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I'm trying to set up a pair of Raspberry Pi 3 to work with the NRF905 transciever following this guide. I'm using the same raspbian version that was used in the guide (Raspbian Jessie Lite 2016-11-25) Everything works fine when I do the apt-get update and dist-upgrade. But when I install the kernel with exported symbols, change the /boot/config.txt and then reboot, the Raspberry Pi doesn't boot anymore, the only thing I get it's a Rainbow screen.

I installed the kernel with:

sudo apt-get install linux-image-4.4.0-1-rpi2 linux-image-rpi2-rpfv linux-
headers-rpi2-rpfv

If I pull out the SD card from the Raspberry Pi and edit the config.txt commenting the lines I just added, the Raspberry boots normally, so I'm guessing there must be something wrong with those lines in the config.txt: 

# use the rpfv kernel
kernel=vmlinuz-4.4.0-1-rpi2
initrd=initrd.img-4.4.0-1-rpi2 followkernel

I used gparted to format the SD card, and etcher to burn the Jessie image to the SD Card.

Does anyone know what's the issue here?

Lord Bulto
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2 Answers2

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There are a couple of problems.

  1. The dtbs in the current raspberry pi foundation firmware package are incompatible with that kernel.
  2. The cmdline.txt on the current foundation images uses root=PARTUUID= . Unfortunately this doesn't work with initrds created by jessie's initramfs-tools.

For the first problem right now you have a couple of options.

  1. Use the newly uploaded "linux-image-4.9.0-2-rpi2" kernel package with the raspberry pi foundation firmware package.
  2. Use the "raspberrypi-bootloader-nokernel" package from the "firmware" section of the raspbian repository.

For the second problem I recommend using a traditional device name (e.g. "mmcblk0p2") in cmdline.txt for now.

Peter Green
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I have exactly the same problem and I've tinkered around without success, either with raspberrypi-ua-netinst (github) or plain latest raspbian updated. I've decided to follow to the letter the article, and downloaded http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian_lite/images/raspbian_lite-2016-11-29/, to which i didn't apply ANY update, just straight:

apt-get install linux-image-4.4.0-1-rpi linux-image-rpi-rpfv linux-headers-rpi-rpfv

After that the only modifications in /boot/config.txt are:

kernel=vmlinuz-4.4.0-1-rpi
initramfs initrd.img-4.4.0-1-rpi followkernel
dtparam=spi=on

Mind that i have a RPi1, identify your board here https://www.element14.com/community/community/raspberry-pi/blog/2016/11/21/how-to-identify-which-model-of-the-raspberry-pi-you-have ; for RPi2 you have to use the correct packages (as in the article).

Also 2016-11-29 hosts 2016-11-25 release for some reason.

Didn't wire yet the NRF905.

Also pay attention to NOT using initramfs=initrd.img-4.4.0-1-rpi but initramfs initrd.img-4.4.0-1-rpi just as above.

If you have an update on latest raspbian, would help a lot, don't want to blindly dist-upgrade/update the system if the wiring with NRF905 will work.

DarthHTTP
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