Hello, I have a new PyPortal, and I am unable to get it to produce a PORTALBOOT drive on macOS 10.13 High Sierra or Windows 10. In addition, after flashing the bootloader, the lower LED no longer lights up during startup or loading.
It's not the cable or USB ports; on two different machines, the CIRCUITPY drive appears fine, and I can read from it and write to it. Double-pressing the button appears to reset the PyPortal, and the lower LED (used to) pulse red and the top LED turns green, but no PORTALBOOT drive appears.
I eventually dug up an old Raspberry Pi 2, and the PORTALBOOT drive does mount there, but I need it to work on my Mac.
Per ladyada's suggestion on Discord, I tried reflashing the bootloader using the RPi2, first copying update-bootloader-pyportal_m4-v2.0.0-adafruit.9.uf2 to the PORTALBOOT drive, then the CircuitPython 4.0.0-beta.6 UF2. The behavior on Mac and Win machines did not change; they still don't register a PORTALBOOT drive after double-press. The lower LED stopped lighting up during startup, however. (The lower LED still works when addressed in code.py.). The PORTALBOOT drive continues to appear after double-tap on the RPi2.
Is there a way to get my PyPortal PORTALBOOT working on Mac, and ideally also Windows?
Thanks!
PyPortal doesn't provide PORTALBOOT drive on macOS or Win10
Moderators: adafruit_support_bill, adafruit
Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.
- vitorio
- Posts: 11
- Joined: Fri Jun 15, 2012 2:55 pm
- adafruit_support_carter
- Posts: 29473
- Joined: Tue Nov 29, 2016 2:45 pm
Re: PyPortal doesn't provide PORTALBOOT drive on macOS or Wi
This behavior has been seen on Windows:
https://learn.adafruit.com/welcome-to-c ... rive-20-11
Do you have any of that?
Not sure about on the Mac though. What kind of USB port is being used here?
https://learn.adafruit.com/welcome-to-c ... rive-20-11
Do you have any of that?
Not sure about on the Mac though. What kind of USB port is being used here?
- vitorio
- Posts: 11
- Joined: Fri Jun 15, 2012 2:55 pm
Re: PyPortal doesn't provide PORTALBOOT drive on macOS or Wi
Hi! Thanks for that Windows link, but I don't have any of those applications installed or running. Is there some general class of application or driver that causes issues with how PyPortal mounts PORTALBOOT (but not CIRCUITPY) that I should be considering?
Under Windows, as CIRCUITPY, I see the PyPortal in Device Manager under "Disk drives" only. When reset to PORTALBOOT, it takes a while for the top LED to turn green, and then I see it also under "Universal Serial Bus devices" as "PyPortal M4 Express," a WinUsb device. It does appear to slowly cause my USB subsystem to fail, with other devices becoming unresponsive, so, maybe similar to the Explorer crash described on the Windows link.
On Mac, CIRCUITPY shows up on both the onboard USB 2.0 port, and a Thunderbolt-connected USB 3.0 port. System Report lists it as "PyPortal" under both USB devices and Storage. PORTALBOOT shows up on neither port, and System Report shows only "PyPortal M4 Express" connected to the USB bus, but not Storage.
Under Windows, as CIRCUITPY, I see the PyPortal in Device Manager under "Disk drives" only. When reset to PORTALBOOT, it takes a while for the top LED to turn green, and then I see it also under "Universal Serial Bus devices" as "PyPortal M4 Express," a WinUsb device. It does appear to slowly cause my USB subsystem to fail, with other devices becoming unresponsive, so, maybe similar to the Explorer crash described on the Windows link.
On Mac, CIRCUITPY shows up on both the onboard USB 2.0 port, and a Thunderbolt-connected USB 3.0 port. System Report lists it as "PyPortal" under both USB devices and Storage. PORTALBOOT shows up on neither port, and System Report shows only "PyPortal M4 Express" connected to the USB bus, but not Storage.
- adafruit_support_carter
- Posts: 29473
- Joined: Tue Nov 29, 2016 2:45 pm
Re: PyPortal doesn't provide PORTALBOOT drive on macOS or Wi
Thanks for the further details about the symptoms. Can you provide some more info on the two machines - the Windows machine and the Mac. Are these your machines? Or are they maintained by someone else?
Do you have access to a third Windows or Mac machine you could also try?
Do you have access to a third Windows or Mac machine you could also try?
