I can´t boot from usb in pi 4

[jomaiz]

First of all, sorry for my English.

My pi 4 runs well booting from SD but it doesn´t from usb. I write the Raspbian Buster ISO into the HDD, then I plug it to the pi in a usb port, 2.0 or 3.0, same result, and then I turn it on, the screen shows absolutely nothing, no strings, no rainbow, nothing.

The hdd has its own power supply and I use the official power supply for the pi 4. I have tried with other hdds and the same result.

It works with my pi 3 b+, what's going on? Thanks.

[plugwash]

USB boot is not currently supported on pi4. It's on the list for a future firmware update (unlike earlier models the pi4 has updatable boot firmware).

[jomaiz]

A shame, thanks for your quick help

[thagrol]

USB boot is not currently supported on pi4. It's on the list for a future firmware update (unlike earlier models the pi4 has updatable boot firmware).

Will the "SD card with just bootcode.bin" trick that works on pre Pi3 modesl work on the Pi 4?

[HawaiianPi]

You could probably do it the old school way with /boot on the SD card and / (rootfs) on the USB drive.

I wonder if the bootcode.bin only method will work? (EDIT: Ninja'd by thagrol)

I'll be testing this and other stuff when my back-ordered Pi4 computers arrive.

[PeterO]

You could probably do it the old school way with /boot on the SD card and / (rootfs) on the USB drive.

I wonder if the bootcode.bin only method will work? (EDIT: Ninja'd by thagrol)

I'll be testing this and other stuff when my back-ordered Pi4 computers arrive.

"Old school way" is working for me
PeterO

[LTolledo]

You could probably do it the old school way with /boot on the SD card and / (rootfs) on the USB drive.

I wonder if the bootcode.bin only method will work? (EDIT: Ninja'd by thagrol)

I'll be testing this and other stuff when my back-ordered Pi4 computers arrive.

"Old school way" is working for me
PeterO

now that is quite re-assuring!
thanks for the info!

just to confirm, its still the "old" bootcode.bin from before (the old boodcode.bin that I used to "USB boot" my RPi1B+) or it is a "new version" bootcode.bin?

[thagrol]

just to confirm, its still the "old" bootcode.bin from before (the old boodcode.bin that I used to "USB boot" my RPi1B+) or it is a "new version" bootcode.bin?

No idea my 4B hasn't arrived yet. I'd start with the one from the latest Raspbian Buster then try the one from stretch if buster doesn't work.

Edit:

Based on this: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/view ... 5#p1485530 it might be necessary to have your USB device connected via the USB C port. Which means you won't be able to use that for power.

And probably means network boot is out unless you can connect a LAN951X based adaptor.

[ShiftPlusOne]

Pi 4 doesn't use bootcode.bin. The equivalent of bootcode.bin lives in the eeprom. You can't use the old bootcode.bin for this because it's entirely different hardware (USB3 and PCI controllers which didn't exist before).

[HawaiianPi]

just to confirm, its still the "old" bootcode.bin from before (the old boodcode.bin that I used to "USB boot" my RPi1B+) or it is a "new version" bootcode.bin?

Nope. Old-school way is all of /boot on the SD card and / (root file system) on the USB drive, with cmdline.txt pointing to that. You should also edit /etc/fstab to mount the SD card as /boot, so that kernel and firmware updates are properly applied.

[PeterO]

Nope. Old-school way is all of /boot on the SD card and / (root file system) on the USB drive, with cmdline.txt pointing to that. You should also edit /etc/fstab to mount the SD card as /boot, so that kernel and firmware updates are properly applied.

I forgot about changing fstab for /boot. I just checked and my fstab is pointing at the sdcard for both / and /boot, but cmdline.txt is overriding the / mount.
I'm surprised the boot partition on the sdcard is so big. It seems to have gone up from ~40M to ~250M ! At some point I will have to repartition the USB HDD as I susspect it may run out of space once we have USB booting available.
PeterO

[angriest]

Thanks - had horrible thoughts my brand new Pi 4 was fried and the USB ports were broken.

