USB Boot on Raspberry Pi 4

dikkertjedap · September 5, 2020, 12:27pm

Things went downhill fast today…

This afternoon I had a perfectly running HassOS 5.1 x64 image running from a USB thumb drive, installed two weeks ago. But I ran into trouble when trying to add a Arduine Mega peripheral, as I couldn’t boot the device due to the Arduino messing up the boot order.

First I’ve tried to put in a bootable SD card (with a fully updated minimal install) and put the exact PARTUUID in the boot order to get it to boot. That didn’t work as planned.

So after hours of trials and failing, I upgraded the firmware today to the latest version and fiddled a bit with the bootloader and bootorder. I have checked the boot order and it looks correct (0xf41) but somehow my Pi won’t boot into the USB thumb drive any longer. No matter what I try. All it does is the 4x-blinking green LED, telling me there is nothing to boot.

As I have a recent backup of my hassOS install, I decided to re-flash the thumb drive with the HassOS image. Nothing but the green blinking LED. Any idea of what I’m doing wrong? Might have to revert to a manual Hassio install…

UPDATE 1
I realized this doesn’t work without me posting used hard- and software specs.
Raspberry Pi 4B 4GB
Raspberry Pi USB-C power supply
Sandisk Extreme Pro USB 3.0 128GB (flashed with HassOS 64-bit v.5.1 dev image for the Pi)
Raspbery Pi OS (5.4.61-v7l+)
Bootloader version: Jul 31 2020 14:43:39 (release)
Bootloader config:

[all]
BOOT_UART=0
WAKE_ON_GPIO=1
POWER_OFF_ON_HALT=0
DHCP_TIMEOUT=45000
DHCP_REQ_TIMEOUT=4000
TFTP_FILE_TIMEOUT=30000
TFTP_IP=
TFTP_PREFIX=0
BOOT_ORDER=0xf41
[none]
FREEZE_VERSION=0

Eeprom status

BCM2711 detected
Dedicated VL805 EEPROM detected
BOOTFS /boot
BOOTLOADER: up-to-date
CURRENT: Fri 31 Jul 13:43:39 UTC 2020 (1596203019)
 LATEST: Fri 31 Jul 13:43:39 UTC 2020 (1596203019)
 FW DIR: /lib/firmware/raspberrypi/bootloader/stable
VL805: up-to-date
CURRENT: 000138a1
 LATEST: 000138a1

UPDATE 2
Must have been an integrity issue with the bootloader. Quick fix was a reset to the latest stable release

sudo rpi-eeprom-update -a -d

And all is well. My apologies for taking your time.

Miccvi · September 8, 2020, 4:28pm

Hi, A have the same problem! It works fine with Raspbian, but black screen with Hassio!

Tim_Stubbs · September 9, 2020, 5:08pm

I’m using a PI4 4GB + CSL USB 3.0 Type A adapter - this works fine on my PI3B+ with 4.13. PI4 arrived today and i’ve upgraded to the Sep bootloader fine but drive plugged in i see the ‘bios’ screen and then things go black… no boot. Tried 5.1 dev build (32bit) to no avail so far…

Going to blow raspian onto the drive to see if that boots.

Tim_Stubbs · September 9, 2020, 5:19pm

…and it does. Oh dear.

Am sitting looking at a working Raspian desktop entirely running orf SSD.

HassOS be dead

MarkB1 · September 9, 2020, 6:20pm

USE 64BIT version

poudenes · September 9, 2020, 8:25pm

With 64bit HA runs better then ever before!

I also mention this in my install steps some posts before

Tim_Stubbs · September 10, 2020, 5:58am

Hilarious - booted first time - thanks!

maxym · September 12, 2020, 2:52pm

Hello all
Initially I though it will be easy task, but…

I have Pi4 8GB. upgraded its firmware to recent one (Sept 3rd). Succeeded to boot from SSD with HassOS v5.2 image burned on it.

