1

I'm new to Raspberry Pi and Linux. I'm a university student and I'm a little stuck. I had the idea that if I formatted the SD card that come with the Raspberry Pi and put CentOS (that's the OS we use a university) on it I could then install centOS on the Pi.

This hasnt worked if I put the SD card in the Raspberry Pi and start it up I just get a lot of fails and no way of booting or entering commands (unless I'm not doing something right)

I downloaded the image from mirror.centos.org.

I created the SD card using a program called Rufus, as far as I'm aware it creates partitions and makes it bootable. When the Raspberry Pi starts up I get the rainbow screen and it runs but stops mid script with the last line:

 [2.038041] ---[ end kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(179,3)

Unfortunately I'm not familiar with term 'instruction set architecture'.

Improve this question
5
  • 1
    Which CentOS image did you use? Is it listed as compatible with the Pi (or even any ARM processor)? Note that the Pi can't run regular x86 images, as it has a different processor architecture. Commented Jan 13, 2018 at 14:52
  • it says it for raspberry pi3, then im using rufus to make the sd card a bootable disk. Commented Jan 13, 2018 at 14:58
  • 2
    Please clarify in detail how you created the card, exactly where you got the image, exactly what "lots of fails and no way of booting means", and whether you are familiar with the concept of instruction set architecture (e.g., x86-64, ARM...). Commented Jan 13, 2018 at 14:59
  • I downloaded the image from mirror.centos.org/altarch/7/isos/armhfp I created the SD card using a program called Rufus, as far as im aware it creates partitions and makes it bootable. Commented Jan 13, 2018 at 15:01
  • I downloaded the image from mirror.centos.org/altarch/7/isos/armhfp I created the SD card using a program called Rufus, as far as im aware it creates partitions and makes it bootable. When the raspberry pi starts up i get the rainbow screen and it runs but stops mid script with the last line " [2.038041] ---[ end kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(179,3) unfortunately im not familiar with instruction set architrcture Commented Jan 13, 2018 at 15:08

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
2

The (179,3) is significant since it means the kernel is looking for a root fs on the third partition. I looked at the CentOS image and it does use three partitions with the root fs last, so that makes sense.

I created the SD card using a program called Rufus, as far as I'm aware it creates partitions and makes it bootable.

This is probably a mistake. That OS image should be written directly to the card; you do not have to do anything before or after that. Any kind of formatting applied is at best a waste of time because the image will overwrite that information anyway, and at worst will muck things up.

If you have another computer that can read or detect ext4 partitions you can check the card, but I'm guessing what you did was copy the image into a partition made with Rufus, which is another mistake. The image contains the boot sector (this is why you do not need to format the card) and three partitions, not one.

The standard Raspbian image only uses two partitions, but it doesn't matter with regard to creating the card, so I recommend you follow the Foundation's recommendations (only the second half there, "Writing an image to the SD card").

Improve this answer

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.