New Setup with Pi4 8GB - Will not seem to boot

[peter75]

I did flash 32bit version (ArchLinuxARM-rpi-armv7-latest.tar.gz) and that one is working OK.

so problematic is ArchLinuxARM-rpi-aarch64-latest.tar.gz
see my previous comment

[doragasu1]

I have the same problem

I have been running alarm on RPi boards for years. Today I did pacman -Syu and my setup broke. The board booted but eth0 was not detected anymore. I tried downgrading first the kernel, then systemd along with openssl, sudo and another library I do not remember, and then the system broke completely (kernel panic on boot because of a libcrypto mismatch).

So I decided to reinstall and found this problem, my Pi is stuck in the U-Boot bootloop shown in this thread .

[peter75]

I did also start another thread
viewtopic.php?f=65&t=16243

[doragasu1]

Hum, retried the installation and now it's working. I'm a bit puzzled right now

Maybe my problem was just an sdcard issue? Although I'm using the same card, on the first try after copying the root filesystem, it automatically remounted itself read only (but no error was reported, so I remounted it read/write and continued the installation). On the second attempt no weird problem occurred.

[pezz]

Just thought I'd add some notes about issues I had today after the updates.

Not sure if it's the bootloader or the new kernel that has changed this, but whatever the case, my eth0 is now end0 so it screwed my systemd-networkd config. Took me a while to work this out as I run a headless Pi4 and it's not easy for me to debug early boot stuff.

I decided to get the stock image booting and updated on another sdcard. The ArchLinuxARM-rpi-aarch64-latest.tar.gz image with U-Boot and the different kernel still do not work on my Pi4. I had to chroot using qemu on my main x86 Linux box to get linux-rpi etc installed (there's another thread about this, I might make a new post as it's easier to get an aarch64 chroot going now in Arch x86_64).

Once I got the stock image booting it allowed me to spot the interface name difference and fix my systemd config which lead to my main install being able to boot again (well, I guess it was booting ok just not reachable on the network).

[graysky]

Yeah, the eth0 --> end0 was unexpected and annoying. See: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=16245

[peter75]

@pezz, please can you write steps how to chroot on arch x86_64 to sd card with alarm and install rpi kernel, initram and boot image?
thanks

[pezz]

Sure, this was originally shared with me by @tamjan (original post) but I've found there's no need for manually setting up the binfmt rules like in his original script.

Have these packages installed:
- arch-install-scripts (for arch-chroot)
- qemu-user-static (for qemu-aarch64-static)
- qemu-user-static-binfmt (bin format rules)

Then mount your card's root and boot like normal, e.g.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', 'mount /dev/xxx2 /mnt/pi4root
mount /dev/xxx1 /mnt/pi4root/boot
')
Use arch-chroot and install whatever you need (if you're using a new image you'll have to init the pacman keyring as in the install steps etc):
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', 'arch-chroot /mnt/pi4root')
I usually run sync after I've logged out of the chroot.

Edit: Removed the part where the static qemu binary is copied into the root of the pi, it's not needed.

[graysky]

Why not just install to another uSD card (same architecture aarch64 or armv7h) and chroot from that? No need for qemu.

[pezz]

The default aarch64 image from the install instructions has never booted on my Pi4 so I've needed a way to chroot and get linux-rpi on the card.