New 5.1 kit building: problem with 1st boot

Building Zynthian
1

Hi Zynthian community!
I am Mathieu from France.
Carefully built my 5.1 kit, had latest Zynthian os built on fresh Samsung 256GB SD card (downloaded this last friday and burnt os with Balena Etcher).
Everthing was fine: screen turned up, had the upside down booting sequence…but after more than an hour and half ,still no splash screen. Tried to find some posts in this discourse with a case like mine with no Luck.

Here is a screenshot of what I have on screen for so long:

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I need someone’s help to make it work.
Thank you very much
Mathieu

2

Well, someone more expert than me might have a more specific suggestion, but I would try:

Using the Raspberry Pi Imager instead of Balena Etcher.

If that doesn’t work, try a smaller sd card, 32 or 64 gb.

I have had times that one of the sd card writing programs works and the other doesn’t - quite randomly!

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Definitely first try reflashing the image and if that fails then try a different uSD.

There have been several instances of uSD failing. This is often with larger (256GB) cards. There are a lot of fake cards in the world, many packaged in official looking packaging. These are sold as large capacity (e.g. 256GB) cards but in fact are smaller capacity or faulty cards low-level formatted to appear as large capacity. They work for a while but then, when the OS tries to write to the unavailable space, they break. The most common symptom is that they become read-only, but appear to still be writeable. On first boot, zynthian expands the file system to the full size of the uSD. This may trigger the fault in a fake card. This may also take an inordinate amount of time if the card is very slow (another symptom of a fake card).

It is difficult to know whether you have a fake or faulty card but buying a reputable brand from a reputable vendor at a price that is not substantially discounted is highly recommended.

One way to test the card is to format it in a PC. Write some data to it. Remove it then reinsert and see if the data is there.

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4

A little off topic but might be interesting: For my 64GB Sandisk Ultra Extreme Pro Card which has worked perfectly from the beginning with Zynthian Kit V5.1, I paid 13€ at ebay (shipping included).

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5

It is definitely Balena Etcher making the problems!
After the 1.17.x versions it makes corrupted media, even broke some of my MicroSD before I found out his Balena Etcher is the culprit.

Use Raspberry Imager or Win32 Disk Imager, but for Win32 Disk Imager you have to unpack the zipped image first.

Do not try too often with Balena, or you’ll fry the card.

Balena Etcher should definitely be removed from any recommendations or howTo in the Wiki.

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Thank you all, will try the raspberry imager right now👍

7

Ok it is now working.

It was due to the Samsung Pro plus 256Go I used.

For the record:
Tried several time to flash latest Zynthian image (25-09, I also checked the md5 hash) with Samsung card

  • first with Balena Etcher, result :see my first post (images)
  • then with Raspberry Pi imager 1.8.5, less errors but stucked with login prompt, and nothing happened (leaved it more than an hour)

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Then:
I moved to buy Sandisk extrême 64Go, used Rbpi imager, it worked flowlessly and quickly.

Was an easy fix but took some hours :wink:
Thank you all and Moving to play with it.

Cheers
Mathieu

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I had the same problem with a different 256GB card. Solution was the same using a smaller, 32 GB Sandisk extreme SD card which worked for me.

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