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Raspberry Pi 4 can finally boot directly from USB

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Re: Raspberry Pi 4 can finally boot directly from USB

#5
Good timing! Only today I was following these instructions to install 64 bit Fedora on a RPi 4B, booting from a USB 3 drive:

https://fwmotion.com/blog/operating-systems/2020-09-04-insta...

(Unfortunately I didn't get to the end because my ancient spinning-rust USB drives take up a bit too much power to work reliably without a powered USB hub, so now I have to wait for some SSD-based USB drives to be delivered.)

Re: Raspberry Pi 4 can finally boot directly from USB

#6
post #2

From this page [1] on Raspberry Pi's Docs it seems like it's been like that for a while. Had there been a big change with this ROM specifically? [1]: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberry...

I know it was in beta. Maybe it's now the default?

"USB msd boot support is now available in the default bootloader version 2020-09-03"

(although the page you reference doesn't really reflect that - see the last paragraph)

Re: Raspberry Pi 4 can finally boot directly from USB

#7

Which devices now support this? Does this require updating some built-in flash/eeprom memory?

The bottom of this page has the instructions for it: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberry...

It doesn't seem to say which specific versions support it, so perhaps all of them?

Re: Raspberry Pi 4 can finally boot directly from USB

#9
This sounds pretty cool! Features like this really open up exciting ways to deploy RPis, even for DIY folks like me who use them to do things like control projectors in a theatre show.

But man oh man, this page is a striking reminder that GitHub could probably use finer grained controls for commenting on issues. I sympathize with the person who wanted to close the issue originally, it looks like it just became a magnet for "Are we there yet?" seat-kicking and "I prefer commenting to thumbs-upping" spam. If there isn't already, there should be a way to toggle a single issue so that anyone can react but only org members can comment.

Re: Raspberry Pi 4 can finally boot directly from USB

#10
post #7

Which devices now support this? Does this require updating some built-in flash/eeprom memory?

The bottom of this page has the instructions for it: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberry... It doesn't seem to say which specific versions support it, so perhaps all of them?

That page is for the Pi 4; it has a somewhat different boot setup than earlier versions.

Instructions for USB boot on Pi 2 and 3 variants are here; this has been officially supported for a few years now (Pi 4 took longer because its boot process is different): https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberry...

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