Boot from Argon ONE M.2 Expansion Board

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

I'm attempting to boot openWRT from the sata SSD installed on an Argon ONE M.2 Expansion Board.

I flashed the image to the drive using balena etcher on my laptop connected to the board via usb. This seems to have worked, as when I connect the board to it's case, boot the pi via the SD card, and cd into /mnt/sda2, I can see the partition contains openWRT.

The pi just won't boot with no SD card inserted, it doesn't seem to see the drive.

Has anyone tried this?

2

I can imagine you need to do something like this 1st https://www.waveshare.com/wiki/PI4-CASE-ARGON-ONE-M.2

Note, the RPi openwrt image might contain an unwanted boot loader.

3

I tried following the steps in the link to switch the boot order, but that didn't work unfortunately. Is there a way to copy everything on an SD card over to the SSD and change boot order via command line in openwrt?

4

depends on how it's done.

does it work with the stock OS, are you able to boot it off the M.2 ?

5

No still not able to boot from the M.2, could it be the image itself? I was able to change the boot order to try usb, but nothing booted.

6

I'd start by trying to get it to work with the stock OS, then attempt to replace it with openwrt.

7

I personally have installed network boot "bootloader" using this method https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/network-install-beta-test-your-help-required/

after installing the bootloader, I simply removed the SD and booted from the SSD.

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8

You used this to boot openWRT?

9

You have to update the Pi4 EEPROM bootloader to one that allows USB booting, and configure a boot order that includes USB. It has to be a Pi 4. Raspberry Pi 3 and previous do not have this function.

Then I'd try booting OpenWrt from a simple USB flashdrive. If that works, the Argon device should be software equivalent.

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10

I used it to boot off the SSD (even though this was network bootloader) and used Homeasssitant.

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You just need to use either USB boot or Network boot bootloader (this one includes USB). I personally didn't change any boot order for USB boot to work.

Just follow the instructions here and instead of SD card use OpenWrt image specific to your raspberry pi. https://openwrt.org/toh/raspberry_pi_foundation/raspberry_pi#how_to_flash_openwrt_to_an_sd_card

Or you can even use https://www.balena.io/etcher/ to flash the SSD and boot off it.

Edit: to Summarize.

  1. Update your bootloader to either Network(it includes USB boot) or USB.
  2. Flash OpenWrt onto the SSD and boot.
  3. Enjoy OpenWrt Goodness.
11

I found the solution, all I had to do was flash the SSD via USB on my PC, then change the commandline.txt file to point to sda2 instead of the SD card.

12

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