Simple, single pi zero boot from Linux without sd card

[Saket Dandawate]

Hello, I am looking for help regarding Booting a Pi Zero without SD. Here are the things i have already done.

https://dev.webonomic.nl/how-to-run-or-boot-raspbian-on-a-raspberry-pi-zero-without-an-sd-card

$ sudo losetup -P /dev/loop0 ~/Applications/Raspberry\ Pi/2018-03-13-raspbian-stretch-lite.img
[sudo] password for user:

$ sudo mount /dev/loop0p1 /pi/boot

$ sudo mount /dev/loop0p2 /pi/root

$ export PD='/pi'

$ sudo rpiboot -d $PD/boot                        
Waiting for BCM2835/6/7
Sending bootcode.bin
Successful read 4 bytes
Waiting for BCM2835/6/7
Second stage boot server
File read: config.txt
File read: start.elf
File read: fixup.dat
File read: config.txt
File read: config.txt
File read: cmdline.txt
File read: kernel.img
File read: initrd.img
File read: bcm2708-rpi-b-plus.dtb
File read: config.txt
File read: overlays/dwc2.dtbo
Second stage boot server done

It crashes with a kernel panic.
    ipconfig: no devices to configure
    ipconfig: usb0: SIOCGIFINDEX: No such device
    Kernel panic — not syncing

I think the system crashes as the root partition never gets mounted. I do not get the usb0 ethetnet gadget asa device on my host system. Are there any similar articles that can get me running from a clean setup. I use Fedora 27 x64

[Chris Burton]

Hi, 

It crashes with a kernel panic.
    ipconfig: no devices to configure
    ipconfig: usb0: SIOCGIFINDEX: No such device
    Kernel panic — not syncing

I think the system crashes as the root partition never gets mounted. I do not get the usb0 ethetnet gadget asa device on my host system. Are there any similar articles that can get me running from a clean setup. I use Fedora 27 x64

It looks like you might be missing the initramfs - you didn't say in your post if you ran the commands to setup and create it or added it to the config.txt.

If you have then adding "debug" to cmdline.txt might show more of what's going on whilst it's running initramfs.

The easy way to get it working with multiple Pi Zeros is to download the usbboot image (https://8086.support/content/23/88/en/guide-to-using-the-rpiboot-test-image-on-the-cluster-hat_zero-stem-or-just-a-usb-cable.html) but that's not Fedora.

Chris.

[Saket Dandawate]

Yes, I made a new initramfs and added to the config.txt

`initramfs initrd.img followkernel`

The url i linked to has all the steps i did. Is that sufficiently discript or should i make a video recording the booting ?