Best Way to Install Mate on 64GB micro SDXC Card

Support & Help Requests
#1

What is the best way to install Ubuntu mate on a 64 GB micro SDXC card for Raspberry Pi 2?

I have read that the best way to format an micro SDXC card is with FAT32. Should I do this and then dd the image on to the card and then continue with the install on the RP2?

Should I format the card with ext4?

Should I format the card with ext4 and then create a partition with also a swap partition and then dd the image?
Should I leave the card unformatted and then use the dd tool?

I’m not sure which is the best File system for this. I know there are instructions to make an micro SDHC card using gddrescue and also to resize the File system later but what is the best or correct format to install Ubuntu Mate on for this purpose?

Any help with this is appreciated.

#2

GNOME Disks is perfect for writing images to flash cards. It will be installed by default in 16.04 (an upcoming release), but for 15.10 and below, you can install this from the software centre or Welcome.

Or from the terminal:

sudo apt-get install gnome-disk-utility

It would be best to format the entire card with FAT32 first and then use the “Restore Disk Image” feature to write the image to the entire card. You don’t need to uncompress it, Disks will accept a tar.xz file.

Once that completes, boot up your Pi and follow the commands to resize the filesystem to use the remaining space:

sudo fdisk /dev/mmcblk0

Then press the keys in this order:
d → 2 → n → p → 2 → Enter, Enter

Reboot, then:

sudo resize2fs /dev/mmcblk0p2

That’s it, Ubuntu MATE is installed to the card using all 64 GB.

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#3

Thanks for the reply and the instructions.

Is there a way that I can check that Ubuntu MATE is using all 64 GB?

Thanx

#4

From a terminal:

sudo fdisk -l /dev/mmcblk0p2

You should see something along the lines of

Disk /dev/xxxxx: 59 GiB, xxx bytes, xxx sectors

Note that 1 GiB is 1024 MiB and 1 GB = 1000 MB.

From a utility:

Disks or GParted can be installed on the Pi and will show you. If you see unallocated "free space" at the end, then you know something has gone wrong.

Taking a guess from Caja:

See if your free space has increased at the bottom of any file manager window:

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#5

Thanks again. All sorted now.

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