Labeling micro-SD cards ?

That's punch cards!

Personally I use a Dymo-style thermal labelling machine, the tape does need trimming down but in a small font size I get get a two lines of a word or two each on the front. I undersize my labels to keep them clear of the very edges of the card but that is more wear resistance than anything else. Failing that I'd resort to my selection of small, quick drying paints with built in brushes for colour coding. Other people know them as nail varnish.

... not so bad if you had added sequence numbers AND had a card sorter handy.

However, I discovered all that later: my first computer was an Elliott 503 that spoke Algol 60 and was programmed with 8 track paper tape written and edited on a Friden Flexowriter. Dropped your program? No problem: get a grip on the end of the tape, throw the tape down the nearest stair well and use a tape winder. Job done.

Consequently my subsequent introduction to 80 column cards and 12-key punches was quite a shock. Didn't take long to learn that having the 30 or so cards that defines a skeleton COBOL program in my briefcase could save a lot of time when bug fixing.

On 17 Oct 2022, R.Wieser said the following... R.> Hello all, R.> R.> Over time I've acquired a few micro-SD cards for my RPi's, and have a R.> problem with labeling them. R.> R.> Besides the surface of the card being tiny, you can't use a stick-on R.> label (would make the whole to thick to fit into the RPi's slot) and R.> I've not been able to find a pen thats able to reliable write on the R.> (mostly black backside) of the card (the written text is easy to rub R.> off, even after a couple of hours) R.>

How about these? Easy to write on with a marker...

|07-|15seeLive|08Ä|15{ "|07Sysop|15": ["|07oNyX bBs|15"] }

|15onyxbbs.mywire.org:2300-tel / :2200-ssh / onyxwww.mywire.org-web |07fsxnet / fidonet / tqwnet / dovenet / gamenet / sfnet|14

... I'm locked inside a chocolate factory... DON'T send help!

So install WSL on the Windows system and you can use that to

• automount Flash media plugged into the Windows computer * read the Linux filesystems with ls

Why not learn what it means?

Well, it is Rudy.

Exactly. I thought the name was familiar and noticed sometime back threads from him follow a similar pattern. Ask a question and then keep poking holes in any replies. Lather, rinse, repeat.

My reply about using WSL etc. was hopefully for people other than Rudy who may find it helpful to have a free Linux machine on their Windows machine to help them with their Pi endeavours. I didn't expect Rudy to actually install it and use it. It would spoil his ability to drag out this thread.

mm0fmf,

In my nick of the woods thats called "weighing pros and cons" and keeping the suggester in the loop. An attempt at exchanging information. Not all "you could possibly try {X}" suggestions are good, and not all of them are workable to me - as I have mentioned. Or, in your parlance "poked a hole in".

Lets go thru your "suggestion", shall we ?

You suggested to install WSL, without bothering to consider if that is actually possible on my 'puter - you where able(?), so everyone else is too.

You suggested to install software, without considering what my stance in regard to installing random stuff is - you simply do not care.

You suggested to install a heavyweight program/framework just so I can do on a Windows machine what I already can do on my RPi - Which is pain daft.

All that because I mentioned that the suggestion of putting a file somewhere that I could than use to identify the uSD card doesn't quite work for both the RPi and my Windows machines ? And a problem that was already nullified by me physically labeling the uSD card itself - as I posted the day before ?

Besides that, accessing those partitions /should/ be something the RPI should be able to do itself, as it 1) created those partition itself 2) already accesses those partitions as part of its boot process.

The only question is how.

I wrote what I tried and what results I got- hoping to get some more information/help so I could access either of the mentioned "w95" partitions (that I saw using fdisk), so I could put a file there.

But instead of doing that you thought it would be a good idea to "suggest" (or should I say : demand ?) that I implement your solution which involves installing /lots/ of stuff on another computer *just so I can access a Linux partition* ?

Kid, thats daft. Over-engeneered stupidity.

Also :KISS. The less changes that need to be made to effect a solution, the less chance something wil go wrong. Thats not rocket science.

Regards, Rudy Wieser

P.s. Don't try to bullshit people here by claiming that /you already knew/ (how?) I would not install it, but just did it to suggest random other people to do so. All you did there is showing that you purposely created a situation to be able to complain about it to someone else (Dumas). Which makes you, at best, an ass.

How is this done? I recently tried and found the following problem:

Easiest thing is to boot a linux live CD or live USB or install virtual box and have a linux virtual machine. Then you aren't handicapped by Microsofts inadequacies.

