ASL3 on RPi 3 Using Image allstar3-arm64-3.0.18.img.xz

AllStarLink
1

I have recently been unable to get a RPi 3B+ to run with the allstar3-arm64-3.0.18.img.xz.

The image boots, runs for a few seconds and sits there. The network connection is never established.

I have made several ASL Nodes with RPi 4's but this RPi 3 issue is baffling.

  • Does the Pi appliance no longer support anything less than an RPi 4?

  • Is it a memory issue?
    (RPi 3's have only 1 GB of RAM; I have been using RPi 4's with 4 GB of RAM.)

Roger
WA1NVC

2

I read that you have to use the older version of the raspberry pi image installer, not the latest as the new one breaks the WiFi config. Maybe that’s your problem.

3

The latest Raspberry Pi Imager application has an annoying bug that is affecting many people. For details, have a look at Do Not Use Pi Imager 1.9.4.

4

I am aware of the Raspberry Pi Imager problem and have dealt with it.

I am also not using WiFi.

5

I currently have the latest version of ASL3 running on an RPi5, RPi4, and RPi Zero 2 W (w/512MB of RAM).

6

Can you put a screen and keyboard on it to see what's going on? There's no de facto problems with a Pi 3B - it's supported.

7

So after I made the post yesterday, I set the node aside. I plugged it back in this morning and there was immediately a lot of disk activity for several minutes, the network connection came up, and I could get to the dashboard. It appears to be fine.

This was not my only try at this. I used two RPi3B+, two SDcards, and tried this multiple times with multiple images before the first post. I had also tried a power cycle on multiple images before THIS time it finally worked!

So I looked for a difference, found an older RPi 3B Rev 1.2 rather than the two RPi 3B+ Rev 1.4, and it came up perfectly the very first time. So something different between the RPi 3B and RPi 3B+?

Roger
WA1NVC

8

There shouldn't be, but you may need to do an eeprom update of the v1.2 unit from an 32-bit OS first? That's just speculative though. I believe that you need certain firmware, that comes with the normal package stream, to do 64-bit on Pi 3s.

9

This problem still exists. I tried two RPi images today,

allstar3-arm64-3.0.18.img.xz and allstar3-arm64-3.0.19.img.xy,

with both RPi imager 1.8.5 and 1.9.6. I used both an RPi3 and an RPi4 with multiple SD cards.

On first boot activity lasts only a few seconds(5?) and stops. Even after a long time, 15-30 minutes, there is no further activity, the node never comes up, and it never appears on the network.

A power cycle reboot causes the expected activity to occur. Lots of activity for about a minute and the ASL Heartbeat appears. After a few more minutes activity stops as the disk expansion and software updates are complete.

This leads me to believe there is something wrong in the Pi Appliance first boot process. It appears to not be handing off to running the modified image.

Any ideas? Certainly others must be seeing this. With a new Pi Appliance version coming, now is the time to test and fix this.

Roger

WA1NVC

10

Can you put a monitor on your Pi and report output?

11

It was very difficult to capture and hard to read.

Three lines appear and then the screen turns blue and everything stops forever.

Resizing the filesystem on /dev/… to…

“[[.. “The filesystem on /dev/… is now ##### (4k) blocks long.

exit 0

The screen then blanks and turns blue.

Roger

WA1NVC

12

How big of an SDCard are you using? And after it says that and turned blue, nothing happens?

13

Samsung Pro Endurance 32 GB. I have also tried Samsung EVO Select 32 GB.

It takes about 10 seconds from turn on to blue screen. Once the screen turns blue nothing happens. I left it for about 30 minutes to be sure. I never appears on the LAN either.

If I power cycle, it continues and ASL works just fine.

I suspect there is something wrong with the first run process. On second boot it takes several minutes before the setup process completes and all is well.