Booting aarch64 from USB - /boot on SD and / on USB 3?

[qxotk]

I am having trouble booting aarch64 from my external USB3 drive.

I am able to boot from the SD card to aarch64, however I would like to take advantage of the speed improvement from running / on my USB3 external hard drive.

I have followed the instructions for Raspberry PI 4: https://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv8/broadcom/raspberry-pi-4 as well as ensuring my EEPROM is up-to-date and I've verified the boot order to be SD then USB3 (0xf41).

I believe I am really close, and I think the issue I am having is the one regarding the USB3 hub being briefly powered down during boot.

I have read that one can configure the RPi 4 to find /boot on the sdcard, and mount / from the USB 3 external drive.

My one problem is that I am not sure what the device name should be for /boot in /etc/fstab for the SD card, nor for the USB drive.

If anyone has done this successfully, would you be willing to post a reply with what /etc/fstab should look like for /boot on SD and / on USB3 device?

Will the device names (e.g. /dev/*) be the same when booted under Raspberry Pi OS arch linux arm?

I would be grateful for any guidance at all.

Thank you,
-qxotk

[moonman]

There is another thread somewhere on the forum about this issue. I believe you need to compile U-Boot 2021.01 release candidate for this to work.

[qxotk]

Thank you @moonman, any chance you can point me to a reference/tutorial on compiling u-boot?

--
EDIT: Currently looking at this for compiling u-boot: https://turlucode.com/arch-linux-compile-your-own-kernel/

[Czar]

@qxotk viewtopic.php?f=65&t=14672#p64313

[mrtux]

There is a packaged version of the RC uboot linked to Dropbox in the forum moonman linked, you can install that with pacman. For your device names I would use the UUID of your drives. Your root device should go in your /boot/boot.txt file and update it afterwards with ./mkscr. The /boot is likely already in your fstab file if your /boot is on the SD card . You may also need to add the pcie_brcmstb module listed in the post as well and rebuild your ram disk file. All steps are found topic linked.
Here is the link to the Dropbox https://www.dropbox.com/s/zwc236qdun21o%20...%20ar.gz?dl=0

[Diesel1]

Hi all,

I have my Pi 4 4Gb booting from sd card with / (root) on the ssd (dev/sda1).

The issue I have is when I reboot, via the reboot command, the ssd plugged into the usb3 ports is not found. Only a hard power cycle will make the (re)boot successful.

Is there anything I can do to make the ssd become live again without having to pull the power lead?

Would having the ssd plugged into a usb hub help?

Any ideas would be welcome.

Diesel1.

*EDIT*
I plugged the SSD into the top USB 3 slot and the drive seems to reset normally every time I reboot.

*EDIT 2*
Alas my solution was unsuccessful and the ssd is not always rebooting.

[qxotk]

@diesel1 I believe I might have read another post by you - or by someone else with a similar issue.

It seems that there is some difference between the RPi4 with 4Gb vs. the RPi4 with 8Gb.

You might want to research that.

[qxotk]

All, I am going to backtrack and try to see if I can achieve a more simple goal: simply setting up a boot SD from the ArchLinuxARM-rpi-aarch64-latest.tar.gz from 2020-08-08.

I thought I had that working at one point, and I am going to try again.

One thing I noticed is the 2020-08-08 image from os.archlinuxarm.org/os pre-dates the latest RPi4 firmware that I have loaded on my pi.

I realize that there are posts on this thread that refer to some manual customizations to arch linux arm - which I will certainly follow if necessary.

I believe the last time I tried to access the dropbox someone posted with an image with such modifications - the link was not longer valid.

I will continue to post my progress on this thread, in case someone has guidance and/or in case it helps anyone else following this.

[qxotk]

I now have aarch64 running on my Rpi4 8Gb from the SD card only.

Followed the setup instructions on the Arch RPi setup page here: https://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv ... berry-pi-4

One thing that I noticed - not a surprise, but perhaps I didn't understand clearly enough at first: the HDMI port I had connected to my monitor is the console (tty1) and a USB keyboard plugged into a USB port is not the console input device.

However, following the instructions regarding connecting via SSH worked as expected.

I think I am going to run via the SDCARD for a bit as I ramp up on the best practices running an arch system: e.g. package management, backup , etc.

I will write again with my next steps soon.