Easier to just use an rPi.

I did use to use VirtualBox, but switched to Hyper-V when I need my VMs to boot with the host booting, there was a cludgy way to do it in VirtualBox, but it was a standard feature with Hyper-V.

Anyway, I pretty much gave up using traditional VMs when WSL 2 appeared. That enabled me to run Linux Docker machines and I had the rPi if I required a proper Linux machine, for stuff like reading Ext4. It would be nice to read Ext4 SD cards in WSL2, but I'm not going to run out and buy a new machine, to get W11.

Anyway, I was interested in the RPi Imager/headless install Andy Burns was talking about. After some fannying around, I re-remembered that the SD card boot partition is FAT anyway, so I didn't need Ext4 to see what was going on.

The RPi imager drops a shell script in the boot partition, firstrun.sh.

SSH worked for me with both password authentication and with public-key only authentication. A little bit irritating that the password authentication didn't copy a public key across.

However, all in all, It is nice to be able to do a WIFI headless instal.

Don't know. The Windows machines here are all Win10 Pro or Win10 Enterprise. WSL and/or WSL2 install fine on W10. Try it and see if it works. If it doesn't automount, you just have to manually mount it with the right fstype, not the end of the world.

You can probably use Cygwin to achieve the same end but WSL/WSL2 seem to install with less effort IMHO.

Yes, I have WSL2, I use WSL2 regularly.

Mount what exactly?

AIUI, The hypervisor on Windows (e.g. Hyper-V, Virtual Box) has tended to get devices handed to it by Windows. If Windows cannot handle a device, such as an Ext4 USB, Windows will not make the device available to the hypervisor.

Now, some hypervisors enable hardware passthru, which may make things such as the USB device directly available to the VM. I've played with this in the past and generally found it to be a pain. A promise that it will work, that suddenly vanishes when some arcane gotcha brings the whole plan grinding to a halt.

In this case, the WSL2 gotcha was I need a specific build which I don't have, and it is far from obvious that I could have even if I spent hours researching it.

It sounds suspiciously like a wild goose chase.

ISTR the command used was something like

wsl --mount \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE3

I know we did this at work to write files to an ext4 partition on an SDcard for an RPi Zero being used to do some USB gadget software debugging. We don't have any Win11 machines. This was during lockdown and someone would have to had to get permission to visit the office, get their keycard enabled, driven to the office, put the card in many of the Linux lab machines, copy the file and drive back. Which was why WSL was used. I'll ask the guy who did it how he did it next time I see him.

I use lots and lots of Virtualbox VMs (running Linux and Windows) on a Windows 2019 server and we have the VMs accessing the Windows Server USB and PCI root complex hardware without any issue.

I gave up using Cygwin as WSL does what was needed better. YMMV

Good! The handiest holder I found is this:

One fellow suggested a "readme" file on the SD card itself so they're kinda self-identifying.

When possible, I use a descriptive label on the file system despite the 11 characters limit.

The bottom line: I agree that they're too small to label at home. Even permanent markers rub off over time. Kinda like trying to mark keys.

--

I have had good success using a paint pen. Sharpie for example makes paint versions of their markers. The tip is fine enough to write an identifier on the chip and will not rub off easily.

Look for "paint pen fine tip" Amazon has dozens of examples. Not very expensive either.

Jeff,

:-) I think you missed the above "thats not the problem" line.

:-) Although my fine-motor skills agree with you, a few people have suggested just that. And one of them even posted an image of his, very readable, handwring.

Also, I and at least one other person here have used a Dymo LetraTag to create a label (with two lines with upto 8 chars per line) which, after a bit of trimming, fit neatly on the front of a Micro-SD card.

IOW, Problem solved.

Regards, Rudy Wieser

Othello,

Thank you.

Alas, I've already tried to use something of the kind (a "silver" pen), but that both didn't really want to stick (on the smooth-and-shiny backside) and (thus?) rubbed/broke off when even normally used.

I've found a solution in using a literal label. Which solved a number of problems at the same time : I don't need to try to write anything that small, it comes with its own background (allowing me to put it on the front), and its even removable.

Regards, Rudy Wieser

On a sunny day (Mon, 24 Oct 2022 08:19:50 +0200) it happened "R.Wieser" snipped-for-privacy@not.available wrote in <tj5b7p$1c4j$ snipped-for-privacy@gioia.aioe.org>:

I have an USB card reader, can be used on your running PI to check any cards.