I recently purchased a Zynthian V5.1 and building it went swimmingly.
However, I can’t get it to boot to the actual interface, or get into the webUI unless I manually start zythian_webconf.py or zynthian_webconf.sh. When I manually start zynthian.sh too it loads the splash screen but gets stuck on that until I cancel the process.
Looking through the logs with journalctl, it looks like there are many systemd units not starting up due to bad unit file settings.
Hello @ArcticSin and welcome. What brand and size of SD Card are you using? I would suggest not going above 64 GB and using SanDisk or Samsung, and using Raspberry Pi imager.
You could try opening the case and putting the SD Card directly in the RPi for troubleshooting purposes.
Here’s a thread about SD Cards that may provide some good info and tips:
It’s a Sandisk Extreme Pro 32gb, and was flashed using rpi-imager on my Steam Deck. I will try putting it directly into the RPi and let you know what happens.
Sounds good. I would recommend rewriting a fresh image to the sd card before retrying the boot. Because Zynthian tries to figure out what kind of hardware it is running on and saves that info on the sd card, so if you fix a hardware issue you can still get bad results if you don’t re-flash the image. It can be quite confusing. I would also suggest trying a different brand or type of card.
First boot can take a few minutes sitting at splash screen!
Good, that shows we’re in the right area, but no, it might be a faulty cable, or mainboard, but it’s still much more likely that the SD Card is the culprit. Could you try another card from a reasonably solid vendor and brand and see if it works? Have you read the link above, SD-cards for Zynthian V5? It provides a lot more info and a link to a video also about the issues, which mostly relate to accessing the card faster with RPi5, although there were issues with counterfeit cards way before the RPi4 as well!
I’d have to go get another SD card since this is the only one I have at the moment, but this issue only seems to be happening when I use it through the cable. It’s perfectly fine with SD card reader on the pi itself. But I’ll look into acquiring one directly from the manufacturer to guarantees I don’t get a counterfit one.
OK, it’s your choice which to try first, cable or card. It makes sense to have a few SD Cards for a Zynthian in order to allow you to switch versions without destroying the current one. Good luck with buying directly from the manufacturer, the closest I’ve gotten is an authorized distributor such as Digi-key.
I completely forgot to actually do this after getting the zynthian to work (with the sd card plugged right into the pi), but I’m going to get some various SD cards tomorrow.