Can centos 8 boot from usb for raspbery pi 4

Issues related to hardware problems
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13663788159@163.com
Posts: 1
Joined: 2020/11/14 04:46:47

Can centos 8 boot from usb for raspbery pi 4

Post by 13663788159@163.com » 2020/11/14 05:02:48

I have searched for some content, but it did not solve my problem; I want my Raspbery Pi4b to boot from a usb device or from SSD. Is there any solution? Thanks in advance

monadnomad
Posts: 2
Joined: 2020/11/16 07:21:47

Re: Can centos 8 boot from usb for raspbery pi 4

Post by monadnomad » 2020/11/16 15:57:00

It can be done with UEFI firmware on an SD card and CentOS on a USB drive. I could only get it to work with the Pi limited to <3G ram via the UEFI settings; presumably this can be overcome with more skill than I have yet...

Serkan86
Posts: 1
Joined: 2020/11/18 14:21:03

Re: Can centos 8 boot from usb for raspbery pi 4

Post by Serkan86 » 2020/11/18 14:33:07

13663788159@163.com wrote:
2020/11/14 05:02:48
I have searched for some content, but it did not solve my problem; I want my Raspbery Pi4b to boot from a usb device or from SSD. Is there any solution? Thanks in advance
I have a Raspberry Pi 4 with the version http://mirror.gadix.com/centos-altarch/ ... os/armhfp/ and I also want an SSD to boot with web pages to be used as FTP, but there is no way , Have you solved it?

pgreco
Posts: 31
Joined: 2018/04/14 17:23:02

Re: Can centos 8 boot from usb for raspbery pi 4

Post by pgreco » 2020/11/22 01:14:05

Yes, it can, right now the mainline kernel support for the rpi4 is not great (but it is getting there), so it is much easier to do it using the foundation's kernel.
You basically need to dd this image https://people.centos.org/pgreco/CentOS ... sda.raw.xz into the drive, edit the cmdline to say /dev/sda3 instead of /dev/mmcblk0p3.
As a prerequisite, you'll need to have a new enough firmware (I think at least Jun 2020).
Also, it would be useful to add this repo https://people.centos.org/pgreco/rpi_aarch64_el8/ where I keep the kernels in sync with our regular armhfp kernels.
As a note, the image is created using normal CentOS aarch64 rpms correctly signed but with a kernel that I build myself, and that is unsigned, if you don't trust me, don't use it. :D
As for the UEFI boot, there's a project that does that for the rpi (https://rpi4-uefi.dev/) and that would allow you to boot your device with a new enough kernel, which we currently don't have for our images, but hopefully we will once kernel 5.10 is out.

Pablo.

bcus
Posts: 3
Joined: 2020/11/26 23:42:54

Re: Can centos 8 boot from usb for raspbery pi 4

Post by bcus » 2020/11/27 14:26:44

Hello Pablo,

I am using your image for the Rpi4, do you think you can rebuild the image with encryption support to let say boot from an encrypted device? This option is not available because we cannot normally select the encryption options like we would on a PC installation of CentOS.


Thanks

pgreco
Posts: 31
Joined: 2018/04/14 17:23:02

Re: Can centos 8 boot from usb for raspbery pi 4

Post by pgreco » 2020/12/26 02:14:20

bcus wrote:
2020/11/27 14:26:44
Hello Pablo,

I am using your image for the Rpi4, do you think you can rebuild the image with encryption support to let say boot from an encrypted device? This option is not available because we cannot normally select the encryption options like we would on a PC installation of CentOS.


Thanks
Which options do you think should be enabled in the config?

scottfl78
Posts: 1
Joined: 2021/06/06 18:14:03

Re: Can centos 8 boot from usb for raspbery pi 4

Post by scottfl78 » 2021/06/06 19:11:13

Hey guys, and pgreco. I installed the CentOS 8 stream version from the pgreco repo on a 240gb SSD for my Rap Pi 4B 4GB. I edited the cmdline to /sda3 and it booted up after awhile. I then ran a yum update and decided to only use the pgreco repo just to be safe.

yum update --nogpgcheck --repofrompath greco,https://people.centos.org/pgreco/rpi_aarch64_el8/

The updates ran fine but this thing boots slowly with tons of errors.. Two questions:
1. Should I try to go into maintenance mode and fix the file system?
2. Should I avoid the other default repos?

I really don't want to brick this thing. I have spent all weekend trying to get something redhat-ish to run on SSD. This is the closest I have got. I need a stable server (redhat-ish) to mess with/learn containers and I don't want to run off an SD card because I feel like it will fail sooner or later. Thanks in advance.

Scott
Orlando, FL

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