noble server and xfce fail to start up properly on RPi5

[Janos Szigetvari]

Hello!

 

I have an RPi5 8GB board that I bought off of AliExpress, along with a Waveshare PoE M.2 HAT+ ( https://www.waveshare.com/poe-m.2-hat-plus-b.htm )

Initially I tried to use the Noble XFCE image, by following the recommended installation procedure via rpi-imager via a USB drive, hoping to install the system to a Toshiba (Kioxia) NVMe drive.

The RPI5 was connected to a CrowView Note.

 

What I saw was that the firmware loaded up the necessary files from the USB drive (then later the micro-SD card), and the initramfs loaded up too, then systemd started up, and probably when the screen usually goes blank for a short time (probably switching to KMS), here, the signal completely drops, and apparently nothing happens.

(The messages scroll too fast, and then disappear, and I can't make out anything from the screen content.)

I tried looking on the network to see whether the RPi5 comes up at all, but no.

Since then, I tried to eliminate elements from my setup to see whether that makes any difference:

• I removed the Waveshare HAT
• Swtiched to using a micro-SD card instead of the USB thumb drive
• Tried to boot it without the CrowView Note
• Tried using the Noble Server image to eliminate any possible problems with the graphical UI 

but none of these helped.

I now have the bare RPi5 with an active heatsink, and it's still not booting properly.

What should I try? Should I try to get serial console working so that I at least see the boot messages?

Is there an activity LED on the RPI5 where I could at least configure a heartbeat so that I could check whether the OS is alive at all?

 

Since the OS can't be installed, I can't really submit much diagnostic information.