- vitorio
- Posts: 11
- Joined: Fri Jun 15, 2012 2:55 pm
Re: PyPortal doesn't provide PORTALBOOT drive on macOS or Wi
Sure. Both machines are my personal machines at home.
The Mac is a MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2011) laptop running macOS 10.13.6 High Sierra. The onboard USB ports are USB 2.0 on a AppleUSBEHCIPCI controller. The USB 3.0 port is connected via Thunderbolt (a Kanex gigabit ethernet + USB 3.0 adapter) and shows up as under AppleUSBXHCIPCI.
The Windows 10 machine is a Dell Inspiron 5675 desktop, AMD X370 chipset. The onboard USB 2.0 and 3.0/3.1 ports hang off of either an AMD USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller 1.0 (Microsoft) or an AMD USB 3.10 eXtensible Host Controller 1.10 (Microsoft).
I tried another Mac (not mine), a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015), also macOS 10.13.6 High Sierra, USB 3.0 ports on an AppleUSBXHCILPTH bus, and PORTALBOOT shows up there!
I also tried an original Surface RT running Windows RT 8.1, and PORTALBOOT shows up there also. :/
So, then, what's up with these other two machines? What kinds of things interfere with the PORTALBOOT drive that I could be looking into? It's weird that they're so different but the same thing is happening. And why did flashing the bootloader make the bottom LED stop lighting up?
The Mac is a MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2011) laptop running macOS 10.13.6 High Sierra. The onboard USB ports are USB 2.0 on a AppleUSBEHCIPCI controller. The USB 3.0 port is connected via Thunderbolt (a Kanex gigabit ethernet + USB 3.0 adapter) and shows up as under AppleUSBXHCIPCI.
The Windows 10 machine is a Dell Inspiron 5675 desktop, AMD X370 chipset. The onboard USB 2.0 and 3.0/3.1 ports hang off of either an AMD USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller 1.0 (Microsoft) or an AMD USB 3.10 eXtensible Host Controller 1.10 (Microsoft).
I tried another Mac (not mine), a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015), also macOS 10.13.6 High Sierra, USB 3.0 ports on an AppleUSBXHCILPTH bus, and PORTALBOOT shows up there!
I also tried an original Surface RT running Windows RT 8.1, and PORTALBOOT shows up there also. :/
So, then, what's up with these other two machines? What kinds of things interfere with the PORTALBOOT drive that I could be looking into? It's weird that they're so different but the same thing is happening. And why did flashing the bootloader make the bottom LED stop lighting up?
- vitorio
- Posts: 11
- Joined: Fri Jun 15, 2012 2:55 pm
Re: PyPortal doesn't provide PORTALBOOT drive on macOS or Wi
Hello, I just flashed my PyPortal with update-bootloader-pyportal_m4-v3.3.0-adafruit.10.uf2 and CircuitPython 4.0.0-beta.7 and my PORTALBOOT drive still doesn't appear on my Mac.
It continues to appear on a Linux box (how I was able to flash it) and a different Mac, and the bottom LED appears to be working again. The CIRCUITPY drive continues to appear on all my machines.
What kinds of things interfere with the PORTALBOOT drive that I could be looking into?
Thanks!
It continues to appear on a Linux box (how I was able to flash it) and a different Mac, and the bottom LED appears to be working again. The CIRCUITPY drive continues to appear on all my machines.
What kinds of things interfere with the PORTALBOOT drive that I could be looking into?
Thanks!
- danhalbert
- Posts: 4687
- Joined: Tue Aug 08, 2017 12:37 pm
Re: PyPortal doesn't provide PORTALBOOT drive on macOS or Wi
Hi - one user reported that a Mac RAID driver was interfering with see the BOOT drive. Changing a setting solved the problem. See if this sounds like it might be a possibility:
viewtopic.php?f=58&t=150232
viewtopic.php?f=58&t=150232
- vitorio
- Posts: 11
- Joined: Fri Jun 15, 2012 2:55 pm
Re: PyPortal doesn't provide PORTALBOOT drive on macOS or Wi
Hi, @danhalbert, thanks for the suggestion! It wasn't the RAID driver, but the "SMART" aspect of it.
I had FUSE installed, uninstalled that, no change. Had FTDI and C-H-3-4-1 and CP210x USB drivers installed, uninstalled those, no change.
But, I also had a SMART driver for diagnostics on external disks installed as part of DriveDx. Uninstalled that, and I see PORTALBOOT now!
