I’m getting the following error after running rpi-update on my original Raspberry Pi Zero.
Firmware exited with status pid 7911 exit 1
Quitting firmware gracefully
Entering safe mode because firmware exited too many times in a row. Reverting to Tinker
Unable to determine hardware version. I see: Hardware : BCM2835
,
- expecting BCM2708 or BCM2709.
If this is a genuine Raspberry Pi then please report this
to projects@drogon.net. If this is not a Raspberry Pi then you
are on your own as wiringPi is designed to support the
Raspberry Pi ONLY.
Raspbian and all packages are up to date, so is particle-agent.
I’m pretty sure it has something to do with wiringpi but I cannot figure out the problem.
$ gpio -v
gpio version: 2.44
Copyright (c) 2012-2017 Gordon Henderson
This is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
For details type: gpio -warranty
Raspberry Pi Details:
Type: Pi Zero, Revision: 03, Memory: 512MB, Maker: Sony
* Device tree is enabled.
*--> Raspberry Pi Zero Rev 1.3
* This Raspberry Pi supports user-level GPIO access.
This thread has the same issue and upgrading Raspbian fixed it in this case. I know you said you're at the latest version but maybe there are additional things you can check based on that other thread.
$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
model name : ARMv6-compatible processor rev 7 (v6l)
BogoMIPS : 997.08
Features : half thumb fastmult vfp edsp java tls
CPU implementer : 0x41
CPU architecture: 7
CPU variant : 0x0
CPU part : 0xb76
CPU revision : 7
Hardware : BCM2835
Revision : 900093
Serial : 00000000be7b821a
And finally:
$ sudo particle-agent version
particle-agent 0.2.3
I do not see anything wrong. Note that this is a fresh install of Raspbian and there is no other software running on the Zero.
Ok, so my idea was on the wrong track.
Since you say it did work before rpi-update, maybe try researching the ChangeLog of Raspbian to see if anything changed in how it uses those ARM features, but you would need to focus on which features particle-agent uses. Just guessing at this point...
I still assume (and it is just an assumption!) it is something to do with your processor chip, based on the information provided.
Raspbian should have nothing to do with it. rpi-update updates the Raspberry firmware.
To be fair, I cannot say with certainty that it worked before. It did claim the Raspberry to my Particle account but I never tried actually flashing firmware to it. I ran rpi-update and after a reboot of the Raspberry, ran into the start-loop also mentioned in the other thread.
I looked into the issue a bit more for my own education.
As far as I figured out, in the current releases of Raspbian, using sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade will also update the firmware (which is not firmware according to a 1990s definition, so that confused me) to the latest stable distribution version.
Also, in the latest releases, it appears rpi-update updates the firmware to the latest and not necessarily stable version. This is recommended only if there is a particular reason that you need the latest firmware.
I would go with the firmware version you now have installed since it is working.
Great to hear it works for you now! Could you clarify which combination didn’t work and which combination works? I’d like to put my Raspberry Pi in the state that didn’t work for you and see if upgrading some library inside particle-agent fixes the issue.
It is not. It is, however, included in Raspbian. When I started using Raspberries a long time ago, pretty much every tutorial told you to run rpi-update (and most still do from what I can find with a quick Google search).
Steps 5 & 6 MUST be performed in order to successfully install the particle-agent. Thanks to @nrobinson2000 for step 6.
DO NOT execute rpi-update as it prevents the installation of the particle-agent.
And no, the "firnware" in this case is just the kernel image.