example

Code:

sudo fdisk -l

will tell you about all the drives found by the O/S. Show us the result from your moOde player with the SSD plugged in.

I don't have a moOde player at hand but here's what I see on the Linux laptop I'm using ATM

Code:

kreed@T520:~$ sudo fdisk -l
[sudo] password for kreed:          
Disk /dev/sda: 931.53 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
Disk model: Samsung SSD 860
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x1d8531a0

Device     Boot Start        End    Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sda1  *     2048 1953523711 1953521664 931.5G 83 Linux


Disk /dev/sdb: 980 MiB, 1027604480 bytes, 2007040 sectors
Disk model: DataTraveler 2.0
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x04030201

Device     Boot Start     End Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1         240 2007039 2006800 979.9M  6 FAT16

One drive (here, /dev/sda) with one partition (/dev/sda1) contains the Linux file system (we can't tell from this if it's formatted EXT2, EXT3, etc). This drive happens to be an SSD. In the case of a moOde player, it will be the uSD memory card with two partitions unless you've gone baroque with an alternative system drive.

The other drive (here, /dev/sdb) also with one partition /dev/sdb1) contains a FAT16-formatted file system. This is a USB thumb drive.

Then you can look to see how the file system(s) got mounted by the O/S by executing the Linux command

Code:

mount

Example (again, my Linux laptop, not a moOde player)

Code:

kreed@T520:~$ mount | grep /dev/sd
/dev/sda1 on / type ext4 (rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro)
/dev/sda1 on /run/timeshift/backup type ext4 (rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro)
/dev/sdb1 on /media/kreed/KINGSTON type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,uid=1000,gid=1000,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,showexec,utf8,flush,errors=remount-ro,uhelper=udisks2)

Here I piped the output from the mount command into a grep command in order to extract only the info I was interested in, but that was just for convenience in reading the results. 

Note that the USB thumb drive is mounted on /media/kreed/KINGSTON because KINGSTON is what I named it when I formatted it.

Again, show us the result from your moOde player with the SSD plugged in. 

If your results don't show the drive is recognized and the file system(s) mounted then we can start examining the syslog to look for clues, but one step at a time.

Regards,
Kent