Failed Boot etc

1. On a couple of occasions, with two different SD cards I have happily install the previous version (not the latest RC6). I have then installed various software, had a good session and then shut down.

Next day – complete failure to boot. Burn another card – eventually same story.
What is going on. Are the cards failing,or is some essential file becoming corrupted?

2. Where is the rest of my 512MB?
This previous version shows 128 MB. The new one only 49MB.

3. How may I use the rest of my 8GB SD card – all the distros seem to be stuck at 2GB.

Nevertheless, apart from the very annoying problem No 1. I still think its a pretty amazing job, and will surely get better.
And it certainly flies compared with the Debian wheezy, which I find very disappointing.

George Pearce

had a good session and then shut down.

How do you shut down? Ctrl-Shift-F12 (or taskmanager menu equivalent) or pulling the power?

Next day – complete failure to boot. Burn another card – eventually same story.

Complete boot failure? Nothing at all happens? Not even the pretty rainbow screen?

2. Where is the rest of my 512MB?

There’s a configuration file, something like “CONFIG/TXT” on the DOS partition. You can access this in, IIRC, as $.!Boot.Loader (it’s a virtual directory). Look around for a command that sets memory. The GPU seems to be somewhat wasteful and gets stressed if it doesn’t have at least 32Mb to itself, but is happier with 64Mb. This will ought to leave RISC OS with 448Mb (minus some for ROM image, data, housekeeping…). Still, this’ll be more than plenty. Probably around 400Mb more than plenty. It’s RISC OS we’re talking about. ;-)

3. How may I use the rest of my 8GB SD card – all the distros seem to be stuck at 2GB.

I think it was an “executive decision” to pick 2Gb as a compromise between usefulness and not requiring anything OTT. Though, it must be said, I’m having trouble finding 2Gb cards these days (mom wants them for the digital camera, thinks navigating >2000 photos is a PITA).

I don’t know how the SD image is built, so I don’t know if it is possible to format an 8Gb card, bung on the DOS partition bit, and unpack !Boot from a zip file or such. Certainly something hairy must be involved to get the “Loader” directory to point to the DOS partition.

I hope somebody with a clue (namely, anybody else…) will fill in some blanks here.

And it certainly flies compared with the Debian wheezy, which I find very disappointing.

Must resist temptation to make lame crack about “wheezy”… Must resist! Must resist!

RISC OS is a “lightweight” OS. There’s a lot of stuff it doesn’t do compared to Linux, Symbian, et al.

On the other hand, RISC OS was happy with 1Mb memory and an 8MHz processor; and quite at home with 16Mb memory and a 40MHz processor.
What we’re offering today, the Pies¹ and Beagles, is just mind-numbing. The Pi boot time takes me right back to my early days with computers. All RISC OS needs to do is ditch that “biip!” and replace it with a bold, confident, “burrrr-BEEP!”.

¹ I write “pies” because I tend to read “Pis” (the official plural, it would seem) as a different word… :-/

I don’t know how the SD image is built,

Clever / totally barking overlap of FAT and filecore as I understan it.

1 I write “pies” because I tend to read “Pis” (the official plural, it would seem) as a different word… :-/

:-) Pop up to Belgium. Le Mannequin

George, have you tried RC6?

Using RC5, is this something you’re able to reproduce – for example: image card, boot RISC OS, install program X (how do you install it?), shutdown, reboot?

And 49MB? That’s an odd number. Where are you getting it from?

How do you shut down? Ctrl-Shift-F12 (or taskmanager menu equivalent) or pulling the power?

Complete boot failure? Nothing at all happens? Not even the pretty rainbow screen?

Yes Shutting down from taskmanager – then switch off – afterwards zilch – just a steady red light on the board and no display.

And 49MB? That’s an odd number. Where are you getting it from?

I misread the number of digits! RC6 does give 458752MB total, though 16th October distro does only show 131072MB total. So some progress there.

As a newbie to this forum, I don’t understand the quote method!

Clever / totally barking overlap of FAT and filecore as I understan it

It was an essential feature, unfortunately – especially in a joint RISC OS with Linux SD card image (coming soon, we hope). Without native partition support in RISC OS, you’d have real problems doing things like editing config.txt or replacing the ROM image from within RISC OS, which would be a bit of a pain.

Hopefully, tools will emerge in the not-too-distant future which will make things easier for people to extend the 2GB RISC OS SD card image to fill larger cards. Keep an eye on this site for example.

which will make things easier for people to extend the 2GB RISC OS SD card image to fill larger cards

And to create SD card images for Beagleboard, ARMini and Pandaboard?

Yes Shutting down from taskmanager – then switch off – afterwards zilch – just a steady red light on the board and no display.

Look carefully as you boot. Does the green ACT light blink at all ?

What happens if you try to use a “dead” SD in a PC? Can you access the boot partition?

