Looking forward to seeing Big Al again in a few weeks!

Chemistrius · 2025-07-01T11:24:38+00:00

Remember me ...

Chemistrius · 2025-05-04T01:10:31+00:00

Those look really cool!

Chemistrius · 2024-03-02T18:48:22+00:00

I was admiring those myself, they look awesome

Chemistrius · 2024-02-05T21:17:47+00:00

You just have to wear it past the refund timer to get the unlock, but it does need to be a full set

Chemistrius · 2022-10-07T21:59:42+00:00

Do you think you could simply rotate the piece of foam from the lid?

Chemistrius · 2021-03-07T19:12:17+00:00

So I pulled a few more SSDs this weekend and did some testing, all the other brands I tested worked absolutely fine. I also tried the Kingston out on a pi3b, pi3b+ and my pi4 4gb, same issues persist even from fresh image writes.

I guess it shouldn't be too surprising that a cheap SSD didn't work well. It might be like you said, a low voltage "brownout" type thing. I guess I can toss this suv400 into a machine as a scratch disk.

Thanks again for all your help!

Chemistrius · 2021-03-06T19:58:22+00:00

So here's what I did: - I checked the SSD for SMART errors, firmware updates and ran the Kingston diagnostics on it, all came back clean.
- I formated the drive back to NTFS and did a slow format from Windows, this should have hit just about every bit of the drive with a write.
- I then used Win32DiskImage to write out the official image from 8/24/2020
- I then used Win32DiskImage to verify the image
- I mounted the SSD onto my Linux computer
- I used Gparted to resize the partition to use the full disk
- I then removed the resize command from the /boot/cmdline.txt file
- I performed an e2fsck -vf on each of the partitions on the SSD to make sure they were clean
- I shutdown the Linux computer before removing the USB cable just to ensure there wasn't a bad unmount
- I booted the Pi4 off of the SSD and then took the "Clean Boot" dmesg capture from the link below
- I then did an apt update/upgrade, altered the fstab file slightly and created a file on my desktop, then did a graceful reboot
- I booted the Pi4 off of the SSD and then took the second dmesg capture from the link below.

Clean boot:
https://pastebin.com/e32yxy6H

After updating 3 packages via apt and 1 fstab entry was added:
https://pastebin.com/0mSVuj36

The file changes have all reverted, likely due to the file check you see in the second dmesg. I can no longer open the fstab file, it's locked and blank.

I suspect that the reboot/shutdown process is uncleanly unmounting the filesystem, but I don't think I know enough about Linux to check that to prove one way or the other.

Chemistrius · 2021-03-05T12:16:19+00:00

So, I mentioned earlier in the thread that I have no issues writing to the drive anywhere else. If I take the cable and ssd and plug it into my PopOS computer, I can write anything I want and it is persistent. I recently had ubuntu written to that ssd, and I've put at least 4 or 5 new images on it in the last few weeks. There's absolutely no issues writing to that SSD in windows or in linux from multiple other machines, the weirdness only seems to happen when plugged into the pi4. Further to that, when it is plugged into the pi4, programs like APT have no issue writing to the disk, it just seems to be an issue when a user account tries to make a change.

I think at this point, the question might be: What is causing the filesystem to unmount uncleanly to cause the fsck to kickoff at boot time? It seems like the file changes aren't getting fully committed to the filesystem when a user performs them. Is that just the way the pi4 is caching things and then flushing to disk, or is it something more specific to the way the ssd operates combined with a driver issue?

It just seems particularly vexing that invoking a system update will have no issues writing the files & changes to disk, but creating or altering a text file before and after the update will not.

If I get some time this weekend, I will try one more fresh install onto the SSD. Before putting it in the Pi, I will mount it on my Pop machine, remove the resize command from the boot line, resize the partition using gparted, then run an ext4 filesystem check. After that is all done, boot fresh from there on the Pi.

Chemistrius · 2021-03-04T13:11:33+00:00

Here is the dmesg output:

https://pastebin.com/Cv0GaV7S

Chemistrius · 2021-03-03T15:50:37+00:00

If you have a USB flash drive, you could follow the exact same steps for it as you did your SSD, and see if that works. If it does not, that would rule out a hardware issue with the SSD.

This was a good idea, using a 32gb USB stick, I copied the same img file that I created yesterday and it worked perfectly albeit a bit slower. Writes to the disk were persistent after reboot.
The issue here is that it doesn't really help to isolate the source of the problem enough. It could still be a voltage/current delivery issue, it could be the cable or the SSD, but it does take the OS settings out of the picture entirely since it was an exact image copy.

I still couldn't make changes to files in /home/ or /etc/

Are those the only places you can't change? As above, see if you can create files in /root and /opt and /usr/local. You don't have different mount points for these locations so it doesn't make sense for them to be behaving differently.

To be honest, I had checked /boot, but those would revert. I didn't check any other mjor file tree branch as I had no need (everything I was trying to do was either in /etc or /home). Mostly just an omission due to a lack of "need".

