Problem Description
I am following the setup instructions in the video on the Freedombox Download page. I am attempting to flash the latest image (freedombox-testing-free_latest_all-arm64.img) to a brand new micro SD card to use in a Raspberry Pi 4-B. However, when I attempt to flash the image in Etcher, I receive the error message captured in the attached screenshots (it only let me upload 1). I have tried everything I can find on the internet and have found nothing but frustration.
I am using a MacBook Pro running macOS Catalina 10.15.6 to format and flash the SD card.
Steps to Reproduce
- Go to the official Freedombox download page, select my compatible hardware (Raspberry Pi 4-B), and download the latest image,
- Unzip the downloaded .img file
- Download and install balenaEtcher
- Insert blank micro SD card (Netac 128gb microSDXC)
- Open Disk Utility, select the SD card, select “erase,” set format to MS-DOS (FAT). (I’m guessing here, based on the options)
- In Etcher, select the .img file as the flash file, select the SD card as the target, click “flash.”
- Warning prompts me to grant Etcher privileged access in order to flash disks. Enter my user password.
- Error message (see screenshots). If I select “retry” the same thing occurs.
- The strange part - if I click “cancel” and then run the process again, the error does not appear and it seems to work! After a couple minutes of loading, Etcher tells me that the image has been flashed successfully. However, when I view the SD card in Disk Utility, I do not see any new volumes, as I understand I should.
- Connect the Raspberry Pi to my network switch, then power supply, then wait 10 minutes. Then 20 minutes. Nothing. “freedombox.local” yields a “server unavailable error.” It seems the SD card was not in fact actually flashed.
Is the Freedombox image file corrupted, as the error supposes? I’ve tried 4 or 5 different image files at this point with the same results and find it hard to believe that they would all be corrupted. Is the fancy SD card I bought for this purpose incompatible or formatted incorrectly? Am I missing something obvious? I’m out of ideas.
I can cd and ls my way around a command line if I have to, but I’m definitely not tech savvy enough to build something from the source code. A lot of what I’m seeing in the Freedombox manual is not very helpful. A sentence like “On the web, there is a lot of documentation about setting your device up and flashing USB or SD Cards to boot your hardware” has no place in an instruction manual for a technology ostensibly designed very specifically for non-technical users.
Any and all help is welcome and much appreciated! Thanks in advance!