Trouble getting started

Never mind. I re-imaged and everything A-OK!!

Bob,

   Did you do anything differently when you re-imaged that would explain

why it worked the second time?  Maybe a different SD card?  or a different

card reader?   Quite a few people have reported similar symptoms, and

it would be nice to know what to suggest to them.

I was in Mac OS when I dd it the first time. When I re-imaged, I did from Windows 7 with Win32DiskImager. I did have to run Win32DiskImager as admin to get it to work, though, which was not mentioned in the instructions I have read.

After reviewing the http://elinux.org/RPi_Easy_SD_Card_Setup page, I realized the error of my way. I dd it to the wrong raw device. I will have to play with it again tonight.

So that brings me back to my question of how do you verify that you have written the image correctly?

"So that brings me back to my question of how do you verify that you have written the image correctly?"

Good question.  I think you can view the SD card on a PC to see if you have the right number of

partitions and that they are about the right size.

Shouldn't any decent operating system auto-mount at least the FAT partition?

My Mac remounts the SD card after "dd"ing the image to it, but I get mixed results as to if the image works. My Pi will boot up to the point of finding the USB keyboard and mouse, but then will not start the Linux init (i.e. it doesn't seem to be seeing anything from the Linux partition of the SD card). Burning it again may or may not solve the problem, and I've installed several images, some of which work.

I'm not sure what can or would make it work more consistently. I wish it would....

Does it say something like "cannot start init", or does it just hang?

In principle, the system should "stop" when it encounters an error situation. The last message would be the error message for the situation. However with modern, bigger systems, sometimes an error at one level becomes a warning at another. For example, the "start the network" script may fail: "no network connected". Which is fine if the raspberry pi is just booting intended to be used standalone. On the other hand, when the root-filesystem is on NFS, that becomes fatal.

So in practise, some more messages may scroll by before the situation runs out of hand and the system cannot continue. So: "cannot start init" may mean just that. The /sbin/init program is missing or corrupt. On the other hand, there might be filesystem corruption mentioned before that, so then THAT would need to be investigated.

The fastest way for the experts to have a look at your log is if you can post a picture of your screen when it stops booting.

How long does the copying of the image to your SD card take?

Finally got around to redo the image in Mac OS. I'm a little rusty in Linux and didn't realize that Mac OS is a bit different. I suppose there's a way to calculate the checksum of files and directories, but that's for another day.

Everything went well and here's a quick capture of the volume info, just in case anyone is interested:

[/Downloads/debian6-19-04-2012] root# diskutil info /dev/disk2s1

   Device Identifier:        disk2s1

   Device Node:              /dev/disk2s1

   Part of Whole:            disk2

   Device / Media Name:      Untitled 1

   Volume Name:              NO NAME

   Escaped with Unicode:     NO%FF%FE%20%00NAME

   Mounted:                  Yes

   Mount Point:              /Volumes/NO NAME

   Escaped with Unicode:     /Volumes/NO%FF%FE%20%00NAME

   File System Personality:  MS-DOS FAT32

   Type (Bundle):            msdos

   Name (User Visible):      MS-DOS (FAT32)

   Partition Type:           Windows_FAT_32

   OS Can Be Installed:      No

   Media Type:               Generic

   Protocol:                 Secure Digital

   SMART Status:             Not Supported

   Total Size:               78.6 MB (78643200 Bytes) (exactly 153600 512-Byte-Blocks)

   Volume Free Space:        48.5 MB (48478208 Bytes) (exactly 94684 512-Byte-Blocks)

   Device Block Size:        512 Bytes

   Read-Only Media:          No

   Read-Only Volume:         No

   Ejectable:                Yes

   Whole:                    No

   Internal:                 Yes

[/Downloads/debian6-19-04-2012] root# diskutil info /dev/disk2s2

   Device Identifier:        disk2s2

   Device Node:              /dev/disk2s2

   Part of Whole:            disk2

   Device / Media Name:      Untitled 2

   Volume Name:              Not applicable (no file system)

   Mounted:                  Not applicable (no file system)

   File System:              None

   Partition Type:           Linux

   OS Can Be Installed:      No

   Media Type:               Generic

   Protocol:                 Secure Digital

   SMART Status:             Not Supported

   Total Size:               1.7 GB (1667235840 Bytes) (exactly 3256320 512-Byte-Blocks)

   Volume Free Space:        Not applicable (no file system)

   Device Block Size:        512 Bytes

   Read-Only Media:          No

   Read-Only Volume:         Not applicable (no file system)

   Ejectable:                Yes

   Whole:                    No

   Internal:                 Yes

[/Downloads/debian6-19-04-2012] root# diskutil info /dev/disk2s3

   Device Identifier:        disk2s3

   Device Node:              /dev/disk2s3

   Part of Whole:            disk2

   Device / Media Name:      Untitled 3

   Volume Name:              Not applicable (no file system)

   Mounted:                  Not applicable (no file system)

   File System:              None

   Partition Type:           Linux_Swap

   OS Can Be Installed:      No

   Media Type:               Generic

   Protocol:                 Secure Digital

   SMART Status:             Not Supported

   Total Size:               200.3 MB (200278016 Bytes) (exactly 391168 512-Byte-Blocks)

   Volume Free Space:        Not applicable (no file system)

   Device Block Size:        512 Bytes

   Read-Only Media:          No

   Read-Only Volume:         Not applicable (no file system)

   Ejectable:                Yes

   Whole:                    No

   Internal:                 Yes

You are absolutely correct. That should have been the first warning sign from my first attempt - the SD card does not show up formatted at all! I think it will help some folks out there if there's some notes about simple checks for imaging results.

Are all the SD cards the same make/capacity? There's a list of compatible cards here: http://elinux.org/RPi_VerifiedPeripherals#SD_cards