Note that I have searched diligently both on-line and here and have found no definitive answers.
System: A robot that can use either a Pi-4 4g or a Pi-4 8g version.
Operating system: Raspberry Pi O/S Buster on a SSD drive that I move from board to board depending on what I am doing. This is roughly identical to moving a pre-programmed SD card from system to system - the operating system and it's configuration are identical.
Issue:
I have two Raspberry Pi's, Pi-4 8g and a Pi-4 4g.
Assume everything about the external configuration is identical as I install each of them into the exact same hardware test bed. (A GoPiGo robot)
If I boot the 8g pi without an operating system, it fails with a black text screen containg a QR code and some terminal text that displays the activity of the boot process.
If I boot the 4g pi in the exact same environment, I get a two color boot error screen. Only after I press [ESC] do I get what is called the "diagnostic" screen.
Background:
While troubleshooting an issue with a display hat, I downgraded the firmware on the Pi-4 4g and this is when the problem appeared.
I attempted to use rpi-eeprom-updater to update the firmware to the latest version and received two warnings:
1. I should have a 250 meg boot partition instead of a 200 meg partition. I allowed it to continue because the same SSD had been updated on the 8g device and 200meg was sufficient.
2. A warning about a filesystem upgrade. Again because this operating system was fully up-to-date, I figured updating an already up-to-date system wouldn't matter.
Result: The Pi-4 4g failed to boot at all while the 8g still booted as before using the same SSD.
I then upgraded, (restored), the firmware on the Pi-4 using rpi-updater and a SD card and the update appeared to complete. Result:
1. The 4g device boots.
2. The two color boot error screen is still there.
Additionally:
When booting, the boot process is normally a 3-step process. (All of this is a text-based process as I disabled the splash screen.)
* First boot with the raspberries at the top of the screen and initial setup and device/filesystem discovery is done. If the system has booted more than five times or more than five days have passed, a fsck is done on the root drive. After this is finished the screen blanks and proceeds to what I call "second boot".
* Second boot starts and the operating system begins to launch processes, daemons, and does post-discovery device configuration. After this completes, the screen blanks again and proceeds to what I call "third boot".
* Third boot begins with a blank screen. Then the mouse pointer appears. Then cron startup scripts run (my robot initializes itself, shakes it's head, and enables the status display.) Then the desktop appears, the WiFi connects, and things are ready.
The 8g version does all this as expected.
The 4g version performs the first boot process and blanks the screen for about a minute and a half. About 50% of the time the robot's initialization completes. Finally the desktop appears.
Note that the wireless desktop does not initialize at all, and the robot does not power down when commanded to shut down. The 8g Pi-4 version does everything as expected.
Also note that I am using THE EXACT SAME operating system SSD which I plug into each robots USB-3 connector before booting.
I am obviously missing something somewhere and any help would be appreciated!
System: A robot that can use either a Pi-4 4g or a Pi-4 8g version.
Operating system: Raspberry Pi O/S Buster on a SSD drive that I move from board to board depending on what I am doing. This is roughly identical to moving a pre-programmed SD card from system to system - the operating system and it's configuration are identical.
Issue:
I have two Raspberry Pi's, Pi-4 8g and a Pi-4 4g.
Assume everything about the external configuration is identical as I install each of them into the exact same hardware test bed. (A GoPiGo robot)
If I boot the 8g pi without an operating system, it fails with a black text screen containg a QR code and some terminal text that displays the activity of the boot process.
If I boot the 4g pi in the exact same environment, I get a two color boot error screen. Only after I press [ESC] do I get what is called the "diagnostic" screen.
Background:
While troubleshooting an issue with a display hat, I downgraded the firmware on the Pi-4 4g and this is when the problem appeared.
I attempted to use rpi-eeprom-updater to update the firmware to the latest version and received two warnings:
1. I should have a 250 meg boot partition instead of a 200 meg partition. I allowed it to continue because the same SSD had been updated on the 8g device and 200meg was sufficient.
2. A warning about a filesystem upgrade. Again because this operating system was fully up-to-date, I figured updating an already up-to-date system wouldn't matter.
Result: The Pi-4 4g failed to boot at all while the 8g still booted as before using the same SSD.
I then upgraded, (restored), the firmware on the Pi-4 using rpi-updater and a SD card and the update appeared to complete. Result:
1. The 4g device boots.
2. The two color boot error screen is still there.
Additionally:
When booting, the boot process is normally a 3-step process. (All of this is a text-based process as I disabled the splash screen.)
* First boot with the raspberries at the top of the screen and initial setup and device/filesystem discovery is done. If the system has booted more than five times or more than five days have passed, a fsck is done on the root drive. After this is finished the screen blanks and proceeds to what I call "second boot".
* Second boot starts and the operating system begins to launch processes, daemons, and does post-discovery device configuration. After this completes, the screen blanks again and proceeds to what I call "third boot".
* Third boot begins with a blank screen. Then the mouse pointer appears. Then cron startup scripts run (my robot initializes itself, shakes it's head, and enables the status display.) Then the desktop appears, the WiFi connects, and things are ready.
The 8g version does all this as expected.
The 4g version performs the first boot process and blanks the screen for about a minute and a half. About 50% of the time the robot's initialization completes. Finally the desktop appears.
Note that the wireless desktop does not initialize at all, and the robot does not power down when commanded to shut down. The 8g Pi-4 version does everything as expected.
Also note that I am using THE EXACT SAME operating system SSD which I plug into each robots USB-3 connector before booting.
I am obviously missing something somewhere and any help would be appreciated!
Statistics: Posted by jharris1993 — Thu Feb 27, 2025 12:01 pm