Pi with 16GB SanDisk Extreme Class 10 45MB/s WORKING

[therealeasterbunny]

Hi,

After getting frustrated with my Class 4 4GB card (1m40s to boot), I purchased a SanDisk Extreme Class 10 45MB/s from play.com at a great price of £15 inc free delivery.

I encountered 2 issues, namely:

1) when booting from Debian (April 2012 build) it was getting grumpy about mmc hardware interrupts.
2) once issue 1 was fixed, it worked in the text shell but when starting gui (startx) keyboard and mouse became nonfunctional - but Pi had not crashed as taskbar cpu thingy in bottom right of gui ticked by happily.

Here is what I did to fix it (compiled using links from other web resources as mentioned in this post - thanks to all for this) - and it now flies - 17 seconds to boot to login from cold, then 9 seconds to gui from startx command:

(I think I've got it all below but let me know if you have issues...)

- Plugged shiny new SanDisk Extreme SD card into my Windows PC

- Used Win32DiskImager.exe (https://launchpad.net/win32-image-writer) to flash the April Debian Image (from R-Pi downloads screen)

- Safely remove SD card from computer then put it back in (you will now see filesystem on it which is essentially the '/boot' folder of the O/S)

- Download the updated kernel.img and start.elf files (but then went back later and got the rest of the files from here apart from emergency file which would not download) from https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware ... aster/boot and, using Windows, copied these to the SD card overwriting the old files

(These updates fixed my first issue which would allow me to boot up on the Pi into the text shell - but not fix my second prob of startx at this point)

- Created a new text file called config.txt on the SD Card which sets up the Pi for my monitor spec as follows

hdmi_drive=2
hdmi_group=2
hdmi_mode=16

(after saving the above file I used XVI32 to remove the chr(13)'s)

(The above settings gives me a 1024x768 hdmi out to my flat lcd monitor. I will knock it up to 1920x1050 at a later date once I've done with poking around in the text shell. Its just so I can read text easily.)

- Safe remove SD card

- Insert SDCard and kbd, mouse, ethernet cables into Pi

- Power up Pi

- Login as pi / raspberry

(At this point you may now still experience the keyboard / mouse dying when running startx if you want to test - but I would now carry on as follows:)

sudo passwd

- Set new password as raspberry

- [CTRL]+[D] to logout of pi

- login as root / raspberry

date --s="mm/dd/yyyy hh:ii:ss"

(replace mm dd yyyy hh ii ss with your date / time --- its needed for the next bit)

sudo apt-get install ca-certificates

apt-get update

apt-get update
(again)

apt-get update
(again - for the hell of it)

(on the next line the O are capital "oh's", not zeroes)
wget http://goo.gl/1BOfJ -O /usr/bin/rpi-update && chmod +x /usr/bin/rpi-update


apt-get install git-core

rpi-update

(it will take a couple of mins)

(at this point I got an error but ignored it -- as follows:)
/opt/vc/sbin/vcfiled: error while loading shared libraries: libvchiq_arm.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

reboot

- Login as root / raspberry

depmod -a

reboot

- Login as pi / raspberry

startx


(all should be OK - works for me)

These helped me (As well as links above):
https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware ... aster/boot
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... =28&t=7574
https://github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/bl ... /README.md

Thanks!

[therealeasterbunny]

This will probably also work for SanDisk Extreme 30MB/s and who knows - maybe other class 10 cards also with the same symtoms of my two mentioned above.

Enjoy!

[ravishi]

Thanks for your write-up. I have the 16GB Extreme 30MB/s and I couldn't get it to boot whatsoever, not even getting to hardware interrupt errors. I'm looking to buy a new card. Would you mind running a CrystalDiskMark benchmark with your SanDIsk 16GB 45MB/s card? I'm interested in seeing that card's 4KB random read/write speeds.

[therealeasterbunny]

Thanks for your write-up. I have the 16GB Extreme 30MB/s and I couldn't get it to boot whatsoever, not even getting to hardware interrupt errors. I'm looking to buy a new card. Would you mind running a CrystalDiskMark benchmark with your SanDIsk 16GB 45MB/s card? I'm interested in seeing that card's 4KB random read/write speeds.

Sure ... for CDM 3.0.1 using a 2GHz Core2Duo laptop with AV disabled via a Kingston MobieLite 62 reader, my SanDisk Extreme Class 10 45MB/s card performs as follows (under a 50mb 1 test pass):

Code: Select all

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
                           Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

           Sequential Read :    20.085 MB/s
          Sequential Write :    14.218 MB/s
         Random Read 512KB :    19.772 MB/s
        Random Write 512KB :     2.863 MB/s
    Random Read 4KB (QD=1) :     3.980 MB/s [   971.6 IOPS]
   Random Write 4KB (QD=1) :     0.846 MB/s [   206.6 IOPS]
   Random Read 4KB (QD=32) :     4.040 MB/s [   986.4 IOPS]
  Random Write 4KB (QD=32) :     0.702 MB/s [   171.4 IOPS]

  Test : 50 MB [E: 0.0% (0.0/14.8 GB)] (x1)
  Date : 2012/06/10 7:17:22
    OS : Windows XP Professional SP3 [5.1 Build 2600] (x86)

Curoiusly CDM 4.6.2 does not see my sd card.... only v3 works?

[jbrickner]

SanDaik 8GB 30MB/s Class 6 wouldn't work with Debian Squeeze but works great with this new image. GOod work.

