Problems booting on Raspberry Pi 3b+

Help
1

Here’s what I’m doing:

  1. Download the 22.11 image from https://nixos.wiki/wiki/NixOS_on_ARM#Installation → https://hydra.nixos.org/job/nixos/release-22.11/nixos.sd_image.aarch64-linux. Got the file nixos-sd-image-22.11.1991.36a81812f29-aarch64-linux.img.zst.
  2. Uncompressing:
➜  ~ unzstd -d nixos-sd-image-22.11.1991.36a81812f29-aarch64-linux.img.zst
nixos-sd-image-22.11.1991.36a81812f29-aarch64-linux.img.zst: 2897481728 bytes
➜  ~ ll nixos-sd-image-22.11.1991.36a81812f29-aarch64-linux.img
Permissions Size User  Date Modified Name
.rw-r--r--  2.9G stian 25 Jan 19:54  nixos-sd-image-22.11.1991.36a81812f29-aarch64-linux.img
  1. Formatting:
➜  raspberrypi git:(main) ✗ nix-shell -p parted

[nix-shell:~]$ date && sudo parted /dev/mmcblk0 --script -- mklabel msdos && sudo parted /dev/mmcblk0 --script -- mkpart primary fat32 1MiB 100% && sudo mkfs.vfat -F32 /dev/mmcblk0p1 && sudo parted /dev/mmcblk0 --script print && date
Wed Jan 25 08:26:28 PM CET 2023
mkfs.fat 4.2 (2021-01-31)
Model: SD SD64G (sd/mmc)
Disk /dev/mmcblk0: 63.9GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags:

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
 1      1049kB  63.9GB  63.9GB  primary  fat32        lba

Wed Jan 25 08:26:32 PM CET 2023
  1. Transferring:
➜  ~ date; sudo dd if=/home/stian/nixos-sd-image-22.11.1991.36a81812f29-aarch64-linux.img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=4M conv=fsync status=progress; date;
Wed Jan 25 08:27:06 PM CET 2023
2730491904 bytes (2.7 GB, 2.5 GiB) copied, 1 s, 2.7 GB/s2897481728 bytes (2.9 GB, 2.7 GiB) copied, 1.07606 s, 2.7 GB/s
690+1 records in
690+1 records out
2897481728 bytes (2.9 GB, 2.7 GiB) copied, 115.693 s, 25.0 MB/s
690+1 records in
690+1 records out
2897481728 bytes (2.9 GB, 2.7 GiB) copied, 115.973 s, 25.0 MB/s
Wed Jan 25 08:29:02 PM CET 2023

When I put this into my raspberry pi and boot it up, I first get to select the generation, then I see a bunch of text pass by, and then the screen goes black. The raspberry seems to be on still, but nothing shows on the screen. I have a video of what it looks like that I’ll share if I find somewhere to upload it to.

Question 1: Am I doing anthing wrong above? Should this work?
Question 2: Any tips for how to share that video of what the boot looks like?

2

I also tried the “unstable (LTS kernel)” (nixos-sd-image-23.05pre446903.f203bcdff14-aarch64-linux.img) and “unstable (Latest kernel)” (nixos-sd-image-23.05pre446903.f203bcdff14-aarch64-linux (1).img) images. The former gave a similar result, while the latter also got to the black screen but did it faster.

3

I’ve just started with Nixos on the Pi, so very noob. But here are some thoughts…

The parted command I don’t fully understand but it looks like there is just one FAT formatted partition…I’m used to having a boot partition and a root partition but I can’t say yours is “wrong”.

I’m using ZFS, and this caught my eye when I was exploring the build:

which looks like your issue maybe.
I copied images like yours onto a USB disk, and some new and old ones didn’t seem to boot at all - I ended up with the 22.11 small which seemed to work. Perhaps some are more fragile than others?
Hope that gibes some food for thought - if not apologies for the rabbit hole!

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4

Thanks for responding! I’m not 100% sure, but I think that parted-command is correct. I have another pi running with nixos, and the sd card image I downloaded back then (21.11.337975.eabc3821918) still works. I think there may be a difference in between that version and the current version that causes this not to work.

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