Long time slacker, but new to ARM! For Xmas, my family bought me a Pi 400. I managed to get sarpi / slackwarearm-current running on it, and while xfce worked OK, kde4 seemed buggy. After querying the availablity of VLC, I was pointed towards slarm64-current, which seems to most closely resemble the slackware64-current that I am familiar with.

I've downloaded the latest base-rootfs image for the Pi4 and installed it on a uSD card, but I can't get it to boot. The black level on the monitor dips up and down a bit, and the power light flashes, but otherwise, no sign of life.

Clearly I've missed something!I've tried creating the boot card using both zstdcat and dd methods described in the readme, to no avail. It looks as if it is failing to find the kernel, or whatever precedes the kernel loading. No error messages, just nothing!

Raspbian loads OK, as does sarpi (32-bit). I'm about to try sarpi64, but not being familiar with the ARM boot process, I've no idea how to update the (rather old) kernels that come with sarpi64.

Any advice gratefully received!

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Pete

u-boot is used for loading, with sdcard there was no such problem yet, it was when transferring to usb-hdd, for a quick fix mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 sdcard and comment out kernel=u-boot.bin in the config.txt file and uncomment kernel=Image.

yeah you have a different dtb, on sdcard /dev/mmcblk0p1 in the uEnv.txt file replace the file name fdtfile=bcm2711-rpi-4-b.dtb with fdtfile=bcm2711-rpi-400.dtb

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No, still the same!

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Pete

good and the crossed out version

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YES!

That has got me to a root login! I've now got something I can work with!

Thanks for your help!



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Pete

everything is correct the bootloader is assembled for raspberry pi 4.

to test the bootloader, please check.
you need to return everything back and replace the file with /dev/mmcblk0p1 u-boot.bin

Yes, I understand! If I had more experience with the ARM version of Slackware, I might have been able to figure it out. However, the boot process and configuration is completely new to me, and sarpi and Raspbian seem to each do it differently again!

As I say - a learning experience!



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Pete

OK, dinner is in the oven at the moment and about to be served! Also my eyes are going funny - I've been staring at the monitor too long!

If I don't get another look tonight, I'll pick it up first thing in the morning!

Cheers,

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Pete

No, that put it back to failing to boot - just a blank screen again.

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Pete

i fixed booting for 400

Still not working!

What I've done:

1) Download new base image and copy to SD card.

2) Edit uEnv.txt to point to the correct (400) fdt file.

3) Boot. (fails)

4) Edit config.txt to point to Image rather than u-boot.bin

5) Boot. Works!

When the boot fails, I get the impression that the system is trying to load something, failing and going round in circles (stuck in a loop). The power light flashes and the black level on the monitor flashes slightly over a period of a few seconds. There is no output to the screen other than black level, making it difficult to diagnose.

I'm going to put it back into boot-fail mode and then remove the sd card and see if it has logged anything in dmesg or syslog...

Update: No, it never gets far enough to write anything to the logs!

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Pete

1 members found this post helpful.

loading is done from sdcard from card slot or as usb stick?

I've only tried it from sd card, but I can certainly put on a USB stick and try it. I have to go out for half-an-hour, but will try when I get back.

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Pete

not worth it, these are clarifications for me, I found one problem in the kernel configuration affecting booting from usb.