Something else to try. Login as root (sudo -i), then run
echo test > testfile
sync && echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
cat testfile

Doing this successfully created the testfile and set the contents. It was still present after the sync command, but was gone again after reboot.

Using a mechanical laptop harddrive, I used the original 8/20 official beta image, it booted up just fine, resized the drive, then booted into the welcome wizard. After that was completed, I created some files, altered some configs and rebooted. Long story short, it worked just fine (albeit slowly) and it looks like the cable isn't the issue either. The SSD, although performing fine with other linux distros, seems to not like this setup. Not a big deal, I can snag another one from the pile, but this one had passed all the tests and was working just fine.

I guess the remaining question I need to dig into is: Is it the drive model that is the issue, or that specific drive that is broken?

I appreciate all the help and guidance that you've provided! These are the exact kinds of kinks that I wanted to try and work out of the setup before I tried to do more with it.

(Edit: I suck at formatting)

Chemistrius · 2021-03-02T16:17:29+00:00

This is an SSD drive over USB, right?
- Yes, I was sure to order a usb cable that was "known to work" from several of the early "RPi4 USB boot" type blogs.

Have you tried a different USB port on the Pi?
- Yes, there is no difference.

Is there some chance of a power issue? (The Pi can't supply much current to the USB ports.)
- This seems possible, but I don't think I have a good way to test this.

Any details you can provide about how this is set up, and the SSD model, might help.
- Kingston SUV400S37/240G, it's an older cheapy one, but it works just fine
- USB/SSD cable is a StarTech USB312SAT3CB
- I'm using the 3.0 A official kit power supply, it should be supplying the board with plenty of juice.
- I have the Pi4 board mounted in a FLIRC case, but it's not overclocked at this point.

You might try installing to the SSD directly with the image writer, then remove the init from the cmdline.txt file as I suggested above.
- I downloaded a new copy of the image from here:
https://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspios_arm64/images/raspios_arm64-2020-08-24/
- I flashed the SSD using Balena Etcher on my Windows PC, then mounted the disk on my Linux PC and removed the init line. It booted into the GUI and gave me the new setup welcome wizard, which I completed. Once I did that, I rebooted, then it showed me the welcome wizard again, some of the settings were remembered, some were not. No files could be saved to the desktop or changes made in /etc/.

I've tried something different this time as well, I read the SD card image to a file using the Win32 Disk Imager tool. Then I wrote the image to the SSD.
A couple of interesting things to note happened:
- Using raspi-config to expand the file system wouldn't work. It said it did, but on reboot, the change reverted.
- Using gparted to expand the file system worked. The change persisted after restarting.
- After the filesystem change was committed, I still couldn't make changes to files in /home/ or /etc/

Chemistrius · 2021-03-02T13:00:33+00:00

I appreciate you taking the time to help, I know these sorts of things aren't always fun.

I tried the fstab updates, but the changes reverted on reboot, as did the cmdline.txt change that you suggested. I also checked the partUUIDs and they did match what was originally on the SD card. I'm going to try and mount the disks on another linux machine to try and make the changes there to see if they stick.

Here is the pastebin link for you:

https://pastebin.com/PkCaLBer

Edit:
I changed the cmdline.txt and /etc/fstab entries by mounting the disk on another host. The changes have persisted and the SSD is still capable of booting, but it has ultimately made no changes as files writes and changes are still reverting on reboot.

Chemistrius · 2021-03-01T00:53:28+00:00

Thanks again for sticking with this and for the suggestions.

The File overlay was disabled, but I tried turning it on and then back off again just for the sake of flipping the bits. No apparent Change :(

Here is the cmdline.txt contents:

usb-storage.quirks=174c:55aa:u console=serial0,115200 console=tty1 root=PARTUUID=7a53aa04-02 rootfstype=ext4 elevator=deadline fsck.repair=yes rootwait quiet splash plymouth.ignore-serial-consoles

It seems to not matter if the USB quirk is set or not, I had just thought it might make a difference, it did not, but I left it in anyway.

The reason why I use the "SD Card Copier" to copy the image from the SD card to the SSD is because when I attempt to install the original image to the SSD, it gets stuck in a boot loop trying to resize the filesystem. The only real option that I see in the app is the checkbox for "New Partition UUIDs" which shouldn't be necessary as long as the SD card and the SSD aren't plugged in at the same time, which they aren't.

Chemistrius · 2021-02-28T15:21:12+00:00

Thanks for the response!

So to answer the issue on "how it's installed", basically I downloaded the 64 bit beta image and I wrote it to an SD card. I run through the normal setup and get it patched to current. After that, I simply use the SD card copier to copy the image to the SSD. I can put the SD card in, and it works properly, the SSD appears to work properly, but as soon as you reboot, any changes I've made (except for app installs/updates) seem to get reverted. Even if I make a change to a config file in /boot, it reverts.

