RPi 4B and RL10.1 - Boot failure

Rocky Linux Help & Support
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1

I tried and failed to install RL10.1 onto my Pi 4-B (4GB memory) this morning. At power-on I see the colourful splash screen but nothing else. The green motherboard LED flashes seven times, pauses and then repeats. The image I’m attempting to install is from the Rocky website: Rocky-10-SBC-RaspberryPi.latest.aarch64.raw.xz.

I’m at a loss as to what I’m doing wrong and help would be appreciated.….. I’ll note that a fresh install of RL9.2 works great.

In exploring the issue I wrote to an SD card the latest Raspberry Pi OS and it booted successfully. Then updated firmware with ‘rpi-eeprom-update -a’ which installed an update. I’ve also tried writing RL10.1 to the SD card using both Balena Etcher and Raspberry Pi Imager (Custom option) but the Pi boot failure is consistently the same. I’ve also tried mounting the SD card on another computer and examining the files in the EFI partition. I see lots of files including: kernel8.img, config.txt, cmdline.txt and start4.elf. kernel8.img is 8.9MB in size and config.txt contains only: arm_64bit=1, auto_initramfs=1 and dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d.

2

Rocky 10 requires different microarchitecture than Rocky 9, see for example Deprecation of x86-64-v1 and x86-64-v2 x86_64 microarchitecture CPUs in RHEL9 / x86-64-v3 is required by RHEL10 - Red Hat Customer Portal

The following is copy-and-paste from Google Gemini:

The Raspberry Pi 4 Model B can run Rocky Linux, but not version 10.

As of early 2026, Rocky Linux 10 is the current cutting-edge release (based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10). While the hardware is technically compatible with the software architecture, there are some specific nuances regarding the microarchitecture and version support you should know.

1. The Microarchitecture Check

The Raspberry Pi 4-B uses the Broadcom BCM2711 SoC, which features a quad-core Cortex-A72 CPU.

  • Architecture: It is an AArch64 (ARMv8-A) processor.

  • Rocky Linux Requirement: Rocky Linux provides a dedicated build for the aarch64 architecture.

  • Compatibility: The Cortex-A72 meets the baseline requirements for Rocky Linux. However, RHEL 10 (and thus Rocky 10) has moved toward requiring ARMv8.2-A or higher for official “certified” support. Since the Pi 4 is ARMv8.0-A, you may encounter performance bottlenecks or require specific “AltArch” SIG (Special Interest Group) builds to run smoothly.

3

Thanks for the info. What you write sounds plausible but I have two comments:

  1. The Redhat link in your reply appears to be about x86_64 architectures and not ARM so it’s not clear to me how that is relevant. Maybe I’m missing something?

  2. The ‘README’ link just below the big green Download button for the Rocky Raspberry Pi image takes one to a page which indicates RL10 works on Pi 4 and 5 but not the earlier ones. It says:

Rocky Linux 10 Raspberry Pi Image

This image is always available at: https://dl.rockylinux.org/pub/rocky/10/images/aarch64/Rocky-10-SBC-RaspberryPi.latest.aarch64.raw.xz

They have been tested on Raspberry Pi 4 and 5.

Rocky Linux 10 WILL NOT WORK on a Raspberry Pi 1 or 2 (1.1 or earlier) as they are 32-bit only, and Rocky Linux only supports arm64 (aarch64).

Rocky Linux 10 WILL NOT WORK on a Raspberry Pi 3 due to lack of MBR on the images.

If RL10 will not work in a Pi4 Model B then the above message in the Rocky README is very misleading….

Andrew

4

I suspect you’re hitting eeprom/gpu firmware compatiblity issues. You could try to downgrade the eeprom to may/june last year and that should work.(might have to drop to jan 2025). Sorry i dont recall the exact eeprom version needed.

Bryan

5

Thanks Bryan.

I tend to agree and it would be good to hear from anyone who has successfully got RL10.1 working on a Pi-4B and how they did that….

When I started the upgrade I was using whatever firmware came with the Pi when I purchased it some years ago. When that attempted to boot I didn’t even see the colourful splash screen but the green LED did its seven-blinks and rotate pattern. After upgrading, as described in my initial post, at least I see the colourful splash screen.

I don’t know from where I can download selected firmware versions, how to install selected versions or whether firmware versions can be ‘downgraded’.

I’ll also add that the kernel8.img in the ELF partition seems small, perhaps too small, at 8.9MB in size. I recall it being significantly larger (20+MB) on a working RL9 build. I don’t know if it’s just smaller with RL10.1 or whether that points to a problem with the build.

What would be nice is a message from the RL Pi team either confirming that RL10.1 doesn’t work on a Pi 4B and their web page is incorrect, that a specific firmware version is necessary or that it should work just fine.

Andrew

6

Im a long time contributor of the AltArch Sig(Special Interest Group) which maintains the raspberry pi image. At one point, i had at least 1 pi 4 with rl10(for release testing). My focus has changed to other things so I cant say if i currently have a working unit. I’ll see if i can dig one up and do a quick test.

A quick search tells me yes you can downgrade (verified before suggesting it previously). Another quick search will yield the git repo where you can get the eeprom files. GitHub - raspberrypi/rpi-eeprom: Installation scripts and binaries for the Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi 5 bootloader EEPROMs

Unfortunately, it may require a bit of trial and error, but it definitely should work.

