My laptop can't recognize the RaspberryPi SD card

[AndreyGaganov]

(This was already posted on another thread, but I don't know if I can get help quicker if I just start a new thread on my RaspberryPI issues.) Hi. A complete Raspberry PI dummy here. I believe this is a good place (if not the only right place) to post this here.

I'm having a number of problems getting my Raspberry PI up and running. I've looked over the quick start guide, and it looks like there is a lot for me to do to accomplish that task.

I got to the business, and I'm already having a problem: my laptop will not see the RaspberryPI-branded SD card. I (1) plugged it into my laptop and (2) used the SanDisk card reader - nothing worked.

In my Ubuntu terminal I wrote:

Code: Select all

sudo su -l
echo 1 > /sys/bus/pci/rescan

... nothing happened. No output on the terminal. Then I wrote:

Code: Select all

lspci -vvnn

... and it spat out a bunch of stuff that is just over my head.

Any help would be appreciated. If you need any more clarification or if you think this should be in a different sub-forum or thread where I could get more help (especially from a person who is an expert with SD cards), please let me know.

- Cheers, Andrey.

[rpdom]

I don't understand why you are running those commands. Why would the SD card/reader show on the PCI bus? The reader is a USB device, is it not?

Try lsusb and see if it shows up there. Also, try "dmesg | tail" a few seconds after plugging in the card reader. You should see some messages about a new USB device, using mass storage driver and a list of partitions found.

[DougieLawson]

Insert the SDCard.
Run the dmesg command.
You should see sdb sdb1 sdb2 sdb5 & sdb6 appear.

Mount the partitions
sudo -i
cd /media
mkdir sdb1 sdb2 sdb5 sdb6
mount /dev/sdb1 /media/sdb1
mount /dev/sdb2 /media/sdb2
mount /dev/sdb5 /media/sdb5
mount /dev/sdb6 /media/sdb6
exit

You won't have partitions 5&6 if it's not a NOOBS card.

[ghans]

Perhaps you internal reader doesn't support SDHC Cards ?
Standard SD Cards go only up to 2 GB so far i know.

ghans

[AndreyGaganov]

Thanks for all your help. I'll try everything that you've suggested and will get back to you probably this afternoon. I might have to buy a new SD card and download and install Raspbian on it. I don't know if there is anything that is already on that older Raspberry-branded card.

I don't understand why you are running those commands. Why would the SD card/reader show on the PCI bus? The reader is a USB device, is it not?

I'm sorry, I don't know what PCI is. I just blindly follow advices. I should have referred you to the page where I got it from, and now I can't find it. It's similar to what you see here: http://askubuntu.com/questions/254099/h ... ot-to-work . At least that was the gist of it.

[rpdom]

Ah, PCI is them main type of internal connection between cards and other peripherals on a PC. If you are using a built-in SD card reader then it could be connected on the PCI bus. The SD card reader on my laptop is connected to PCI, but isn't supported at all under Linux and even then would not be able to recognised a SDHC card like most of the ones used on the Raspberry Pi.

As you mentioned using a SanDisk card reader I assumed you were using a USB external SanDisk branded SD card reader. Now I'm not so sure.

SanDisk is just one manufacturer of SD (Secure Digital) cards - and the most commonly faked brand.

I find a cheap, generic, USB SDHC card reader from the local "pound" shop for £1 to be as good as any of the branded readers and it has better support. Cheap enough to buy a spare, just in case

[AndreyGaganov]

As you mentioned using a SanDisk card reader I assumed you were using a USB external SanDisk branded SD card reader.

Yes, one like that: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... te]SanDisk is just one manufacturer of SD (Secure Digital) cards - and the most commonly faked brand.[/quote]That sucks.

Try lsusb and see if it shows up there.

Code: Select all

andrey@owner-VPCSC1AFM:~$ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 8086:0186 Intel Corp. WiMAX Connection 2400m
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0c45:64b5 Microdia 
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 0489:e00f Foxconn / Hon Hai Foxconn T77H114 BCM2070 [Single-Chip Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR Adapter]

I'm not sure what that means. It doesn't say anything about Raspbian.

Also, try "dmesg | tail" a few seconds after plugging in the card reader. You should see some messages about a new USB device, using mass storage driver and a list of partitions found.

Code: Select all

andrey@owner-VPCSC1AFM:~$ dmesg|tail
[  266.930964] cfg80211:     (5250000 KHz - 5330000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
[  266.930970] cfg80211:     (5490000 KHz - 5600000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
[  266.930976] cfg80211:     (5650000 KHz - 5710000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
[  266.930982] cfg80211:     (5735000 KHz - 5835000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 3000 mBm)
[  297.919596] cfg80211: Found new beacon on frequency: 5200 MHz (Ch 40) on phy0
[  298.275570] cfg80211: Found new beacon on frequency: 5220 MHz (Ch 44) on phy0
[  301.677780] cfg80211: Found new beacon on frequency: 5785 MHz (Ch 157) on phy0
[  301.863281] cfg80211: Found new beacon on frequency: 5805 MHz (Ch 161) on phy0
[  302.101748] cfg80211: Found new beacon on frequency: 5825 MHz (Ch 165) on phy0
[  302.101828] cfg80211: Found new beacon on frequency: 5825 MHz (Ch 165) on phy0

Doesn't say anything about partitions.

