Boot problem

[pirates89]

I have recently been trying to make a RPi powered car however one day when when I booted my Pi it didn't boot the same. It didn't display the coloured screen at all and displayed a terminal style display with the logo in the top left corner. When I try most normal commands such as 'sudo' or 'cd' it says it doesn't recognise the command then shows '-/bin/sh/'.
I have also tried some of my other SD cards, one with xbmc and the other with RISCOS and the later doesn't work as well. I have tried making a new SD card to boot from, however that doesn't work either.
Plese help!!
Dan

[DeeJay]

I wonder if you are in Safe Mode? Searching for that on the forums or via google might help. Does this odd behaviour still occur if you disconnect all external cabling from the GPIO connector? (Guessing that is how you were driving the car?)

[mahjongg]

Pulling pin 5 of the GPIO header low during boot will force the PI with raspbian to boot in "safe mode", its a feature s joy can get this behavior by putting a jumper between pin 5 and pin 6 (GND)!

there is an override command in config.txt you can use to disable safe booting.

[Joe Schmoe]

Pulling pin 5 of the GPIO header low during boot will force the PI with raspbian to boot in "safe mode", its a feature s joy can get this behavior by putting a jumper between pin 5 and pin 6 (GND)!

there is an override command in config.txt you can use to disable safe booting.

Has anyone come up with a good explanation for why this happens - i.e., why it is sometimes necessary to advise newbies to put that line in config.txt?

It seems to happen with some frequency (judging by the posts here). It doesn't seem to me like it should ever be necessary (to put that line in config.txt) - and that if it is, then something is seriously wrong.

[drgeoff]

I have recently been trying to make a RPi powered car however ...
Dan

An RPi can do some amazing things but powering a car may be out of its league.

[rpdom]

Has anyone come up with a good explanation for why this happens - i.e., why it is sometimes necessary to advise newbies to put that line in config.txt?

It seems to happen with some frequency (judging by the posts here). It doesn't seem to me like it should ever be necessary (to put that line in config.txt) - and that if it is, then something is seriously wrong.

I have been wondering the same thing for a while now. I suspect there is an issue in some of the bootcode somewhere.

[Joe Schmoe]

Has anyone come up with a good explanation for why this happens - i.e., why it is sometimes necessary to advise newbies to put that line in config.txt?

It seems to happen with some frequency (judging by the posts here). It doesn't seem to me like it should ever be necessary (to put that line in config.txt) - and that if it is, then something is seriously wrong.

I have been wondering the same thing for a while now. I suspect there is an issue in some of the bootcode somewhere.

Probably so, but wouldn't there also have to be something "special" about the GPIO pin setup as well (I.e., something attached to it) - to trigger it?

AFAIK, it doesn't happen unless you have *something* attached to the GPIO pin.

[pirates89]

Cheers. I think it is booting into safe mode. I found another post about it with an actual picture to confirm my problem. http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... 4&p=387619 It seems I have booted into safe mode and will try adding "avoid_safe_mode=1" to config.txt.

Cheers for all the help.
Dan

[rpdom]

Has anyone come up with a good explanation for why this happens - i.e., why it is sometimes necessary to advise newbies to put that line in config.txt?

It seems to happen with some frequency (judging by the posts here). It doesn't seem to me like it should ever be necessary (to put that line in config.txt) - and that if it is, then something is seriously wrong.

I have been wondering the same thing for a while now. I suspect there is an issue in some of the bootcode somewhere.

Probably so, but wouldn't there also have to be something "special" about the GPIO pin setup as well (I.e., something attached to it) - to trigger it?

AFAIK, it doesn't happen unless you have *something* attached to the GPIO pin.

The thing with this particular problem is that a lot of times it is happening even if there is nothing connected to the pins.

There was a problem with the video a while back, where in certain circumstances the RGB colours were swapped around. Setting certain options in config.txt prevented it happening, but could cause other issues.
Eventually this was tracked down to an uninitialised variable in the bootfiles.
I'm wondering if this is a similar thing.

[Joe Schmoe]

The thing with this particular problem is that a lot of times it is happening even if there is nothing connected to the pins.

Ahhhh. I see. That actually agrees with my recollection as well, but I thought maybe I was remembering wrong...

There was a problem with the video a while back, where in certain circumstances the RGB colours were swapped around. Setting certain options in config.txt prevented it happening, but could cause other issues.
Eventually this was tracked down to an uninitialised variable in the bootfiles.
I'm wondering if this is a similar thing.

Could be. Could be...

[pirates89]

Sorry, but my raspberry pi booted after I added 'avoid_safe_mode=1' to the config.txt file however after rebooting it it says there is insufficient storage space in the root file system. After that it continues the boot until it goes to load the GUI and it just sits there with a flashing underscore in the top left of the screen. The keyboard works as well and I have tried typing thing to see if it does anything but nothing works.
Dan

[RaTTuS]

did you expand the rootfs at any time?
how big was the SD card

[pirates89]

I am having the problem on both my 4GB and my 2GB memory card and I have never touched the rootfs at any point due to my lack of knowledge

[RaTTuS]

run
sudo raspi-config
and choose expand rootfs
then reboot as directed

[pirates89]

Where am I meant to type this because there is nowhere I can?
Dan