Hi Alpine users,

I recently bought a mini PC based on the Loongson 3A5000 CPU and want to
try Alpine on it.

So i downloaded alpine-standard-3.24.1-loongarch64.iso and checked the
sha256sum: it was ok.

Then i used:
dd if=alpine-standard-3.24.1-loongarch64.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=4M
to put it on my 16GB USB key.

As suggested in the wiki, i did the following:
cmp alpine-standard-3.24.1-loongarch64.iso /dev/sdb

And got:
cmp: EOF on alpine-standard-3.24.1-loongarch64.iso

Secure Boot is disabled in the BIOS.

When the machine boots, i select the USB key.
Then i press [Enter] and nothing happens.

Does someone have a clue on what causes the problem?

Christophe

Hi Christophe,

The `cmp` output you got is completely normal it just means the flash
completed successfully up to the size of the ISO image.

Since it hangs immediately after selecting the USB drive, it's
likely a firmware or display initialization quirk. You can
try a few things:

  1. Try plugging the USB key into a USB 2.0 port instead of a USB 3.0
  port. Some Loongson UEFI implementations struggle to
  hand off controllers properly during early boot. 

  2. If your mini PC has multiple display outputs
  (like HDMI and DisplayPort), try changing cable to other
  port. Sometimes the kernel initializes the video on the secondary
  port by default.

Best,
Shivank Sharma