I'm in the process of building out a pipeline for running QLC+ in as a quasi-embedded application on both members of the Zero product line. You can find the code I'm working with here: https://github.com/the-maldridge/qlcpi/tree/qlc. I have used this pattern successfully with several other applications where I want to just boot to an initramfs and run without a "real" underlying filesystem, this project is the first time I am trying to make this work with an original model Zero.
On boot, the Zero comes up and then seems to stall forever on the color cube. The power is stable, I can boot other systems from the same SD card, and the behavior is repeatable. I am quite confident something is wrong in my application code that is trying to load the initramfs. The same build loads on a Zero 2, though later phases do fail to initialize. I am trying to get to a point where this works on the original model Zero before addressing those issues.
The documentation leads me to believe that initramfs-based boot should be available on the original Zero as long as modern firmware is loaded, but its unclear how else I can proceed to troubleshoot, so suggestions are welcome. You can duplicate my build to try this yourself after checking out the repo above by (ab)using docker as a build system:
The first command will load the binfmt emulation for building alien architectures on the host. The second command will build the initramfs and export it (as well as other files) to a directory called . You can then write the files to a FAT32 formatted card and attempt to boot.
On boot, the Zero comes up and then seems to stall forever on the color cube. The power is stable, I can boot other systems from the same SD card, and the behavior is repeatable. I am quite confident something is wrong in my application code that is trying to load the initramfs. The same build loads on a Zero 2, though later phases do fail to initialize. I am trying to get to a point where this works on the original model Zero before addressing those issues.
The documentation leads me to believe that initramfs-based boot should be available on the original Zero as long as modern firmware is loaded, but its unclear how else I can proceed to troubleshoot, so suggestions are welcome. You can duplicate my build to try this yourself after checking out the repo above by (ab)using docker as a build system:
Code:
$ docker run --privileged --rm tonistiigi/binfmt --install arm,arm64$ docker buildx build --output out --platform linux/arm/v6 .Code:
outStatistics: Posted by maldridge — Thu Apr 17, 2025 8:03 am