Ubuntu image for the new Raspberry Pi 3 B+

[washy]

Yeah I got the kstars running, but indi really dont want to play ball - I'll keep plodding through it till I get it sorted. Its no fun if it works first time is it

[jamesh]

In reply to a comment above, that booting a Pi is real hard, I'd have to say that booting a Pi with the official OS is really easy. Image SD card, boot. It really is that simple.

Booting the Pi with third party OS is almost always just as easy, except when a new model comes out and the third parties take a week or two to get their OS's updated. So this is entirely down to the users decision. If you want it to work straight out of the box, use the official OS. If you are happy to wait for you own preferred OS to work, then wait. If you are impatient, you can try to make a third party OS work, but that can be time consuming. My own advice would be simply to wait for the OS maintainers to catch up, and if you are desperate in the meantime, just use Raspbian.

[washy]

In reply to a comment above, that booting a Pi is real hard, I'd have to say that booting a Pi with the official OS is really easy. Image SD card, boot. It really is that simple.

Booting the Pi with third party OS is almost always just as easy, except when a new model comes out and the third parties take a week or two to get their OS's updated. So this is entirely down to the users decision. If you want it to work straight out of the box, use the official OS. If you are happy to wait for you own preferred OS to work, then wait. If you are impatient, you can try to make a third party OS work, but that can be time consuming. My own advice would be simply to wait for the OS maintainers to catch up, and if you are desperate in the meantime, just use Raspbian.

I agree with your sentiment - and I'm in no way upset, I'm a complete Pi beginner - the 3b+ is my first and I just bought it because there was no information anywhere to dissuade me from thinking it would work out of the box for my application, and in all probability next week it will.

Installing the official OS worked flawlessly (except requiring to eject the SD card from windows!)

Its kept me busy for a good few hours and I now know something about how it works under the hood.

[jamesh]

In reply to a comment above, that booting a Pi is real hard, I'd have to say that booting a Pi with the official OS is really easy. Image SD card, boot. It really is that simple.

Booting the Pi with third party OS is almost always just as easy, except when a new model comes out and the third parties take a week or two to get their OS's updated. So this is entirely down to the users decision. If you want it to work straight out of the box, use the official OS. If you are happy to wait for you own preferred OS to work, then wait. If you are impatient, you can try to make a third party OS work, but that can be time consuming. My own advice would be simply to wait for the OS maintainers to catch up, and if you are desperate in the meantime, just use Raspbian.

I agree with your sentiment - and I'm in no way upset, I'm a complete Pi beginner - the 3b+ is my first and I just bought it because there was no information anywhere to dissuade me from thinking it would work out of the box for my application, and in all probability next week it will.

Installing the official OS worked flawlessly (except requiring to eject the SD card from windows!)

Its kept me busy for a good few hours and I now know something about how it works under the hood.

If you are happy to play around to try and get stuff to work, that is great - it's why the Pi was invented in the first place - education! The more you learn, the better!

[feelslikeautumn]

In reply to a comment above, that booting a Pi is real hard, I'd have to say that booting a Pi with the official OS is really easy. Image SD card, boot. It really is that simple.

Booting the Pi with third party OS is almost always just as easy, except when a new model comes out and the third parties take a week or two to get their OS's updated. So this is entirely down to the users decision. If you want it to work straight out of the box, use the official OS. If you are happy to wait for you own preferred OS to work, then wait. If you are impatient, you can try to make a third party OS work, but that can be time consuming. My own advice would be simply to wait for the OS maintainers to catch up, and if you are desperate in the meantime, just use Raspbian.

I agree with your sentiment - and I'm in no way upset, I'm a complete Pi beginner - the 3b+ is my first and I just bought it because there was no information anywhere to dissuade me from thinking it would work out of the box for my application, and in all probability next week it will.

Installing the official OS worked flawlessly (except requiring to eject the SD card from windows!)

Its kept me busy for a good few hours and I now know something about how it works under the hood.

If you are happy to play around to try and get stuff to work, that is great - it's why the Pi was invented in the first place - education! The more you learn, the better!

Any input on what might be going wrong?

[HawaiianPi]

Any input on what might be going wrong?

What's wrong is the new 3B+ requires an updated OS, and the Ubuntu devs have not provided the needed updates.

At this time it is best to stick with the official Raspbian OS. Both Ubuntu and Raspbian are based on Debian, so it should be much easier to get any software you need to run under Raspbian, than trying to get an incompatible OS running on the new hardware. Even if you can get Ubuntu to boot you'll likely have trouble with networking and who knows what else. Booting is not the end of your problems, it's just the beginning.

