[SOLVED] manual installation on the Raspberry Pi: unable to boot

YuGiOhJCJ · 04-10-2015, 03:58 AM

No, I have only one SD card.
I will try as soon as possible to boot the raspbian image (as you suggested in a previous post) to check if the firmware in the raspbian image is good for my board.

louigi600 · 04-10-2015, 04:24 AM

I suggested that when I thought that you had 2 Pi board, an old one and an new one.
If the old firmware is known good for your board it might not help you move towards a solution.

YuGiOhJCJ · 04-13-2015, 11:46 AM

Interesting thing!
I have done the test with the raspbian image to check if the firmware in the raspbian image is good for my board.
It seems to be bad.

This is what I have done:

Code:

sudo mkdosfs -F 32 /dev/mmcblk0p1
wget -c http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian/images/raspbian-2014-06-22/2014-06-20-wheezy-raspbian.zip
unzip -o 2014-06-20-wheezy-raspbian.zip
sudo mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /mnt/floppy
sudo cp -v 2014-06-20-wheezy-raspbian.img /mnt/floppy
sudo umount /mnt/floppy
rm 2014-06-20-wheezy-raspbian.img

And it does not work.
Also, I have tried with the zip instead of the img file (because I do not know the exact instructions in order to install raspbian from the image) and it does not work, same behavior: The red LED is actived only and nothing displayed to the screen.
Exactly the same behavior than with the try with Slackware.

This is the partitions on my SD Card:

Code:

sudo fdisk -l /dev/mmcblk0

Disk /dev/mmcblk0: 7822 MB, 7822376960 bytes
4 heads, 16 sectors/track, 238720 cylinders, total 15278080 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000d8d91

        Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/mmcblk0p1            2048    15278079     7638016    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)

Maybe the problem is only about the version of raspbian I am using.
I should try with older versions I think...

Can someone just confirm that what I am doing is correct to install raspbian?
I just need to copy the zip or img file to the SD Card?

gus3 · 04-13-2015, 02:08 PM

Don't copy the raspbian-*.zip file to the SD card. Make an empty (scratch-space) directory, move (or copy) the zip file into that directory, and unzip it there. If you get a single raspbian-*.img file, then that is the file you want to copy to the SD card. It will have the partition table at the beginning, plus the /boot partition with firmware and kernel, and the root partition, all prepared for the first-boot setup and configuration.

(Comments definitely welcome. I'm not a regular Raspbian user.)

louigi600 · 04-13-2015, 04:09 PM

Unless you're prepared to tinker with the image itself you will need an SD that is at least the size of the uncompressed image.
Unzip the zipped image and run fdisk on it to see the size SD you need.

Code:

fsidk -l 2014-06-20-wheezy-raspbian.img

then once you have an SD of at least the size fdisk reports the image is go ahead like this: (supposing on your system th SD is located in /dev/mmcblk0)

Code:

cat 2014-06-20-wheezy-raspbian.img > /dev/mmcblk0
sync

or something equivalent to that if you're concerned about using cat in that manner.

Code:

dd if=2014-06-20-wheezy-raspbian.img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=512

You might haveto use partprobe or reinsert the SD to have kernel reread the SD partition table and make udev create the device files for the partitions created in the SD while dumping raw data into it.

If you don't have an SD big enough you're back to having to tinker with the image to reduce it to fit your SD, much like the manual installation process for the Slackware arm miniroot.

the3dfxdude · 04-16-2015, 03:39 PM

Trying to follow your logic here...

Quote:

the3dfxdude> I prefer a manual installation than an installation that requires an installer.
That is why I chose this solution.
Anyway, I have followed these instructions using an old version of raspbian from 2013 but I have also tested with a version from 2014.
Same results.
On the link you give, I only see an installer image.
That is not what I am looking for as I would like a manual installation.

Quote:

Interesting thing!
I have done the test with the raspbian image to check if the firmware in the raspbian image is good for my board.
It seems to be bad.

This is what I have done:
...snip...
And it does not work.
...snip...
Maybe the problem is only about the version of raspbian I am using.
I should try with older versions I think...

The fatdog image has an installer, yes. But even when I used the image, I technically did not run the installer. You can use that bootdisk image and not run the installer. I highly suggest not downgrading to an older raspbian image. The newer firmware is so much better. Please consider using the fatdog very new image and adapting to your manual install process. Some reasons:

* The firmware is only a few days old
* It boots you to a shell you can get started in
* It is a slackware-arm native environment
* The steps will be easier / more intuitive
i.e. ... boot, finish your partitions, mount target partition, unzip or use installpkg. Follow the last steps setting up the SD to boot your OS as found in the fatdog instructions.

It worked out of the box for my pretty old latter 2012 raspi B model.

YuGiOhJCJ · 04-18-2015, 04:27 AM

louigi600> OK I have done the test:

Code:

$ fdisk -l 2014-06-20-wheezy-raspbian.img

Disk 2014-06-20-wheezy-raspbian.img: 2962 MB, 2962227200 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 360 cylinders, total 5785600 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000b5098

                         Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
2014-06-20-wheezy-raspbian.img1            8192      122879       57344    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
2014-06-20-wheezy-raspbian.img2          122880     5785599     2831360   83  Linux
$ sudo bash
# cat 2014-06-20-wheezy-raspbian.img > /dev/mmcblk0
# sync

And it works fine!
So the firmware is good for my board and the problem about installing Slackware is probably about the way I am partitioning, or the way I am formating, or the way I am copying files to the SD card...

the3dfxdude> Yes, OK there is a way to install Slackware without an installer using a bootdisk.
If you have some instructions to give me I can try to follow them.
Anyway, I am interested to understand why the instructions of louigi600 written on the Wiki do not work anymore.
I was able to do it before and I would like to find what is the reason of this failure.

YuGiOhJCJ · 12-12-2015, 09:59 AM

It works

I have been notified by e-mail that the instructions [1] for installing Slackware ARM on the Raspberry Pi have been modified by allend the 2014-12-17 at 12:49.
I just have to use "-F 16" instead of "-F 32" for the "mkdosfs" command.

Now, I can boot but after that I don't know what is the password for the "root" user.
So, I modified the "/etc/shadow" file to set a new one:

Code:

$ sudo mount -o noatime /dev/mmcblk0p2 /mnt/hd
$ sudo vim /mnt/hd/etc/shadow
$ sudo umount /mnt/hd/

As the password is encrypted in this file, the value I typed was a value copied from an existing user from my /etc/passwd file.

After this modification, I am able to log in

Do you know what is the default password for the "root" user?

[1] http://docs.slackware.com/howtos:har...rm:raspberrypi

louigi600 · 12-12-2015, 10:49 AM

I've been recently revisiting my own notes while doing basically the same thing on RPi2 ... I figured out that there was an issue on the boot the way the partition is formatted: not enough cluster to make such a small fat32 filesystem ... you need to format the patition with -F 16 but the partition ID should still be c so that you get a 16 bit vfat and the Pi seems to like that better

Sorry for taking so long to debug that.
I now have a script for the RPi2 that takes miniroot, kernel, modules and boot firmware and creates a working image file ready to be cat or dd to an uSD .... It would probabbly still work on the Pi as long as you instruct it to use the correct kernel, modules and boot firmware packages from Fatdog. If anybody wants it I can share it.

YuGiOhJCJ · 12-12-2015, 07:31 PM

Oh I found the default password is "password"

Here is the information: ftp://ftp.arm.slackware.com/slackwar...ot_details.txt

Problem solved