Multiple Audio distro in one SD card for raspberry pi

[Audoophile]

Hi to all music lovers,

Not rocket science.

Lots of assistance from Deepseek, many trials and errors and tonnes of perseverance, I managed to put 4 audio distros (piCorePlayer, Archphile, rAudio, Moode Audio) in a single 32gb SD card on raspberry pi 4 platform.

I used SSH Button app to switch from one distro to another.

No need for many SD cards, remove/insert, switch on/off the raspberry pi.

I don't know whether this has been accomplished before but I'm more than happy to share my experience and tips.

Along the way, I managed to stabilise the internet connection for Archphile. This distro is one of my favourites (minimalist) but unfortunately has not been maintained since 2020 and has issues to establish internet connection. I needed to power on/off up to 7 times to get at last an internet connection.

If anyone has put many distro in one single SD card please share your method so that I can improve mine.

Let me know your thoughts and enjoy the music.

Cheers.

 

[Apesbrain]

Interesting, but why?

 

[Audoophile]

@Apesbrain, Archphile sounds different than piCorePlayer. Archphile is based on mpd and PiCorePlayer on squeezelite. And there are differences in how the distro implement the audio processing (real-time, CPU isolation etc.). To me it can affect the sound. The more options the distro offers the less "engaging" the sound.

I have one SD card for each distro and each time I want to switch distro, I need to switch off the raspberry pi, remove the SD card, insert another one and switch on the raspberry pi. It is quite a hassle.

Having many distros in a single SD card, it save me a lot of hassle.

 

[Apesbrain]

sounds different

Ok, we'll just leave it there then. Glad it works for you.

 

[somebodyelse]

I've not tried it, but from what I've read it sounds like PINN would do it. Or the multiboot script.

 

[Audoophile]

PINN and berryboot work only with general Distro but not with specifically optimized distros like moode audio, PiCorePlayer ,,,

multiboot script looks interesting. I'll investigate further. Thanks

 

[somebodyelse]

PINN works for any OS image that has been packaged for it, even non-linux ones like RISCOS. That includes piCorePlayer, moode and volumio, although they aren't all up to date. See https://pinn.mjh.nz/ when you follow the process to the 'Select your systems' stage and go to the 'Media' tab. You could file an issue about the out of date or missing ones, or package them yourself. It's not great if you want to use the Pi headless, but it is possible.

 

[somebodyelse]

Berryboot has instructions for custom distros too.

 

[Audoophile]

I have tried berryboot but could not manage to boot any distro. Maybe I did a wrong manipulation or I should have persevered further.

After few internet search, I though that PINN could not handle customised distro. So I did not pursue further.

Also, my concern is that having berryboot or pinn will add another layer of "services" running in the background on the top of the audio distros and therefore injecting "delays" and "noises". I may be completely wrong on that matter.

Since my raspberry pi is headless and I also want to be able to select the distro from my tablet, The only way is to write myself a script.


What I found out is that:

1. All the mentioned distro will boot only of the boot partition is of vfat F32 LBA file system. Do the SD card has to be formated as MBR instead of GPT.

2. piCorePlayer will load the root partition to the CPU ram. No access or writing to the SD card afterwards until a reboot or a switch off. So an extra procedure is needed if you need to make any change persistent.

3. There is different treatment whether cmdline.txt or fstab files use PARTUUID or mmcblk0pX to point the partition.

4. Different procedures whether the distro fully expand the root partition or not.

5. Volumio create 3 partitions unlike others distro.

6. Understanding better how each distro load, allows me to optimise the script and arrange the partitions order.

It was a knowledgeable journey. I have learned bit of Linux, understand better how the raspberry function, bootloader, systemd, daemon etc ...

Thanks for referring me to the multi-boot script. I don't know why it did not pop up during my internet search. It could have led me to another path.

Cheers and enjoy your music.