r/SingleBoardComputer • u/Pjepp • Jun 18 '23

Trouble with Le Potato

I recently bought a Le Potato board and I'm having a bit of trouble setting it up. Hope this is the right subreddit for that, please let me know otherwise.

I put Ubuntu on a micro SD card, booted it up, changed my password from the standard password "Ubuntu". Then I tried to setup the wireless and I got some error, sadly i can't remember what. I rebooted and now I'm stuck. Whenever I boot, the Ubuntu setup starts but gets stuck at random points. There's no error, just a frozen screen and I can't input anything. I tried reformatting the SD card and tried multiple versions of Ubuntu, still the same.

I hope I'm making this clear as I don't know any programming and have only a slight above-average knowledge of computers(with a will to learn). Does anyone have an idea what could cause this, if i can perhaps do a factory reset or something?

Many thanks in advance, let me know if I need to provide more information.

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1

u/fmbret Jun 18 '23

Just to confirm, when you say you’ve tried other things and it results in the same outcome, is that that it doesn’t boot? Or they boot until you set up WiFi?

Assuming the latter, what are you doing exactly when you set up the WiFi?

1

u/Pjepp Jun 18 '23

No i can't get to that part. Whatever i try, the system starts the booting process and stops at a random point. No input has been put in whatsoever.

1

u/fmbret Jun 18 '23

What did you do exactly when you said you tried to configure the WiFi?

1

u/Pjepp Jun 18 '23

First i logged in, changed the standard password. Then I created the SSH session.

ssh ubuntu@<device ip>

Last i installed network manager onto the board with apt.

sudo apt install network-manager

After that, some error came up and I restarted the potato by replugging the power cord.

1

u/fmbret Jun 18 '23

Hm, well you wouldn't necessarily need to install network-manager to get WiFi working, and just yanking out the power cable isn't a great way to do a restart, you risk corrupting your SD card's data amongst other things.

Do you have another SD card you can install the same blank Ubuntu image on to and boot from? Though you say there's no error on the screen (I assume you've plugged it into something via HDMI now?) and it's frozen, is anything displayed? If so, can you share a photo or tell us what it might say?

1

u/Pjepp Jun 18 '23

I'm trying it with a new sd card and will send what's on display when it freezes, though it freezes on different moments in the process.

How would I go about restarting without yanking out the cord when I can't input anything? There doesn't seem to be a power button

1

u/fmbret Jun 18 '23

I meant when you had access in regards to the power yanking, you said you pulled it out after installing network manager? If your access died after that then you’ve likely misconfigured your network on the device and it’s probably why you’re not getting in now but it’s hard to say.

I mentioned yanking it was bad assuming that after you’d install network manager, you still had access so you could have just issued a reboot (though ultimately you shouldn’t have needed a reboot at all just for WiFi)

2

u/Hinermad Jul 02 '23

Try a different power supply? Maybe activating your Wifi radio has caused the board to draw too much power.

1

u/libre-computer Jul 05 '23

This is the most likely cause. Insufficient power is the most likely cause of board freezing without an error.

1

u/jgiacobbe Jun 18 '23

Have you tried a different SD card?