[markaugie]

Excellent post. Thank you.
This got my SanDisk Extreme 32GB 45MB/s up and running!
less than 10 seconds to boot, less than 8 seconds for desktop.

[therealeasterbunny]

No worries, thank you for posting your feedback, much appreciated and glad to be of help to you chaps. Hope others also find this useful.

Wowzers on your speed as well Truly awesome!

[benddennis]

I am running Debian Squeeze from 4-19.

When trying to run rpi-update, I get the following error:
github.com[0:207.97.227.239]: errno=Connection refused
fatal: unable to connect a socket (Connection refused)

I am running as root, and I have followed the previous steps to a tee, without issue.

Thanks in advance for assistance.

Dennis

[therealeasterbunny]

Hi,

I am no Pi or Linux guru, but in my Windows / networking experience, with it saying 'connection refused' I would say its either:

1) Github may have had some outage so you got rejected at the time - in which case try again now

2) Something somewhere is preventing you or rather the update from working - I am not sure if the update uses any special ports for transmission maybe others can answer this - but check your proxy / firewalls / routers on your LAN for blocking logs

Also have you tried a quick google search such as this ...

http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&gs_nf=1& ... h=564&bs=1

Also this might be useful perhaps...

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions ... on-435107/

Sorry cant be of more help

[rasbeer]

Why does the procedure in the OP help get a faster SD card working?

[natey.j80]

Thanks!! worked a treat!!

I was initially gutted when my new ScanDisk class 10 SD card refused to boot but this procedure is a god send!!

So is the problem with the latest official release of Debian or are class 10 cards not officially supported? is this more a software problem more than a hardware limitation of the Pi?

[therealeasterbunny]

Why does the procedure in the OP help get a faster SD card working?

I'm no Linux or Pi expert (throw me a Windows rig however...) but as I understand it, the Linux kernel (operating system core) was patched which rectifies an issue with dealing with certain SD cards. I am sure a Linux or Pi guru will correct me on this if I am mistaken.

If you see this link ... http://elinux.org/index.php?title=RPi_V ... did=139898 and the scroll down to the "Problem SD Cards" section, it has more information with statements such as:

"There are issues with most Class 10 SDHC cards, apparently due to a bug in the Broadcom bootloader"

"This seems to have been fixed in sdhci.c" (which I assume (although I could be wrong) sits inside the Kernel, as this (as well as start.elf) are the only two files I copied to my SD card to get past (resolve) the (my) mmc iisue.

[rasbeer]

Ah - so basically it was like a kernel (+ start.elf) update?
I missed that in all the detail - thanks!

[therealeasterbunny]

Ah - so basically it was like a kernel (+ start.elf) update?
I missed that in all the detail - thanks!

Yes, thats what specifically got me past the mmc interrupt issue which then allowed the Pi to boot from the new faster card.

But the remainder of the patching using rpi-update etc is still needed post-login to get the "other stuff" on the SD card (drivers / apps etc) aligned with the newer kernel, which, when done, resolved my secondary issue of mouse / keyboard not working when firing up the GUI by startx.

As I say, I'm no Linux guru and the majority of info above has come from others with references. All I did was create a step-by-step guide using a compilation of others notes here and there so all can try to see if it fixes their issues similar to the two issues I came across.

... as well as a reference for me again when I need to reformat my SD card and reprep every so often, as I do with my Windows rigs to keep them in tip top running shape.

[rasbeer]

You've done a good job documenting it & I'm glad to hear the fast cards now work - it'll make acquiring suitable cards simpler & should speed some things (as well as reboots!) up considerably

[therealeasterbunny]

You've done a good job documenting it & I'm glad to hear the fast cards now work - it'll make acquiring suitable cards simpler & should speed some things (as well as reboots!) up considerably

Thanks, thats most kind; always happy to help.

[rasbeer]

Well, I've got a Pi on the way (-ish: t - 9 weeks!) & one thing I wasn't really looking forward to buying it special slow SD cards :p

Hopefully the fix you documented will be in the standard d/l images by Pi-time in Rasbeer's hutch

[adam_d]

Just like to say thanks for this, worked great for me on a class 4 SanDisk 4GB.

[therealeasterbunny]

Cool! Thanks for the feedback! Happy Pi'ing!

[Artagael]

Hi there - I'm having the same problem with the Sandisk Extreme 16GB card - but when I replace the files suggested the pi refuses to boot at all - red power light only. If I revert, I'm back to mmc interrupt errors

I notice that the files have been updated since the post - is it possible they are broken?

Thoughts appreciated!

[Zeek20]

Hi there - I'm having the same problem with the Sandisk Extreme 16GB card - but when I replace the files suggested the pi refuses to boot at all - red power light only. If I revert, I'm back to mmc interrupt errors

I notice that the files have been updated since the post - is it possible they are broken?

Thoughts appreciated!

I would try to replace kernel files again and see if it boots, I have the Sandisk Ultra 16GB and that's all I had to for squeezy anyways.

[Artagael]

I've had a go, but as soon as these files go on it becomes resolutely unresponsive...

[aprice2704]

THANK YOU!! I followed this carefully and it seems to have worked!! Thanks sooo much.

[Artagael]

Downloaded the Wheezy beta and this seems to have done the trick...

[therealeasterbunny]

THANK YOU!! I followed this carefully and it seems to have worked!! Thanks sooo much.

Cool! Thanks for the feedback! Happy Pi'ing!