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The images was written to the SD card with dd - I followed this guide: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/installation/installing-images/linux.md

Some booting activities can be seen on the green led - but after around 30 sec is start blinking with a constant rate.. and the ethernet leds not blinking at all, although it is connected to a working router with dhcp.

What files should be checked on the SD card to verify the successful image writing? Unfortunately I dont have HDMI to check the console..

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  • I'm having the exact same problem. I've installed Ubuntu on a Pi4 (8GB) several times before, but getting the latest images has the same behavior. The ethernet lights up for a few seconds then goes out. No connection. I'm assuming something is happening during the boot process and failing. I want to run a headless server, so I'm flying blind. Raspbian works, and even the 64-bit beta of Raspbian boots up.
    – jtalarico
    Dec 30, 2021 at 12:34

3 Answers 3

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I am using the Raspberry PI Imager as well as Balena Etcher but had this black screen not booting condition on my Raspberry PI 4B no matter which distribution I burned. Luckily I still had an SD card with a working distro on it. So I began comparing the entries in the config.txt on the new burns to the working burn. And one by one I changed the settings until I found the one problem entry. I don't know the reason it's this way for you, only something you might look at and try.

The Raspberry PI Imager is putting the dtoverlay parameter in the config.txt file like this:

dtoverlay=vc4-kms-V3d

However, I noticed in the working build I had this entry had the letter “f” in front of the “kms” part. So I edited the config.txt and changed the dtoverlay entry as follows and the boot process continued and I was up and running on the new images:

dtoverlay=vc4-fkms-v3d

Maybe someone can explain this parameter and why the imagers are putting out a code that appears to hang up the Raspberry Pi 4B boot process. I just know this is how I finally got these images to boot. Hope this helps someone.

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  • Had to use this for the current 21.10 Ubuntu Desktop image via rpi-imager and my PI 4 Mod B/8 GB. It worked well.
    – romandas
    Feb 18, 2022 at 14:54
  • This worked for me with Ubuntu 22.04 Desktop image on a Raspberry Pi 400 (the keyboard one). Apr 23, 2022 at 16:31
  • Same here, I had a perfectly functional RPi 400 running Ubuntu 22.10 for several months up until one random day it was not booting anymore (well, actually not showing the login screen, after some text the display was going black). Did all kinds of remote troubleshooting through ssh until I found this answer. It did the trick right away. You can find the difference explained here. Short answer: remove the f
    – Marcos G.
    Feb 17, 2023 at 19:37
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Start over, using a better guide specifically for Ubuntu:

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I had a similar issue when I installed Ubuntu Desktop 22.10 64-bit on a Raspberry Pi 4 8GB (I used the Raspberry Pi Imager). I intended to use it in headless mode, but couldn't get it to show up on the network at all.

Using Ubuntu Server 22.10 fixed it for me. The server image can also be preconfigured in the imager (enable ssh, setup WiFi, ...)

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