I admire the effort here, and if it's all for the learning/tinkering experience then fine. But if you actually think you can make Ubuntu Mate a viable OS by just copying a few files over from Raspbian, then it's an effort in futility.

But in the end, it's your time to waste.

[BluPI2]

Keep us updated. I was really hoping I could just swap my SD card from my RPI 3 to my RPI 3 B+, but that is apparently not the case. I wasn't that impressed with Raspbian last time I tried it, but perhaps I'll give it another look while I'm waiting.

[jamesh]

Keep us updated. I was really hoping I could just swap my SD card from my RPI 3 to my RPI 3 B+, but that is apparently not the case. I wasn't that impressed with Raspbian last time I tried it, but perhaps I'll give it another look while I'm waiting.

Raspbian is by far the best supported OS on the Pi, so would be interested in why you were not impressed.

[feelslikeautumn]

Keep us updated. I was really hoping I could just swap my SD card from my RPI 3 to my RPI 3 B+, but that is apparently not the case. I wasn't that impressed with Raspbian last time I tried it, but perhaps I'll give it another look while I'm waiting.

Nobody as yet given a valid reason why this shouldn't be the case. Just ensure the bootloader files and kernel have actually been updated.

[jamesh]

Indeed. You will need to replace the boot files, the kernel, the kernel modules and probably device tree stuff as well.

Or wait a week and let someone else do that for you.

[feelslikeautumn]

Unless you have insider information, it is not going to be a week. Probably somewhere between one and two months for Ubuntu-mate. For Ubuntu-server it is even longer. 18.04 is in feature freeze I think, so the bootloader files probably won't be updated in time for release. Plus there will probably never be a image released especially for the 3B+.

[MaxVMH]

Maybe not in an 'official' Ubuntu (Mate) package, but maybe in a fork? Or if washy (or someone else) could get this to work, he/she could make an image with the altered boot files and upload it.

EDIT: link to relevant issue on building Debian for Raspberry Pi 3B+

[BluPI2]

I finally have success! Ubuntu Mate 16.04 is now booting and everything seems to be working as it should. The only thing that isn't working atm is the built-in wifi. I plugged in a nano usb wifi adapter and problem solved

I downloaded the latest version of Raspbian and mounted the .img file, then I extracted all of the necessary files and copied them over to my Mate SD card.

I copied these files to the boot partition of Mate: bootcode.bin, fixup.dat, start.elf, bcm2710-rpi-3-b-plus.dtb , kernel.img, kernel7.img

I then copied these 2 folders into the root partition in the /lib/modules folder: 4.9.80-v7+ and 4.9.80+



As for Raspbian its pretty easy to say your the best when you have no competition I'll still give Raspbian another go too though. Last time I tried it was like 2015 on my RPI 2. I'm sure alot has changed since then and it sounds like alot of work has gone into it.

I'm gonna play around with it some more but so far its working great. Thanks for the help Guys!

[tkaiser]

bootcode.bin, fixup.dat, start.elf, bcm2710-rpi-3-b-plus.dtb , kernel.img, kernel7.img

I then copied these 2 folders into the root partition in the /lib/modules folder: 4.9.80-v7+ and 4.9.80+

You neither need kernel.img nor the '4.9.80+' directory (ARMv6 stuff) but you want to add the new wireless firmware: See this commit to get an idea where to fetch the files and where they should go to: https://github.com/ThomasKaiser/pi64/co ... 9c8c4f7737

[BluPI2]

Awesome, thanks for the heads up. I'll see if I can get the onboard wifi working too. I'm sure it'll be alot faster than this usb dongle.

[jamesh]

Unless you have insider information, it is not going to be a week. Probably somewhere between one and two months for Ubuntu-mate. For Ubuntu-server it is even longer. 18.04 is in feature freeze I think, so the bootloader files probably won't be updated in time for release. Plus there will probably never be a image released especially for the 3B+.

This post is entirely wrong. Should be a matter of a few days (as shown after previous Pi model releases). Whether third parties bother is down to them.

Someone in the thread above has it working...

[washy]

I finally have success! Ubuntu Mate 16.04 is now booting and everything seems to be working as it should. The only thing that isn't working atm is the built-in wifi. I plugged in a nano usb wifi adapter and problem solved

I downloaded the latest version of Raspbian and mounted the .img file, then I extracted all of the necessary files and copied them over to my Mate SD card.

I copied these files to the boot partition of Mate: bootcode.bin, fixup.dat, start.elf, bcm2710-rpi-3-b-plus.dtb , kernel.img, kernel7.img

I then copied these 2 folders into the root partition in the /lib/modules folder: 4.9.80-v7+ and 4.9.80+



As for Raspbian its pretty easy to say your the best when you have no competition I'll still give Raspbian another go too though. Last time I tried it was like 2015 on my RPI 2. I'm sure alot has changed since then and it sounds like alot of work has gone into it.