As a newbie to this forum, I don’t understand the quote method!

Leave a blank line.
begin a line with bq (in lower case), and then a period, then a space, then your quote.
A blank line to finish.

Like this:

This is not quote.

bq. This is quoted stuff.

And this is not quote.

Hopefully, tools will emerge in the not-too-distant future which will make things easier for people to extend the 2GB RISC OS SD card image to fill larger cards. Keep an eye on this site for example.

I think the minimum that would allow a user familar with tools on other systems available, to get a flexible system is FAT32FS with the abiltiy to mount the boot partition, and a tool that produces a Filecore partition at a requested size or proportion of drive capacity, with a corresponding partition entry that protects it from other operating systems.

Longer term, would it be better to add filecore support to a tool like gparted, and then port it? (Since the partioning doesn’t have to be done on RISC OS, just as writing the image to SD isn’t)

I had a bad problem (corruption) trying to write the image using a SD adaptor in my monitor. It was only solved by powering off the monitor (i.e. not stand by) and trying again.

Look carefully as you boot. Does the green ACT light blink at all ?

Yes – it blinks once.

What happens if you try to use a “dead” SD in a PC? Can you access the boot partition?

Yes,I can read the PiBoot partition with 6 files – config.txt etc.
Disc manager shows 3 partitions, PiBoot, Healthy second partition(RiscOS ?) and a third unallocated.

(However one of the cards is evidently corrupted with many more files in Piboot, all with ‘ofla’ type characters, i.e non-alphabetic, and corrupted disc name. But I think we can ignore this)

George, have you tried RC6?

Yes, very good, but I did have add ‘disable_overscan=1’ to remove black borders and fuzzy text.

And 49MB? That’s an odd number. Where are you getting it from?

My bad.I was misreading taskmanager.It’s actually 458752KB free!

MB, or KB? 458752 kiB of system RAM would be correct for a 512 MiB Pi.

And to create SD card images for Beagleboard, ARMini and Pandaboard?

Wouldn’t the Pi distro work, with the relevant files for machine added? (Apart for any non Arm 7 software installed)

Yes – it blinks once.

I’ll need to hand over now to somebody more experienced with the Pi – does the machine output anything to the serial port during startup? This might help us see exactly how far it is getting.

Yes,I can read the PiBoot partition with 6 files – config.txt etc.

Do you have a “diff” utility? Something that can compare the ‘broken’ PiBoot and a fresh (hopefully working) one to see if the files are the same or not?

(However one of the cards is evidently corrupted with many more files in Piboot, all with ‘ofla’ type characters, i.e non-alphabetic, and corrupted disc name. But I think we can ignore this)

Ah, the ofla monster raises its head again.

To explain, the first few words in memory are the hardware vectors (SWI, undefined instruction, data abort, etc etc). It looks sort of like this:

*MemoryI &0 +1C
00000000 < .ôflå : E59FF400 : LDR     PC,&00000408
00000004 : .ôflå : E59FF400 : LDR     PC,&0000040C
00000008 : .ôflå : E59FF400 : LDR     PC,&00000410
0000000C : .ôflå : E59FF400 : LDR     PC,&00000414
00000010 : .ôflå : E59FF400 : LDR     PC,&00000418
00000014 : .ôflå : E59FF400 : LDR     PC,&0000041C
00000018 : .ôflå : E59FF400 : LDR     PC,&00000420
*

[I have had to add “fl” manually; under RISC OS it is the “fl” ligature, but this isn’t a part of ISO 8859/1]

Anyway. Let’s say you have a pointer. And you set the pointer initially to NULL (which translates as “0”). And then you make use of this pointer. The bit you forgot was to actually set the pointer to something first. Well, for writing to the pointer your program should crash (earlier versions of RISC OS would instantly die due to having crap splattered across the vector instructions). For reading from the pointer… it’ll be a bunch of “oflaoflaofla” stuff.

This is a very common error in C, so much so that some C runtimes (Borland TurboC for instance) will trap this and report “Null pointer assignment” if you try to write to an uninitialised pointer.

Of course, none of this helps you get your Pi working; but from a geek standpoint, I find the “ofla” mess to be quite interesting.

Still getting the occasional failure to boot after a successful shutdown.

I have found that sometimes removal of the powered hub and the Pi power supply for 10 seconds or so enables the boot. Don’t know why this should be.

I have found that sometimes removal of the powered hub

On the BB ARMini, with a separately powered external hub in addition to the internal hub, I have found I have had to disconnect it completely on a small number of occasions when I have crashed the machine. Leaving the hub connected and powered while the ARMini is reset/power cycled has led to attached hard drives going and remaining invisible.

George, do you know if your power supply is OK? Have you done the TP1/TP2 voltage check? I’ve had random boot failures and SD card corruption, which were fixed when I switched to a different power supply.