I have a "hybrid" disk on my Windows machine (aka "fusion drive" on Mac), where an SSD transparently caches files from a rotational drive, and I wonder if that's what's choking PORTALBOOT there.
Maybe notes like these can be added to the FAQ for the PyPortal?
And if external software checking for SMART diag responses is hanging, maybe that's something the SAMD21 firmware can ack/nack to resolve?
I had FUSE installed, uninstalled that, no change. Had FTDI and C-H-3-4-1 and CP210x USB drivers installed, uninstalled those, no change.
But, I also had a SMART driver for diagnostics on external disks installed as part of DriveDx. Uninstalled that, and I see PORTALBOOT now!
I have a "hybrid" disk on my Windows machine (aka "fusion drive" on Mac), where an SSD transparently caches files from a rotational drive, and I wonder if that's what's choking PORTALBOOT there.
Maybe notes like these can be added to the FAQ for the PyPortal?
And if external software checking for SMART diag responses is hanging, maybe that's something the SAMD21 firmware can ack/nack to resolve?
- vitorio
- Posts: 11
- Joined: Fri Jun 15, 2012 2:55 pm
Re: PyPortal doesn't provide PORTALBOOT drive on macOS or Wi
As suggested by tannewt on Discord, I tried running SMART diag tools directly on the PORTALBOOT device from Linux, trying both skdump from libatasmart-bin as well as smartctl from smartmontools.
Running skdump on the PORTALBOOT device locks up the PyPortal and makes the device unable to be mounted, or unable to be read if it's already mounted.
Running smartctl won't work at first, it doesn't recognize the PORTALBOOT device type and fails out:
Telling it the PORTALBOOT device is an ATA device also fails. Telling it it's a SCSI device locks up PORTALBOOT and smartctl never returns.
When run on the CIRCUITPY device, the skdump output is the same but does not lock up the device.
When run on the CIRCUITPY device, the smartctl command again fails, fails as ATA, and fails as SCSI.
Forcing it further with permissive or verypermissive still doesn't lock up CIRCUITPY, smartctl eventually fails out recognizing that it doesn't support SMART.
It seems like CIRCUITPY and PORTALBOOT respond to SMART requests differently, and maybe that's the issue, then?
Running skdump on the PORTALBOOT device locks up the PyPortal and makes the device unable to be mounted, or unable to be read if it's already mounted.
Code: Select all
$ sudo skdump /dev/sdb
Device: sat12:/dev/sdb
Type: 12 Byte SCSI ATA SAT Passthru
Size: 7 MiB
Awake: Operation not supported
ATA SMART not supported.
Code: Select all
$ sudo smartctl --all /dev/sdb
smartctl 6.6 2016-05-31 r4324 [armv7l-linux-4.14.79-v7+] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-16, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
/dev/sdb: Unknown USB bridge [0x239a:0x0035 (0x4201)]
Please specify device type with the -d option.
Use smartctl -h to get a usage summary
Code: Select all
$ sudo smartctl -d scsi --all /dev/sdb
smartctl 6.6 2016-05-31 r4324 [armv7l-linux-4.14.79-v7+] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-16, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Vendor: PyPortal
Product: M4 Express
Revision: 1.00
User Capacity: 8,192,000 bytes [8.19 MB]
Logical block size: 512 bytes
scsiModePageOffset: response length too short, resp_len=4 offset=4 bd_len=0
Device type: disk
scsiModePageOffset: response length too short, resp_len=4 offset=4 bd_len=0
Local Time is: Tue Apr 16 00:03:18 2019 CDT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled
Temperature Warning: Disabled or Not Supported
=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
When run on the CIRCUITPY device, the smartctl command again fails, fails as ATA, and fails as SCSI.
Code: Select all
$ sudo smartctl -d scsi --all /dev/sdc
smartctl 6.6 2016-05-31 r4324 [armv7l-linux-4.14.79-v7+] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-16, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
Short INQUIRY response, skip product id
A mandatory SMART command failed: exiting. To continue, add one or more '-T permissive' options.
It seems like CIRCUITPY and PORTALBOOT respond to SMART requests differently, and maybe that's the issue, then?
- danhalbert
- Posts: 4687
- Joined: Tue Aug 08, 2017 12:37 pm
Re: PyPortal doesn't provide PORTALBOOT drive on macOS or Wi
Vitorio, thanks very much for the extensive testing! I had tried smartctl just on a BOOT drive yesterday, as SCSI, and saw the same hang. You've done a really thorough job and I think we know what to fix now.
Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.