I'm gonna play around with it some more but so far its working great. Thanks for the help Guys!

top banana! working now

actually -not quite, keyboard and mouse not wokring

[BluPI2]

The keyboard and mouse didn't work for me until I transferred over the modules. Did you transfer the new folder into /lib/modules ?

[washy]

The keyboard and mouse didn't work for me until I transferred over the modules. Did you transfer the new folder into /lib/modules ?

Unfortunately, yes, I copied them - I do see a kernel failure in the boot sequence but its beyond my ability to figure that out I think. As a last resort I formatted and re-imaged both a ubuntu-mate and rasbian card and recopied the relevant files to no avail - still no keyboard or mouse.

Another day tomorrow!

[jamesh]

The keyboard and mouse didn't work for me until I transferred over the modules. Did you transfer the new folder into /lib/modules ?

Unfortunately, yes, I copied them - I do see a kernel failure in the boot sequence but its beyond my ability to figure that out I think. As a last resort I formatted and re-imaged both a ubuntu-mate and rasbian card and recopied the relevant files to no avail - still no keyboard or mouse.

Another day tomorrow!

No keyboard or mouse is exactly the problem I see if I have the wrong modules installed, so that's almost certainly the issue. The module folder name and the contents need to match the kernel version being run.

[washy]

The keyboard and mouse didn't work for me until I transferred over the modules. Did you transfer the new folder into /lib/modules ?

Unfortunately, yes, I copied them - I do see a kernel failure in the boot sequence but its beyond my ability to figure that out I think. As a last resort I formatted and re-imaged both a ubuntu-mate and rasbian card and recopied the relevant files to no avail - still no keyboard or mouse.

Another day tomorrow!

No keyboard or mouse is exactly the problem I see if I have the wrong modules installed, so that's almost certainly the issue. The module folder name and the contents need to match the kernel version being run.

I'm sure you are right !

Do you need to indicate anywhere in a config file that you have put new modules on the SD card? I simply deleted the existing folders in the modules folder and replaced them with the 2 from the (working) Raspbian image. The (only) error when I boot is

Failed to start Load Kernel Modules.
See 'systemctl status systemd-modules-load.service' for details

And I can also see it doesn't find the USB devices when its booting, so its safe to assume this is the problem - I just don't really know how to fix it

[tkaiser]

See 'systemctl status systemd-modules-load.service' for details

What about doing exactly that and posting the output in a code block here? Uploading dmesg to an online pasteboard service would be a good idea too:

Code: Select all

dmesg | curl -F 'f:1=<-' http://ix.io

[jamesh]

Unfortunately, yes, I copied them - I do see a kernel failure in the boot sequence but its beyond my ability to figure that out I think. As a last resort I formatted and re-imaged both a ubuntu-mate and rasbian card and recopied the relevant files to no avail - still no keyboard or mouse.

Another day tomorrow!

No keyboard or mouse is exactly the problem I see if I have the wrong modules installed, so that's almost certainly the issue. The module folder name and the contents need to match the kernel version being run.

I'm sure you are right !

Do you need to indicate anywhere in a config file that you have put new modules on the SD card? I simply deleted the existing folders in the modules folder and replaced them with the 2 from the (working) Raspbian image. The (only) error when I boot is

Failed to start Load Kernel Modules.
See 'systemctl status systemd-modules-load.service' for details

And I can also see it doesn't find the USB devices when its booting, so its safe to assume this is the problem - I just don't really know how to fix it

Don't delete the old ones, they will be in a different folder, which contains the version number of the kernel. So you will be adding a NEW folder with the appropriate name with the new modules. Because of the naming the module folders can coexist over kernel version changes.

[washy]

See 'systemctl status systemd-modules-load.service' for details

What about doing exactly that and posting the output in a code block here? Uploading dmesg to an online pasteboard service would be a good idea too:

Code: Select all

dmesg | curl -F 'f:1=<-' http://ix.io

The keyboard don't work and I couldn't get SSH working either, so I'm not sure how to do that at the minute

[jamesh]

See 'systemctl status systemd-modules-load.service' for details

What about doing exactly that and posting the output in a code block here? Uploading dmesg to an online pasteboard service would be a good idea too:

Code: Select all

dmesg | curl -F 'f:1=<-' http://ix.io

The keyboard don't work and I couldn't get SSH working either, so I'm not sure how to do that at the minute

Get the modules right first, then you can do all this stuff. Without the right modules, nothing will work correctly - keyboard, mouse, USB devices, networking etc.