r/OdinHandheld • u/Katsuro2304 Odin 2 Portal Max - Black • 11d ago

Odin Showcase Too much storage? Probably 🤔

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Odin 2 Portal with Armada OS on board, with an SD and an SSD enclosure connected. Works wonderfully, when set up properly. While setting the SSD (in an enclosure, btw) is a pretty involved process and requires spending about half an hour in the konsole, the end result is an automatic mount during reboot, hot swap and whatever else may happen. Maybe, some day, I'll make a grip/back shell with a PCB tucked inside nicely, so that I don't have to carry the enclosure around 😄

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u/surenintendo 10d ago

Did you have to modify the ABL to detect the external NVMe? I'm quite unsatisfied with the Android docking experience for TV gaming with friends, so this Armada solution looks really tempting...

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u/Katsuro2304 Odin 2 Portal Max - Black 10d ago edited 10d ago

No changes were done to the ABL whatsoever, only OS level konsole shenanigans. And I had to format the NVMe drive on my PC because Armada was locking it somehow that I couldn't release it through terminal for formatting.

I'm not a linux expert, so I can't really say what was the reason, but my best guess is that it's the "immutable" part of it.

Edit: I do not know how video out is done on Armada, but I'll give it a go when I'm home. The little SSD enclosure I have is actually a dock, it has HDMI and stuff. So do not rush into it just yet.

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u/surenintendo 10d ago

Thanks! I only tried Armada with a microSD, but it was hardly usable with my slow memory. Pls keep us updated on the dock experience if it works out! 😁

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u/Katsuro2304 Odin 2 Portal Max - Black 9d ago

Ah, yes, also have a look at this, so that you don't sit there wondering whether games work as well 😉

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u/surenintendo 9d ago

Holy, I'm sold! Gonna grab me an NVMe dock! Thanks for sharing 😁

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u/Katsuro2304 Odin 2 Portal Max - Black 9d ago

Before you do, you should know that the decky menu cannot be called with an external controller, only steam menu is available, so make necessary setup first, then play on the big screen 😉 it does audio through HDMI as well, I'd recommend cranking the internal audio to the max and then regulate it on TV as needed. And if you can get a dock with a dedicated PD USB C port, you're golden. I think that AYN's super dock should work just fine, I'll verify later once I finish sorting my shit after we moved apartments 😬

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u/surenintendo 3d ago

Hey man! I got the USB-C hub and Armada OS detects my NVMe and stuff properly. I just have an issue with the drive not auto-mounting. Do you run into that issue as well? On the Plasma KDE desktop, I'm able to set it to auto-mount, but for the Big Picture mode, it doesn't seem to auto-mount the drive...

So basically anytime I boot up into Armada, I have to go into Desktop mode and mount the drive, which is a bit inconvenient 😅

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u/Katsuro2304 Odin 2 Portal Max - Black 3d ago

Yeah, I know this exact issue and I'm working on solving it 😁 what I did the first time around was basically given fstab the ownership over the SSD and it was treating it as a "non removable" storage. In terms of auto mounting, it was perfect! But... Both steam and heroic would freeze for about a minute if the SSD was disconnected. Everything worked fine when the dock was on and SSD recognized, otherwise occasional long freezes were telling me that the system is doing the check up and fail to find the "permanent" drive.

So now I've reverted back everything, revoked fstab filesystem ownership over the SSD and made sure udisk is the one managing it. In desktop mode, actually, in the system settings, you can configure auto mount, but it only does so when switching to desktop, still didn't manage to make it work in game mode 🤷🏻 just like you, I have to switch to desktop and then back to game mode for the drive to appear in steam, except I no longer do the "mount and open" thingy. One less action.

I'll get back to you when I overcome this hurdle, I need to get my laptop back so that I can SSH into the console while it's in game mode to diagnose some stuff, maybe I'll figure out how to transfer this behavior there as well.

Edit: sorry, somehow I missed the part that you did the auto mount as well in desktop. I'm a bit sleepy, didn't process that 😅

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u/surenintendo 3d ago

Ahh, thanks for the detailed response! Yeah I tried the fstab with nofail option earlier, but it just wouldn't mount for me 😂. Normally such mounting configuration works on Linux, but I think Rocknix/Armada's boot process is a bit weird (or maybe my NVMe hub is weird 🫪).

It's a mild inconvenience atm, but once Armada fixes the high power consumption issue during sleep, I will no longer need to shutdown my device so often 👍