For reference, the instructions on the 'old old' method of booting from USB are https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/view ... hp?t=44177, although note that doing it via sdx is not recommend - use partuuid instead. I'd got used to the convenience of being able to boot from USB without a care in the world, but at least I'll get a touch of nostalgia doing it this way again...

[Pitel]

Just got hit by that. Brouight brand new Pi 4 and USB 3.0 flash drive home, prepared, USB, but not booting. Guess I'll wait for the new firmware then.

Does that also means, I'll still need some SD to do the boot firmware update?

[smadger]

Received my Pi4 yesterday and tried several times to boot from USB like I do with my Pi 3B+ ... before I decided to come here. By the way I now understand that I have to stop trying

Thank you guys for opening this thread but I'm wondering why the foundation released a product with a such regression. Looks like releasing an early access app...

You guys need to calm down a little. I get it's little frustrating, but the feature is planned for development, it's not been taken away completely.

Given that there are (clunky) workarounds, and the hardware has a new firmware update feature - which is in itself a new feature I'm looking forward to seeing mature and perhaps the community get involved with - and, to be quite frank, this is a RPi not Apple, you have to give them a little leeway considering what they have just released. The 4 is an absolute beast, and it's £35!!

Please don't take this comment in an insulting manner, it's honestly not intended that way, but I think you guys need to need to chill, it's too hot to get angry, and by the sounds of it you still have other RPi's to play with in the meantime

[rpdom]

Please be patient. An announcement will be made in the official Blog when it is ready.

[jamesh]

Hi there,

I understand this has not been fixed yet, but is there a way to get an official update / progress on this topic ? Maybe on github, or somewehere else already ?

Thanks

Official report. No progress, we are busy on other stuff. I know some will be disappointed, this is a minority use case, but is not far from the top of the list.

[jdb]

Nope. Old-school way is all of /boot on the SD card and / (root file system) on the USB drive, with cmdline.txt pointing to that. You should also edit /etc/fstab to mount the SD card as /boot, so that kernel and firmware updates are properly applied.

^ Use this method to run the root filesystem from a USB attached storage device on Pi 4 until a native USB boot mode is implemented.

[Charles_M]

I found this easy to follow guide on how to boot from SD then pass control to SSD / HD

https://www.tomshardware.co.uk/boot-ras ... 61081.html

It worked for me for a RasPi 4 although I was just playing around really; I'll use SD only for now.

[PeterO]

One thing to note is that the boot partition on the latest raspbian images is now 250M rather that 40M in the older versions.

You might want to make sure there is space on any hard disk you use for a root file system to add a boot partition later when usb boot becomes available.

PeterO

[DougieLawson]

And that's a right proper PITA.

gparted can't resize FAT32 partitions smaller than 256MB. So you have to trash it or convert to ext4 before you can tinker with the disk layout.

That's why I'm leaving my two model 3Bs that boot from WD hard drives till last for the Buster upgrades.

[k-pi]

Official report. No progress, we are busy on other stuff. I know some will be disappointed, this is a minority use case, but is not far from the top of the list.

"A minor use case" - & yet this product is being advertised as a desktop system........

Just wished you lot had told us that the software hadn't been written, when you launched the board, would have saved some annoyance.

[thagrol]

Official report. No progress, we are busy on other stuff. I know some will be disappointed, this is a minority use case, but is not far from the top of the list.

"A minor use case" - & yet this product is being advertised as a desktop system........

Just wished you lot had told us that the software hadn't been written, when you launched the board, would have saved some annoyance.

Booting from USB is not a requirement of a desktop system. Neither is rotating rust or SSD storage. (lol or otherwise)

For my money I'd much rather see the lack of boot via GPIO 3 toggle fixed, though again that might be a minor use case so I'm not holding my breath.

[grayerbeard]

I found this easy to follow guide on how to boot from SD then pass control to SSD / HD

https://www.tomshardware.co.uk/boot-ras ... 61081.html

It worked for me for a RasPi 4 although I was just playing around really; I'll use SD only for now.

