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Ubuntu Server on HDD
Posted: Fri May 31, 2019 8:17 am
by Matt Penfold
It is great to see an official ARM64 Ubuntu Server release.
I have no problems getting it working using an SD card, but it fails when I install the image to an HDD (It tries to boot from an SD card, and of course, there isn't one!). Does anyone have some pointers as to how I can get it booting from the HDD? I suspect I will need to edit some files after I have written the image to the hard drive.
Re: Ubuntu Server on HDD
Posted: Fri May 31, 2019 8:52 am
by Andyroo
Is your Pi capable of booting from a HDD?
To get it up and running you could try creating an SD card (FAT32 format) just with bootcode.bin only on it and boot from that with the HDD connected.
That may be easier than swapping the HDD between machines to edit files

Re: Ubuntu Server on HDD
Posted: Fri May 31, 2019 12:49 pm
by Matt Penfold
Andyroo wrote: ↑Fri May 31, 2019 8:52 am
Is your Pi capable of booting from a HDD?
To get it up and running you could try creating an SD card (FAT32 format) just with bootcode.bin only on it and boot from that with the HDD connected.
That may be easier than swapping the HDD between machines to edit files
Yes, it will boot from the HDD if I put a Raspbian on the drive. Good thinking on using a minimal SD card!
Re: Ubuntu Server on HDD
Posted: Fri May 31, 2019 1:10 pm
by Icosagon
Hey Matt Penfold
Is your HDD connected to Pi via USB?. If it is you can't boot unless you enable usb booting on it.
Did you properly flash Ubuntu to HDD ? Try setting the boot bit
https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentati ... des/msd.md
Re: Ubuntu Server on HDD
Posted: Fri May 31, 2019 1:15 pm
by Matt Penfold
Yes, the boot bit is set, and I have had the PI booting Raspbian from the HDD, but now I am trying the official Ubuntu server image and it is not working. Almost certainly because there is something wrong with the config files. I am just not sure what!
Re: Ubuntu Server on HDD
Posted: Fri May 31, 2019 1:59 pm
by Andyroo
Looking at the images
https://www.ubuntu.com/download/iot/raspberry-pi-2-3 it only mentions 2 and 3 - no 3B+
Firmware and drivers changed at 3B+ so could that be the reason?
Re: Ubuntu Server on HDD
Posted: Fri May 31, 2019 2:36 pm
by Matt Penfold
It is just a Pi3B, not a plus model.
I have found some instructions here (
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ARM/RaspberryPi ... .2FAArch64) which I am in the process of testing. First though I need to setup a virtual Linux box.
Re: Ubuntu Server on HDD
Posted: Fri May 31, 2019 5:00 pm
by HawaiianPi
It looks like cmdline.txt needs to be edited to point to the USB drive (/etc/fstab seems to be using labels, so that's probably okay).
Code: Select all
net.ifnames=0 dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 console=ttyAMA0,115200 console=tty1 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootfstype=ext4 elevator=deadline rootwait
Change the
root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 statement to point to the second partition of the USB drive, preferably using something more robust than /dev/sda2.
Re: Ubuntu Server on HDD
Posted: Fri May 31, 2019 6:51 pm
by Matt Penfold
HawaiianPi wrote: ↑Fri May 31, 2019 5:00 pm
It looks like cmdline.txt needs to be edited to point to the USB drive (/etc/fstab seems to be using labels, so that's probably okay).
Code: Select all
net.ifnames=0 dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 console=ttyAMA0,115200 console=tty1 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootfstype=ext4 elevator=deadline rootwait
Change the
root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 statement to point to the second partition of the USB drive, preferably using something more robust than /dev/sda2.
Thanks, that is one of the places I was going wrong. I now Ubuntu server booting from the HDD with no SD card required. The instructions to do it are in that article I linked to, but a bit all over the place. I might write up a simplified version.