1

I began with the instructions here: https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi I downloaded the aarch64 Raspberry Pi release from alpine's website, extracted the contents of the .tar.gz archive, and wrote them to a blank FAT32 partition on an SD card. I put the SD card into the Rpi 4B, plugged in an HDMI monitor to the HDMI0 port, and a USB keyboard into one of the USB 2 ports.

When I power on the Pi, it shows the rainbow square and the green light flashes seven times, indicating that the kernel image is not found. I checked the config.txt and it points to /boot/vmlinuz-rpi4.

I've followed other guides that recommended certain config settings for the pi 4B, but the best I got was a blank screen and the same seven-flash error indicating that the kernel is not found. I'm at a loss how to troubleshoot this further.

Improve this question
2
  • Is this your original post raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/119503/… - if not see my notes and link.
    – user115418
    Dec 28, 2020 at 13:30
  • No, that's a different user and different issue, and I read it before asking my question. As this did not solve my issue, and I have a different error message (7 blinks instead of 4), I asked a new question.
    – user128410
    Dec 28, 2020 at 21:48

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

I solved this by moving all of the items out of the /boot directory to the root directory of the SD card, and editing the config.txt to point to the items there instead of in the folder. Looking at the Raspberry Pi documentation, I would expect pointing to the kernel in a directory to work, but it seems this does not work in practice.

If you're getting seven green flashes on boot, try this:

  1. Move all items out of the /boot directory to the root directory of the SD card.
  2. Edit config.txt to look for the kernel and initramfs in / instead of /boot, so that it looks like:
# do not modify this file as it will be overwritten on upgrade.
# create and/or modify usercfg.txt instead.
# https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/config-txt
[pi3]
kernel=/vmlinuz-rpi
initramfs /initramfs-rpi
[pi3+]
kernel=/vmlinuz-rpi
initramfs /initramfs-rpi
[pi4]
enable_gic=1
kernel=/vmlinuz-rpi4
initramfs /initramfs-rpi4
[all]
arm_64bit=1
include usercfg.txt
  1. Make any desired additions to usercfg.txt
  2. Eject the micro SD card, put it in the Pi, and power it on. It should boot now.

(I'm assuming you've already created a FAT32 partition on the SD card and untarred Alpine into it as detailed here: https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi)

Improve this answer
1
  • I find it very strange that the Alpine team provided a download that required a modification like this to work. Maybe a recent change to the R-Pi bootloader is to blame.
    – user128410
    Dec 29, 2020 at 0:51

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge that you have read and understand our privacy policy and code of conduct.