I like that method its a bit weird but seems fine. Essentially you have to put the R Pi setup you want on an SD card and then copy over the contents to your "other drive". Because of some security issue you can't just put a fresh Raspian on the drive on the USB it ONLY works with a copy of what is on the SD card copied over as stated using the command "sudo rsync -avx / /media/newdrive" where you have mounted the other drive in the ".../newdrive" directory. The description on that website is good apart from a few fairly obvious typos such as "sudo nano /boot/cmdlinetxt" instead of "sudo nano /boot/cmdline.txt".

I do not see any downside to this method apart from perhaps issues once the proper method is working and one has run with the boot directory on the SD card and the rest of the system on the USB drive doing updates. I suppose then to change over care needed to copy "/boot" to the drive in the USB drive.

I intend using a fast 32GB SSD drive for the "system" and a big desktop 1TB for Data and setting up a desktop/server. (Both items purchased at low cost from Amazon and due to arrive tomorrow). For the 1TB drive I have one of those adaptors with an extra 12volt PSU.

So far I have tested using an old laptop 250GB drive and it works OK using the method from https://www.tomshardware.co.uk/boot-ras ... 61081.html

Can anyone see any snags to look out for (now or later)?

[thagrol]

I found this easy to follow guide on how to boot from SD then pass control to SSD / HD

https://www.tomshardware.co.uk/boot-ras ... 61081.html

It worked for me for a RasPi 4 although I was just playing around really; I'll use SD only for now.

I like that method its a bit weird but seems fine. Essentially you have to put the R Pi setup you want on an SD card and then copy over the contents to your "other drive".

Nothing weird about that it's what you'd do to move the OS from one partition to another. It's also what you'd do when setting up a Pi for network booting.

Because of some security issue you can't just put a fresh Raspian on the drive on the USB it ONLY works with a copy of what is on the SD card copied over as stated using the command "sudo rsync -avx / /media/newdrive" where you have mounted the other drive in the ".../newdrive" directory. The description on that website is good apart from a few fairly obvious typos such as "sudo nano /boot/cmdlinetxt" instead of "sudo nano /boot/cmdline.txt".

If you don't use sudo and rsync as indicated not everything you want will copy and nothing will have the correct ownership and permissions. So yeah, a security issue but also expected behaviour in linux. Some stuff you don't want may get copied over too.

I do not see any downside to this method apart from perhaps issues once the proper method is working and one has run with the boot directory on the SD card and the rest of the system on the USB drive doing updates. I suppose then to change over care needed to copy "/boot" to the drive in the USB drive.

Not quite. You need to create a new FAT partition at the start of the HDD, copy the boot stuff there then update fstab to match. Creqating the new FAT partition may mean you'll have to resize and move the existing partition.

I intend using a fast 32GB SSD drive for the "system" and a big desktop 1TB for Data and setting up a desktop/server. (Both items purchased at low cost from Amazon and due to arrive tomorrow). For the 1TB drive I have one of those adaptors with an extra 12volt PSU.

So far I have tested using an old laptop 250GB drive and it works OK using the method from https://www.tomshardware.co.uk/boot-ras ... 61081.html

Can anyone see any snags to look out for (now or later)?

Not a snag, but when partitioning your SSD it may be advisable to create the FAT partition for /boot now rather than have to muck about with partitions later. It can be left empty and unmounted.

Also, you should be aware of the bandwidth limitations on the 4B's USB ports: "a total of 4Gbps of bandwidth, shared between the four ports". You'll never hit the maximum possible transfer speeds of SATA III with one drive let alone two.

[grayerbeard]

Also, you should be aware of the bandwidth limitations on the 4B's USB ports: "a total of 4Gbps of bandwidth, shared between the four ports". You'll never hit the maximum possible transfer speeds of SATA III with one drive let alone two.

Yes not quite full SSD speed but still rather faster than max possible with SD cards.

The potential seems so good I was rather surprised that getting "boot from usb" working has a lower priority I had wondered if the upgrade to USB3 on R Pi4 was instead of the approach adopted on other SBCs of other types of faster devices for drives. Also when I researched small SSDs I found the small 32GB ones are now quite cheap at around £20.