All of a sudden I couldn't access my Tinypilot via the web interface. Looking at my switch I'm seeing its not pulling an IP address either. When I looked a the device, the green light is flashing 7 times, stops, then repeats that 7 flashes over and over. Any suggestions on resolving this?
- JJobey Smith @jobey
I went ahead and re-flashed the sd card and it is now back online.
David @david2023-07-24 11:22:22.766ZHi @jobey, I'm sorry you ran into this issue.
I'm glad you're now back up and running after re-flashing your SD card. It sounds like this could have been a filesystem corruption issue.
Please let us know if you have any other questions.
- JJobey Smith @jobey
Hi David,
I do have another question after re-flashing my sd card. I uploaded an ISO image to TinyPilot, but whenever I try to actually run anything after its been mounted, I get this error
- David @david2023-07-26 11:19:09.882Z
I'm sorry you're running into this issue, @jobey.
Are you trying to mount a Windows .iso? Unfortunately, booting from most Windows images does not work on TinyPilot.
The problem is that TinyPilot is able to emulate CD-ROMs, but not DVD-ROMs. CD-ROM mode can read only the first 2.2 GB of the file, while most Windows ISOs are larger than that. The underlying issue is that the Linux kernel itself can't properly emulate DVD-ROMs. As far as I know, there are no plans for developing that functionality into the Linux kernel.
It should be possible to to create a custom Windows installation image that's smaller than 2.2GB to mount from TinyPilot in CD-ROM mode. Another user wrote a helpful article about installing Windows with virtual media and WinPE which is the best workaround we have right now.
Hope that helps! Please let me know if you have any other questions.
- JJobey Smith @jobey
I'm taking a Windows 2022 server iso (it is 5gb in size and is bootable, yes, but I'm not using it for booting) and trying to do an in-place upgrade using the mounted iso. That doesn't seem to be working, and what you are stating above makes sense as to the cause. I'm very surprised that the Linux kernel is being limited to 2.2gb since these iso's seem to be getting bigger every year, but I know that's not your call. Thanks!
Edit: I do wonder about something, however: if 2.2gb is the limit, can you not limit the upload itself into TinyPilot to that size (or at least display a warning to the user)?
- David @david2023-07-26 17:38:38.755Z
You're welcome!
Thanks for the feedback - that would be super useful. We've created an internal ticket to warn users if they try to mount an image that's too large. There's no timeline for that change yet, but it will be super useful in the future to help prevent others from having this issue.