Insert the SDCard.
Run the dmesg command.
You should see sdb sdb1 sdb2 sdb5 & sdb6 appear.

It spat out a lot of stuff. I did catch this line, though:

Code: Select all

[   72.286918]  sdb: sdb1 sdb2 < >

I guess I can't go further with your instructions since I don't see partitions 5 and 6.

You won't have partitions 5&6 if it's not a NOOBS card.

I guess this card does not have the Raspbian OS installed on it. Can't even reformat it to FAT (saw it somewhere in some instructions) and install NOOBS on it if the computer does not see the card in both Linux and Windows OS.

[rpdom]

It spat out a lot of stuff. I did catch this line, though:

Code: Select all

    [   72.286918]  sdb: sdb1 sdb2 < >

I guess I can't go further with your instructions since I don't see partitions 5 and 6.

"You won't have partitions 5&6 if it's not a NOOBS card."

I guess this card does not have the Raspbian OS installed on it. Can't even reformat it to FAT (saw it somewhere in some instructions) and install NOOBS on it if the computer does not see the card in both Linux and Windows OS.

Actually that looks like exactly what I would expect from a card with only Raspbian on it.

The device /dev/sdb1 is probably the FAT partition of /boot and /dev/sdb2 would be the ext4 partition of /.
Try (as root or with sudo)

Code: Select all

mount -t ext4 /dev/sdb2 /media
ls /media

You should see the standard files and directories that exist in the Raspbian / directory (bin, lib, proc etc...).
Don't forget to umount /dev/sdb2 when you have finished and before unplugging the reader.

[AndreyGaganov]

OK, after two days of beating my head against the wall I've figured it out: all I really had to do was to simply follow the Quick Start Guide (QSG) instructions, and my laptop has nothing to do with any of it. I'm going to explain what caused my confusion with this whole process.

I did not want to mess up and sacrifice an SD card or the RaspberryPI board just to see what happens, so lack of confidence was one issue.

Another issue is that there are more than one guide on the Web on what to do to get Raspbian going on the board (see the list below), and I did not know which guide to follow. (And I assumed that every guide would be different; I should have spent some time reading every guide and making sure they were suggesting the same sequence of steps. That's my fault.)

1) http://www.raspberrypi.org/quick-start-guide ... or ...
2) http://elinux.org/RPi_Hardware_Basic_Setup ... or ...
3) http://www.raspberrypi.org/forum/viewto ... =91&t=4751

Also, because I was examining the Raspberry-branded SD card and noticed that it was acting like some ghost card that no OS on any computer can see, I did not know what to do with it. It already could have had the Raspbian OS installed on it. (I believe it was actually the board that had the NOOBS already stored on it that could be used to install the OS on the card.)

I did not know whether or not to use the SD formatting tool (as suggested in the guide if you are on Windows OS) to reformat the card. Strangely, after I plugged the card into my laptop, the Windows OS did not see the card (as would be expected) but the formatting tool did. It was at that moment that I've thought that maybe the card wasn't useless after all and I could just plug it into the board and proceed with further QSG instructions instead of ever having to plug it into my laptop (which I originally thought was a good idea if I wanted to store NOOBS on it).

Anyways, thanks to all of you for all your help. I really appreciate it.
--------------------------------------
Quick tips for those who want to easily get Raspberry Pi up and running:

1) Do not use the HDMI-to-HDMI cable that comes with Raspberry Pi (I don't know why it did, and that was one part of my overall confusion). I once connected the board to my laptop, but the GUI output did not change; the laptop was still showing Linux (which I was using on my laptop at the time). Your laptop will not serve as a substitute. Use an actual monitor. So, you actually have to use an HDMI-to-DVI lead. I went to Best Buy and bought a DVI-D-to-HDMI cable, and it worked between the monitor and the board just fine. I bought the RCA composite video connector just in case but haven't really used it.

2) You can utilize the SD formatting tool to make sure that your card is actually usable, so that you wouldn't have to waste $13 on a brand new 8-GB SD card.

[rpdom]

1) Do not use the HDMI-to-HDMI cable that comes with Raspberry Pi (I don't know why it did, and that was one part of my overall confusion). I once connected the board to my laptop, but the GUI output did not change; the laptop was still showing Linux (which I was using on my laptop at the time).

The HDMI-HDMI cable is fine. It is supposed to connect HDMI output on the Raspberry Pi to a TV or monitor that has HDMI input.

Your laptop has HDMI output too which is also supposed to be connect to a TV or monitor. You cannot connect two HDMI outputs together and expect the output from one to display on the built-in screen of the other. That would be like connecting two light bulbs together and expecting one to light up if you shine a light on the other one!

[AndreyGaganov]

^ Didn't know that ... the thing with HDMI, not the lightbulbs. Thanks.