26
Struggling to get PI OS working on a 3B (lemmy.ca)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
16 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Got a couple rpi 3Bs I'd like to use headless.

Downloaded 32bit pi os lite, flashed it to an sd card, powered on and did the initial setup (select keyboard layout, set first user+pass).

As soon as I'm dropped into a shell, I run 'sudo apt update' then 'sudo apt upgrade -y'.

Once these finish, I type 'sudo reboot'; the pi reboots, shows the rainbow splash, about a dozen lines of kernal boot messages then the video output dies and after a couple seconds the act light stops flashing too. Disconnecting power and powering it again does the same thing.

I don't think it's hardware failure as I get the same results with both 3Bs and with a 4B.

I don't know what to do from here.

I've spent the last 6 hours retrying this with both the 32 and 64 bit versions of pi os light. I can't get past the initial update/upgrade.

Anyone got any ideas? Anyone got a spare sd card, a pi 3B, and some free time to see if I'm just stupid somehow? I don't understand what I'm doing wrong.

/edit: RESULTS!

I can only assume this was a bad sd card. Tried a different card, with the exact same procedure: it finally booted after an upgrade.

Ran the update/upgrade again + a dist-upgrade and a couple more reboots. Up and running.

Excuse me while I go grab an image of that working card to file away.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] just_another_person@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago
  1. What are the kernel messages that you are saying?
  2. Have you checked to see if the board is is still active via network?
  3. Have you tested with a different SD Card?
[-] Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca 6 points 2 years ago

Seems it was a bad card.

Tried a different one and all is well again.

[-] just_another_person@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

SD cards get thrashed pretty quickly from high I/O usage. Install and setup log2ram to mitigate some of that issue, and put any heavy logging to wherever you set the log2ram mount (/var/log by default). Note this will extend the life of the SD card, but reduce your available RAM while running. Another option is getting an NVME hat or USB adapter to not run on off of SD.

[-] Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Here's a couple frames from a video I took. More lines than I thought, but I don't see anything noteworthy :/

Start of boot:

Last lines shown before video dies:

[-] just_another_person@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Pretty sure the video mode is just being set wrong. Did you set the run level or something since you mentioned headless? Have you tried to SSH into it?

What happens if you boot the clean image, then reboot it without updating?

[-] Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 years ago

  1. didn't look like anything unusual, but I'll try and grab a photo before it disappears from screen. Waiting on 'apt upgrade' rn.

  2. the devices MAC has a fixed DHCP lease. The IP becomes and remains unreachable as soon as I enter 'sudo reboot'.

  3. this is a previously known to be good card (it had a working OS on it prior to todays messing around), but I'll try another for good measure.

[-] Deckweiss@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Grab the sd card, and look at it on your pc. If windows can't read it (idk anything about windows), do so from another linux (live boot Ubuntu or something on your windows machine).

The journal log should be stored at either one of:

/var/log/journal/<machine-id>/*.journal

/run/log/journal/<machine-id>/*.journal

Post it's contents in full here via pastebin.com

this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2025
26 points (90.6% liked)

Selfhosted

61734 readers
602 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

Detailed Rules Post

  1. Be civil.

  2. No spam.

  3. Posts are to be related to self-hosting.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or readme if you're providing a link.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title.

  6. No trolling.

  7. Promotion posts require active participation, with an account that is at least 30 days old. F/LOSS without a paywall has exceptions, with requirements. See the rules link for details. Tags [CBH] or [AIP] are required, see the links in Rule 8 for details.

  8. AI-related discussions and AI-involved promotional posts have additional requirements for tagging, as noted in Rule 7 and the AI & Promotional Post Expanded Rules post, and find example disclosures here.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
ruud@lemmy.world
Loki@lemmy.world
CannaVet@lemmy.world
devve@lemmy.world
ayyy@sh.itjust.works
curbstickle@anarchist.nexus
curbstickle_lw@lemmy.world