vuxu.org: Pomona

Pomona is a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B Rev 1.4 (Revision d03114) with 8GB RAM and a 1TB Samsung Portable SSD T5 running Void Linux.

The naming

Pomona was a goddess of fruitful abundance in ancient Roman religion and myth. Her name comes from the Latin word pomum, “fruit”, specifically orchard fruit.

Components

ArticlePriceWhere from
Raspberry Pi 4 Computer Model B, 8GB RAM76.90€BerryBase
Raspberry Pi Power Supply, USB-C, 5.1V / 3.0A7.90€BerryBase
Micro HDMI to HDMI adapter3.10€BerryBase
FLIRC case for Raspberry Pi 419.90€BerryBase
SAMSUNG Portable SSD T5, 1TB (blue)104.99€Saturn
TOTAL212.79€

Assembly

Straight forward, don’t forget to remove the foil from the thermal pad.

Setup

For the setup you need a MicroSD card that can fit a 2GB image.

As of 2021-06-23, Void Linux did not have rpi4 images ready, so I built one myself:

git clone https://github.com/void-linux/void-mklive
cd void-mklive
make
sudo ./mkrootfs.sh aarch64
sudo ./mkplatformfs.sh rpi4 void-aarch64-ROOTFS-20210623.tar.xz
sudo ./mkimage.sh -B 256MiB void-rpi4-PLATFORMFS-20210623.tar.xz

The resulting .img can be dumped raw on a MicroSD card.

After initial boot, we want to update the firmware and check EEPROM config:

git clone https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-eeprom
cd rpi-eeprom
./rpi-eeprom-config

Check here that BOOT_ORDER contains 4 (USB mass storage boot):

BOOT_ORDER=0xf41

This was set already for my version.

Check for firmware updates:

./rpi-eeprom-update
*** UPDATE AVAILABLE ***
BOOTLOADER: update available
   CURRENT: Thu Sep  3 12:11:43 PM UTC 2020 (1599135103)
    LATEST: Thu Apr 29 04:11:25 PM UTC 2021 (1619712685)

  VL805_FW: Using bootloader EEPROM
     VL805: up to date
   CURRENT: 000138a1
    LATEST: 000138a1

Update the firmware:

./rpi-eeprom-update -a -d
reboot

After this, we can install the system to SSD. I just reused the same .img and grew the second partition to fill the whole disk.

Important: You need to adjust /boot/cmdline.txt on the SSD to use the correct root=/dev/sda2, else you’ll just see a blinking cursor on boot…

Remove the MicroSD card and it should boot from SSD. Be sure to use the blue USB3 port.

The SSD I use (Samsung Portable SSD T5, 1TB, 04e8:61f5) did not require setting quirks and works fine (and boots fine) in UAS mode.

It was recommended to change the default scheduler to schedutil, so add this to /etc/rc.local:

echo schedutil >/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy0/scaling_governor

Benchmarks

  • Temperature in the FLIRC case:
    • Idle: 44-46°C
    • Full load with GCC: 55°C
    • 5min cpuburn-a53: 58°C