Anyone tried Mender with the Raspberry Pi CM5?

Board Integrations Debian family
1

Hi everybody,

I have spent all of yesterday trying to get Mender running on a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 without much luck. I managed to convert the raw image of 64bit Bookworm after having to tweak the default Pi 5 config (for some reason it expected that kernel8.img is gzipped and conversion fails because it can’t find kernel8.img.gz).

After loading the converted image on the CM5 I just get the U-Boot logo in the corner. I didn’t do much more customisation except making the data partition 8GB.

Unfortunately, I can’t see the serial log because I don’t have female jumper wires to connect my UART to USB module. Did anyone have more luck?

Cheers

2

UDPATE:
I got rid of the gzipping error by using the docker version of mender-convert, but still get the same issue with the Pi being stuck at the U-Boot logo.

Also, found a UART to USB converter cable with female jumper wires already attached to it but I don’t get anything from the Pi. UART is enabled in config.txt and I tried getting to the U-Boot command prompt by spamming Enter after Pi powered on but also nothing (the cable is ok).

3

Hi @zettro,

Thanks for reaching out! We have ordered a few CM5s to test, but unfortunately they haven’t arrived yet. So just guesswork here at the moment.

  • the kernel8.img is, at least in the default bookworm 64bit version, a gzipped flat Linux kernel image, and therefore that’s what the default config expects.
  • does the configuration work if you run the resulting image on a standard RPi5?
  • how is the image modified? Is it the default, Raspberry Pi OS one, or are modifications added? Specifically, device tree ones?
  • is there additional hardware connected? Especially such that blocks the UART ports? In that case, u-boot will need some tuning. I’ve seen that on a standard RPi5+AI Hat, for example.

Greetz,
Josef

4

Thank you, @TheYoctoJester, for your response and insights!

  1. That makes sense—thank you for clarifying.
  2. Unfortunately, I don’t have access to a standard RPi5 for testing, as it doesn’t align well with our specific use case.
  3. The image I’m using is unmodified.
  4. I did have additional hardware connected initially, but after disconnecting everything, I’m still not receiving any UART output.

I appreciate your support and am happy to provide more details or try any suggestions you might have.

Best regards