NixOS failing to boot from SD card on Raspberry Pi 4B 2GB

rafaelcgs10 · August 2, 2021, 4:35pm

Hi,

my first time posting here, so I’m sorry if this is the wrong place for that.

I’m having an issue when trying to do the first boot/install of NixOS using an SD card into my Raspberry Pi 4B 2GB. This only happens with the SD card, I successfully installed NixOS from a USB stick.

I’m basically following this tutorial.

I’ve tried using two different SD cards:

Same result with both.

The error message says it didn’t manage to mount the NIXOS_SD partition, and this is all I could understand from the error messages.

I also have tried many different versions of the NixOS for aarch64 from Hydra. Again, all gave me the same error.

There is also the possibility that my Raspberry Pi has a hardware problem, it would be good to validate that possibility without buying another Raspberry Pi.

I would appreciate any suggestions on how to solve this problem.

EDIT: I managed to install another Linux distro using the SD card.

nvandoorn · August 24, 2021, 8:44pm

Hey @afaelcgs10! I’m having the exact same issue and was also able to boot Raspbian on my Raspberry Pi 4. I also had an easy time installing NixOS on a Raspberry Pi 3 so I was a little surprised by this. I’ll follow up with any ideas or solutions I may encounter.

colemickens · September 2, 2021, 6:06pm

cc: @samueldr @jonringer Jon, didn’t you fix this?

jonringer · September 2, 2021, 6:18pm

I just followed NixOS on ARM - NixOS Wiki and didn’t have much of an issue.

@samueldr is definitely the one to ask

mackenzie · September 2, 2021, 9:49pm

Did you try updating the firmware?

## Updating the bootloader using Raspberry Pi Imager
# Raspberry Pi Imager provides a GUI for updating the bootloader and selecting the boot mode.
Install package: rpi-imager
Launch the application: rpi-imager
Insert a spare sd-card. The contents will get overwritten!
Choose OS > Misc utility images > Bootloader
Boot-mode: SD (recommended), USB or Network.
Choose Storage: Select the sd-card
WRITE
Boot the Raspberry Pi with the new image and wait for at least 10 seconds.
The green activity LED will blink with a steady pattern and the HDMI display will be green on success.
Power off the Raspberry Pi and remove the sd-card.

note: Sometimes a command seems to be finished, but is still writing to storage. You might have disconnected the sd-card too soon?

rafaelcgs10 · September 2, 2021, 11:53pm

Yes, I did update the firmware. I think this procedure was completed fine, I waited way more than 10 seconds.

rafaelcgs10 · September 2, 2021, 11:56pm

I don’t know if this helps, but when I update the firmware from NixOS I do this:

[nix-shell:~]# mount /dev/disk/by-label/FIRMWARE /mnt

[nix-shell:~]# BOOTFS=/mnt FIRMWARE_RELEASE_STATUS=stable rpi-eeprom-update -d -a
BCM2711 detected
VL805 firmware in bootloader EEPROM
Checking for updates in /nix/store/fvpchpwlsaip0j4swbi7q9l5yj1xv61i-raspberrypi-eeprom-2021-03-18/share/rpi-eeprom/stable
Use raspi-config to select either the default-production release or latest update.
BOOTLOADER: up-to-date
CURRENT: qui 29 abr 2021 16:11:25 UTC (1619712685)
 LATEST: qui 18 mar 2021 08:54:11 UTC (1616057651)
RELEASE: stable
VL805: up-to-date
CURRENT: 000138a1
 LATEST: 000138a1

pepsilon · September 3, 2021, 12:14pm

Which image did you use?

rafaelcgs10 · September 3, 2021, 2:28pm

I tried different images of 21.05 and 21.11. E.g.: Hydra - Build 142828023 of job nixos:trunk-combined:nixos.sd_image_new_kernel.aarch64-linux

pepsilon · September 3, 2021, 3:06pm

Oh I meant @jonringer I used the same image as you and had the same issue

jonringer · September 3, 2021, 4:56pm

I probably created my own image, as I think I just re-used my desktop’s configuration.nix with a few tweaks

colemickens · September 4, 2021, 3:19pm

I thought there was a somewhat recent fix that added the SDHC module to the initrd kernel modules to specifically fix this scenario of / not mounting from SD?

(Now that I’ve tried to look in git history, though, I can’t find a supporting commit.)

pepsilon · September 4, 2021, 8:21pm

There is repo which automates the building process via docker-compose. With the repo I managed to build a working image.
Maybe it helps you too:

mackenzie · September 5, 2021, 10:02am

I did this a few days ago. This went easier than the docker one…

I used an usb3 connected ssd, it should work for sd-cards.


# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
#  #  #  #  #   SELF-BUILD  IMAGE   #  #  #  #  #
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #


### Add to configuration.nix on build machine.
# {
#   boot.binfmt.emulatedSystems = [ "aarch64-linux" ];
# }

# CLONE nixpkg
git clone https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs ~/

cd ~/nixpkgs
# MODIFY IT
vim ~/nixpkgs/nixos/modules/installer/sd-card/sd-image-aarch64-new-kernel.nix
  ########################################################
  # # When running from USB device without SD card present, kernel spams log about missing SD card, workaround for this is to set:
  # boot.loader.raspberryPi.firmwareConfig = "dtparam=sd_poll_once=on";
  #
  # environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [ git neovim cryptsetup rsync silver-searcher raspberrypi-eeprom ];
  #
  # nix = {
  #     package = pkgs.nixUnstable;
  #     extraOptions = ''
  #       experimental-features = nix-command flakes
  #     '';
  # };
  #
  # console = {
  #   colors = [
  #     "f8f8f8"
  #     "a60000"
  #     "005e00"
  #     "813e00"
  #     "0031a9"
  #     "721045"
  #     "00538b"
  #     "282828"
  #     "ffffff"
  #     "972500"
  #     "315b00"
  #     "70480f"
  #     "2544bb"
  #     "8f0075"
  #     "30517f"
  #     "000000"
  #   ];
  #   font = "Lat2-Terminus16";
  #   # keyMap = "us";
  #   keyMap = "colemak/colemak";
  # };
  #
  # i18n = {
  #   defaultLocale = "en_IE.UTF-8";
  #   # defaultLocale = "en_US.UTF-8";
  #   extraLocaleSettings = {
  #     LC_TIME = "en_GB.UTF-8";
  #   };
  # };
  ########################################################

# MAKE IT
nix-build -A sd_image_new_kernel.aarch64-linux nixos/release.nix
## COPY the image to ~/downloads/images/
sudo cp /nix/store/8v0f2iq4jwbh704ym6wpvdinwnrdd9c3-nixos-sd-image-21.11pre130979.gfedcba-aarch64-linux.img/sd-image/nixos-sd-image-21.11pre130979.gfedcba-aarch64-linux.img.zst ~/downloads/images/
## Decompress File
unzstd -d ~/downloads/images/nixos-sd-image-21.11pre130979.gfedcba-aarch64-linux.img.zst

# WRITE TO SSD
lsblk
sudo dd bs=4M if=~/downloads/images/nixos-sd-image-21.11pre130979.gfedcba-aarch64-linux.img of=/dev/sdX status=progress oflag=sync

# BOOT rpi4 WITH SSD

rafaelcgs10 · September 7, 2021, 6:06pm

Yes, I confirm this works and is a workaround to the problem.
However, I still think that keeping this thread is relevant because this problem shouldn’t happen with images from hydra, right?
What do you people think?

avanc · November 3, 2021, 3:40pm

I can confirm the very same issue with generic image!

However, it works without problems by using the new kernel image.