Won't boot after removing and inserting the SD Card?

Question

I've installed Arch Linux on my SD Card with Win32DiskImager. If I shut down the RPi, remove the card, insert, and start the RPi, everything works fine. But if I do full system update in pacman with pacman -Syu, there some problem. If I shut down and the start RPi again, no problem, but if I shut down, remove the card, insert, start RPi, it can't boot ever again, just waiting at the rainbow start screen always. I also dont need to remove the sdcard, only enough to stop the power supply for 30 seconds, (until the condensators complety discarges) and start the RPi, and the same error occurs.

I tried to disable the raspberrypi-firmware package update by adding IgnorePgk = raspberrypi-firmware in /etc/pacman.conf file, and then do the full system update, and then I remove and insert the sdcard, and then I dont see the rainbow screen again, but get this error message:

[  20.217557] Kernel panic - not syncing : VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(179,2)

PANIC: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(179,2)

Entering kdb (current=0xcd828ca0, pid 1) due to Keyboard Entry
kdb> _ 

This error also occurs if I only update the linux-raspberrypi package, and then I only reboot and not remove the sdcard, and I get the same kernel-panic error message.

I have Samsung SDHC 16GB Class10 (MB-MPAGA aka MB-MPAGAEU) card. I also tried with Kingmax SDHC 16GB Class10 card, and with Kingmax SDHC 8GB Class6 card, neither worked.

If I ignore the raspberrypi-firmware and the linux-raspberrypi package in pacman, and then do the system update, no error occurs even if I remove the sdcard. So it must be some problem in these packages.

Answer 1

I'm posting this as an answer as there is not enough space in comments. So from all the information gathered so far it seems that the problem is only related to /boot/ partition contents. Now the problem can be caused by two things: 1. /boot/ filesystem corruption which makes it impossible for bootloader to load firmware files 2. New version of firmware has some regression that prevents your SD card working. You have to check which one of this is true.

One way of doing this would be to manually update files in /boot/ on your PC. To do this you will have to first ensure that your system is not booting directly to graphical system (because you won't have modules working and this would make it impossible to use keyboard/mouse in X). Then you have to connect your SD card in PC, backup its content, go to the github page for firmware files, enter boot directory and download following files (overriding existing ones) to your /boot/ partition - bootcode.bin, kernel.img, start.elf, loader.bin. You won't need override any other files. To download each file you have to click on its name, then click "view raw" and save this on disc. After you save all files, ensure that you saftly ejected your SD card and check if it boots. This way you can check if newest firmware files (kernel and bootloader) are able to boot from your SD card. If it's true then we can be sure that your problem is caused by /boot/ partition corruption, not kernel/bootloader regression.

As mentioned earlier, you should also check how many green led flashes can you see when you see rainbow screen. Some time ago troubleshooting code was added to bootloader and it will blink green led several times to show what went wrong. Here's the list: 3 flashes: loader.bin not found 4 flashes: loader.bin not launched 5 flashes: start.elf not found 6 flashes: start.elf not launched

If you see no flashes at all then either your firmware is too old to support this or not even bootcode.bin was loaded. You can also check if the boot partition is not corrupted by checking if all the files needed for boot (mentioned earlier) are sane (not zero sized, exists etc). You can also check which file on boot partition causes problem by restoring only some of them. For example only restore kernel.bin or only start.elf+loader.bin+bootcode.bin. This can tell you if it's firmware or kernel problem.

Answer 2

It must be sdcard problem. If I install Raspbian “wheezy”, then in the raspi-config I expand the partition to fill the card, then shut down the Raspberry Pi, remove the sdcard, insert in again, it won't boot. The Kingmax 16GB SDHC Class10 card is not suppported.

---

I also tried with Kingmax 8GB and Samsung 16GB as I mentioned in the question, and neither worked. Maybe it is some other problem.