Unfortunately, it refuse to boot up again after toggling power off and on.
This is the last thing which is displayed before Pi repeatedly restarts on its own

BTW is it possible to ssh to hassos with no containers/supervisor running? All guides point to ssh addon which is pointless without supervisor

with regards

maxym · September 13, 2020, 1:02pm

I think I found the root cause of failing boot after reboot, but not double checked it. I don’t know is it expected behaviour or issue I should report on github.

Initially I started testing ssd boot at place where there is no wired connectivity available. I thought I can temporally use wifi. Unfortunatelly I failed connecting hassos with my wifi network.
Anyway, the first boot gave access to hassos but none containers got up bacause it required network connection (to download docker images I suppose).

Failing in the midfle of first boot process likely caused some damage to the system.

Anyway, when I connected my RPi do LAN, whole process went flawless. It boots from usb2 as well as usb3 without quirks.

Interesting thing, connecting the ssd to usb3 under Raspbian causes increased cpu load and makes keyboard/mouse both connected to usb2 not responding. Under HassOS I see no such problems with the keyboard.

For reference:
RPI 4 8GB
SSD Samsung V300 connected through some SATA-USB3 cable

neuman1812 · September 14, 2020, 1:58am

Sorry to jump in here. This seems to be the best thread on this.

Im trying to get HA on a new RPi4 2gb-64bit.

It appears the usb(SSD) booting was just added not to long ago, but I’ve yet to get mine working. Can anyone point me in the newest install option?

Vlad · September 14, 2020, 9:47am

softwheat · September 18, 2020, 3:53pm

I can confirm with Vlad’s instructions that this is working on Raspberry pi 4 8GB when previously it was not. The big thing I think everyone is hitting a wall at is the bootloaders being up to date and not being able to go backwards on the version. I had to download the July version of the bootloader on the 16th.

I had to go to the following URL: https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-eeprom/releases
Look for the eeprom listed: rpi-boot-eeprom-recovery-2020-07-16-vl805-000138a1-STABLE
Extract the files from the zip and winscp or SCP transfer the files into the /home/pi directory.
Run the following command to revert the eeprom to July 16th. Please note you must be in the same directory in where you put the files via SCP. sudo rpi-eeprom-update -d -f ./pieeprom-new.bin
sudo reboot the system and wait for it to boot up and shut it down and replace the MicroSD card with the SSD in the USB 3.0 Port.

Please note as well, now that I started to think about this. You can use wget to receive the files into the /home/pi directory and unzip it from there.

cdikland · September 20, 2020, 2:21pm

I have been able to boot my Rpi4 HA installation (installation described here) from a USB flash drive for sometime. Originally I needed to use a SD card for the boot process but with the FW update this card is no longer needed

Recently I installed HA ( This version as well as This version) on a flash drive. Neither of these versions would boot using the same Rpi4 as above.

Is there another step I have to do to get either of these versions to boot? Bear in mind I do have the Rpi4 booting this version without issue.

pepe59 · September 20, 2020, 5:56pm

Update the bootloader as described above and then apply version 5.2 64bit

cdikland · September 20, 2020, 8:42pm

Worked like a charm.

cdikland · September 21, 2020, 4:40pm

Well… Not really.
While I can boot without issues and everything within HA appears to be working I do have an issue with Supervisor. After a refresh or reboot, Supervisor tells me there is an update. I am runnin 115.2 and it want me to update to 114.3. If I click the Update button I am toast, The PI will no longer boot from that USB. I tried recreating this install several times and even without any integrations, addons or any other changes to the new installation, all I need to do is refresh or reboot and I get this:

Untitled-1

maxym · September 21, 2020, 6:33pm

what about to ignore this update? just don’t click it.

BTW what’s wrong with boot loader from 3rd August? I can see above that 16th July is suggested while newer version is available

pepe59 · September 21, 2020, 7:53pm

operating system wait until the final version 5.x does not update anything until then. The supervisor updates himself and the Home assistant can be updated to newer versions that will be.

pepe59 · September 21, 2020, 7:56pm

I have a newer bootloader 31.7 and I have no problem with v 5.2 64 bit

Vlad · September 21, 2020, 11:00pm

It’s not a Supervisor, it’s OS update. Just ignore it.