Raspberry Pi - booting up

50Twuncle

I have a Pi 4 and have replaced the stock OS with a properly sourced Ubuntu - this has partitioned the 64Gb card  into 3 partitions

1. 256Mb boot partition

2. 6.61Gb

3. 56.62Gb unallocated

I assume that means that my downloaded image is in 1.

And that on booting - it "should" install to 2.

Pi's don't have an accessible BIOS - so how does it do this ?

MinuteNoodles

It looks at the master boot record on the drive which will tell it to look at partition 1. Partition 1 will contain the bootloader which will know to fire up the OS in partition 2.

Your downloaded image isn't in 2, it's in 1 and 2.

50Twuncle

OK both LEDs (Red and Green) are on permanently (not flashing) - when the card is fitted - all of the time that power is on

It looks as if the  green should be flashing when the card is fitted - can you please confirm this ?

The on-line instructions are somewhat vague and sometimes refer to a Pi 3 ....

50Twuncle

I was wrong  - green IS flashing and red is on permanently - but no sign of life on the TV (connected via 5m HDMI cable) - could this be too much for the device ?

DCFC79

50Twuncle said:

I was wrong  - green IS flashing and red is on permanently - but no sign of life on the TV (connected via 5m HDMI cable) - could this be too much for the device ?

Try a pc monitor to see if that changes anything.

Neil_Jones

What's this "I ... have replaced the stock OS with a properly sourced Ubuntu" of which you speak?

The downloads for Ubuntu are free from the website and there is no "stock OS" for the Pi.  If you buy a retail package with the Pi, the SD card and the power supply and a pretty box, the SD card will probably hold a flavour of Raspian.

The website suggests you can just copy the Ubuntu image on to a microSD card, and it should then boot straight into Ubuntu.  It should just work.

What a lot of Pi distros do is resize the partitions automatically on the first boot, and as they will probably be Linux formatted partitions that Windows can't read anyway, what My Computer says isn't necessarily gospel.

If your Raspberry Pi 4 will not boot, it is possible that the SPI EEPROM has become corrupted. To check, remove the SD card, disconnect the device from power, then reconnect it. If the green LED does not flash, this indicates that the EEPROM has become corrupted.

50Twuncle

Neil_Jones said:

What's this "I ... have replaced the stock OS with a properly sourced Ubuntu" of which you speak?

The downloads for Ubuntu are free from the website and there is no "stock OS" for the Pi.  If you buy a retail package with the Pi, the SD card and the power supply and a pretty box, the SD card will probably hold a flavour of Raspian.

The website suggests you can just copy the Ubuntu image on to a microSD card, and it should then boot straight into Ubuntu.  It should just work.

What a lot of Pi distros do is resize the partitions automatically on the first boot, and as they will probably be Linux formatted partitions that Windows can't read anyway, what My Computer says isn't necessarily gospel.

If your Raspberry Pi 4 will not boot, it is possible that the SPI EEPROM has become corrupted. To check, remove the SD card, disconnect the device from power, then reconnect it. If the green LED does not flash, this indicates that the EEPROM has become corrupted.

The EEPROM is fine - the green LED is flashing - with the RED fixed

Just nothing on the display - on ANY OS !

I am using a large USB power bank to power it - and a 5m HDMI cable to TV

Any clever ideas ?

Neil_Jones

50Twuncle said:

I am using a large USB power bank to power it - and a 5m HDMI cable to TV

Any clever ideas ?

That might be your problem.  Try it on the original charger and see what happens.

mksysb

50Twuncle said:

I have a Pi 4 and have replaced the stock OS with a properly sourced Ubuntu - this has partitioned the 64Gb card  into 3 partitions

1. 256Mb boot partition

2. 6.61Gb

3. 56.62Gb unallocated

I assume that means that my downloaded image is in 1.

And that on booting - it "should" install to 2.

Pi's don't have an accessible BIOS - so how does it do this ?

I suggest you go back to raspbian, or Pi OS as it's known as now.  Can't see any point in running ubuntu on a pi.  

50Twuncle

mksysb said:

50Twuncle said:

I have a Pi 4 and have replaced the stock OS with a properly sourced Ubuntu - this has partitioned the 64Gb card  into 3 partitions

1. 256Mb boot partition

2. 6.61Gb

3. 56.62Gb unallocated

I assume that means that my downloaded image is in 1.

And that on booting - it "should" install to 2.

Pi's don't have an accessible BIOS - so how does it do this ?

I suggest you go back to raspbian, or Pi OS as it's known as now.  Can't see any point in running ubuntu on a pi.  

I have retried RASBIAN and again, nothing on the display

Could it be too long HDMI cable or the power source (a USB power bank) - the fan works fine

Myser

Could be either so try a shorter HDMI cable and the original power supply.