7

Great and thanks codedude. I see the different builds, clearly there is a lot of info on GitHub. I’ll do some reading to understand what I need to do to apply a specific firmware build and give it a go starting with builds from the start of 2025. Afterwards I’ll update this thread. :slight_smile:

Andrew

8

I’ve split this reply into two parts, the short and the long….

Short version:

I tried nine eeprom updates mostly from 2025 and with each RL10.1 fails to boot just as previously described.

As a test I also wrote Alma Linux 10.1 to an SD Card and that booted and worked just fine.

I’m now thinking the issue is not firmware but the actual RL10.1 image. If someone else could try it on a Pi 4-B that would be cool.

Long version:

I downloaded from GitHub the following firmware-2711 images:

  • pieeprom-2025-02-11.bin
  • pieeprom-2025-05-16.bin
  • pieeprom-2025-07-17.bin
  • pieeprom-2025-08-20.bin
  • pieeprom-2025-09-22.bin
  • pieeprom-2025-10-03.bin
  • pieeprom-2025-11-05.bin
  • pieeprom-2025-12-08.bin
  • pieeprom-2026-02-06.bin

Booting into the latest Raspberry Pi OS (64 bit) I ran ‘sudo rpi-eeprom-update -d -f ’ to apply the firmware image. Each time it ran, it reported the ‘CURRENT’ and the ‘UPDATE’ versions so I was able to confirm the update was being applied. After each run I rebooted, staying in Pi OS, then shutdown, swapped SD cards to one containing RL10.1. Each time RL10.1 failed to boot just as described in my previous posts.

Each time the Pi starts it displays a boot loader screen for about 500ms then displays the colourful splash screen before going no further.

In the bottom half of that boot loader screen I see the following messages:

  • Progress: Trying boot mode SD
  • Reset USB port-power 1000ms
  • Boot mode: SD (01) order f4
  • USB3[2] 00021203 connected enabled
  • USB3 root HUB port 2 init
  • USB2[1] 400202e1 connected
  • MSD [01:00] 3.32 000000:02 register MSD
  • USB2 root HUB port 1 init
  • HUB [02:00] 2.16 000000:01 init port 3 speed 2
  • HID [03:02] 1.16 000003:01 register HID
  • HUB [02:00] 2.16 000000:01 init port 4 speed 2
  • Trying partition: 0
  • type: 16 lba: 2048 ‘mkfs.fat’ ‘ V ^ ‘ clusters 63965 (16)
  • Trying partition: 1
  • type: 16 lba: 2048 ‘mkfs.fat’ ‘ V ^ ‘ clusters 63965 (16)
  • Read config.txt bytes 51 hnd 0x9f
  • Read start4.elf bytes 2262304 hnd 0x26bc
  • Read fixup4.dat bytes 5459 hnd 0xa1
  • 0x00c03112 0x00000000 0x00001fff
  • MEM GPU: 76. ARM: 948 TOTAL: 1024
  • Starting start4.elf @ 0xfec00200 partition 1

As a test I also wrote Alma Linux 10.1 to an SD Card and that booted and worked just fine.

I’m now thinking the issue is not firmware but the actual RL10.1 image. If someone else could try it on a Pi 4-B that would be cool.

Andrew

9

Today, 27-Feb-2026, this issue has been logged in the Bug Tracker with id: 0012112

10

try 2024 may. Sorry about that.

2024/05/17 12:26:58
version 72caf66729df313801bcefe9b1ff7099c71bb5ce (release)
timestamp 1715945218
update-time 1735678821
capabilities 0x0000007f
[rocky@rnode2 userland]$ cat /etc/os-release 
NAME="Rocky Linux"
VERSION="10.1 (Red Quartz)"
ID="rocky"
ID_LIKE="rhel centos fedora"
VERSION_ID="10.1"
PLATFORM_ID="platform:el10"
PRETTY_NAME="Rocky Linux 10.1 (Red Quartz)"
ANSI_COLOR="0;32"
LOGO="fedora-logo-icon"
CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:rocky:rocky:10::baseos"
HOME_URL="https://rockylinux.org/"
VENDOR_NAME="RESF"
VENDOR_URL="https://resf.org/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.rockylinux.org/"
SUPPORT_END="2035-05-31"
ROCKY_SUPPORT_PRODUCT="Rocky-Linux-10"
ROCKY_SUPPORT_PRODUCT_VERSION="10.1"
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT="Rocky Linux"
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT_VERSION="10.1"
11 
[rocky@rnode2 userland]$ dmesg |grep -i model
[    0.000000] Machine model: Raspberry Pi 4 Model B Rev 1.4

Pi4

12

Ran into the same problem today. I’m happy to report back that the 2024-05 eeprom does work.

13

I too can confirm RL10 boots successfully with firmware: pieeprom-2024-05-17.bin, pieeprom-2024-10-10.bin and pieeprom-2024-12-07.bin.

The next stable firmware release after pieeprom-2024-12-07.bin is pieeprom-2025-02-11.bin and with that and all later stable firmware RL10.1 fails to boot. So whatever the issue it was first introduced between these two firmware releases.

In the bug tracker I have proposed that either:
a) For the RL10, Rpi download the README is updated to clarify that for a Rpi 4 model B the latest stable firmware that works with RL10 is that in pieeprom-2024-12-07.bin
b) Resolve the issue and make an updated RL10 image available for download.

Actually it would be helpful to do (a) ASAP so others who wish to use RL10 are aware of the current limitation whilst (b) is actioned.