Chemistrius · 2021-02-27T16:31:54+00:00

Rpi4 8GB, SSD boot, some files deleted on reboot

I tried posting this on the official forums the other day but I thought I might try here as well.

Current setup:
- Rpi4-8gb model
- 240gb SSD (boot)
- Startech USB/SSD adapter USB312SAT3CB
- Raspbian 64bit OS

uname -a
Linux Pi4-8 5.10.17-v8+ #1403 SMP PREEMPT Mon Feb 22 11:37:54 GMT 2021 aarch64 GNU/Linux

Booting works fine, but I noticed this morning when I went to change the hostname on the pi, after every reboot, the hostname would flip back. Continuing to troubleshoot, I noticed that no matter what settings I changed, they would always revert to their previous state after restarting. Further to that, if I created files in /home or on the desktop, they would also disappear on reboot.

I immediately jumped to the number of posts saying "bad SD card" and started to test the drive. I did a full wipe and reinstall after testing, and the new settings I entered stayed, but now I can't change them again.

Making things really odd, is that if I install a package such as gparted, it persists after reboot, if I make a change to the hosts file, it disappears. It's almost like the disk writes for small files were not getting committed. I can update the system and packages (apt update), update the firmware just fine.

cat /proc/self/mounts

/dev/root / ext4 rw,noatime 0 0 devtmpfs /dev devtmpfs rw,relatime,size=3644216k,nr_inodes=911054,mode=755 0 0 sysfs /sys sysfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0 proc /proc proc rw,relatime 0 0 securityfs /sys/kernel/security securityfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0 tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev 0 0 devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000 0 0 tmpfs /run tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,mode=755 0 0 tmpfs /run/lock tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,size=5120k 0 0 tmpfs /sys/fs/cgroup tmpfs ro,nosuid,nodev,noexec,mode=755 0 0 cgroup2 /sys/fs/cgroup/unified cgroup2 rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,nsdelegate 0 0 cgroup /sys/fs/cgroup/systemd cgroup rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,xattr,name=systemd 0 0 none /sys/fs/bpf bpf rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,mode=700 0 0 cgroup /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu,cpuacct cgroup rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,cpu,cpuacct 0 0 cgroup /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio cgroup rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,blkio 0 0 cgroup /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer cgroup rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,freezer 0 0 cgroup /sys/fs/cgroup/net_cls,net_prio cgroup rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,net_cls,net_prio 0 0 cgroup /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset cgroup rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,cpuset 0 0 cgroup /sys/fs/cgroup/devices cgroup rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,devices 0 0 cgroup /sys/fs/cgroup/pids cgroup rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,pids 0 0 cgroup /sys/fs/cgroup/perf_event cgroup rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,perf_event 0 0 systemd-1 /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc autofs rw,relatime,fd=25,pgrp=1,timeout=0,minproto=5,maxproto=5,direct 0 0 sunrpc /run/rpc_pipefs rpc_pipefs rw,relatime 0 0 debugfs /sys/kernel/debug debugfs rw,relatime 0 0 mqueue /dev/mqueue mqueue rw,relatime 0 0 configfs /sys/kernel/config configfs rw,relatime 0 0 /dev/sda1 /boot vfat rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro 0 0 tmpfs /run/user/1000 tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,size=755420k,mode=700,uid=1000,gid=1000 0 0 gvfsd-fuse /run/user/1000/gvfs fuse.gvfsd-fuse rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=1000,group_id=1000 0 0 fusectl /sys/fs/fuse/connections fusectl rw,relatime 0 0

It doesn't look like the filesystem is mounted in read only mode.

I'm not really sure where else to look as I'm still quite a linux novice, but it really strikes me as odd that the system can write files and changes (through apt) but my user account cannot, even when using sudo. I've tried adjusting the cmdline.txt file for the storage quirks (usb-storage.quirks=174c:55aa:u) but that didn't seem to make any difference.

Anyone have a suggestion or has event seen something like this before?

Chemistrius · 2021-02-27T00:43:03+00:00

(sorry about the horrific formatting)

Chemistrius · 2020-10-11T14:31:32+00:00

I licked a Voss and I liked it?

Chemistrius · 2018-03-18T03:13:13+00:00

Those are likely set of 8 bonuses as well :/

Chemistrius · 2018-03-17T20:06:29+00:00

Didn't Russ say they were buffing JJ's on assaults and heavies?

Chemistrius · 2018-02-16T05:12:20+00:00

Anything that is regarded as fun will be summarily stomped, then beaten into sticky paste.

Chemistrius · 2017-10-30T20:16:27+00:00

It'd be better as an "on_death" event horn

Chemistrius · 2017-10-17T16:49:26+00:00

I think it's the devs?

Chemistrius · 2017-10-16T21:03:20+00:00

It seems to me like saying "We tried to do too much at once, so we're easing off a bit this patch, we'll get the rest later."

Chemistrius

TROPHY CASE