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IDProjectCategoryView StatusLast Update
0000544AlmaLinux-9linux-firmwarepublic2025-07-11 23:33
ReporterFingerlessGloves Assigned To 
PrioritynormalSeverityminorReproducibilityalways
Status newResolutionopen 
Summary0000544: Raspberry Pi 3B fails to boot on Alma 9 and Alma 10
DescriptionTrying to boot Raspberry Pi 3B with Alma 9 or Alma 10 will fail to boot, Alma 8 will boot no problem. After doing some investigation to ensure all the requires files exist, which they have all the needed files. The problem ended up being the Pi3B doesn't like the brcmfmac43430-sdio.raspberrypi,3-model-b.txt.xz firmware file being compressed, soon as I decompressed it with "xz -d" the pi booted first and everytime without issue.

I Investigated the issue upstream and Fedora doesn't have this issue but they don't use the Pi kernel and their kernel on Fedora 42 is much newer as well, but their compressed file works. So this may get fixed in a future kernel version.
Steps To ReproduceDownload the latest https://repo.almalinux.org/almalinux/9/raspberrypi/images/AlmaLinux-9-RaspberryPi-mbr-9.6-20250602.aarch64.raw.xz image and apply it to a SD Card and then place it in a Raspberry Pi 3B. It won't boot correctly and fail.

To fix simple mount the second partition of the image in /mnt then do `xz -d /mnt/usr/lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43430-sdio.raspberrypi,3-model-b.txt.xz`, umount the filesystem. Place the SD card back in a Pi 3B and it'll boot no problem.

To test a Alma 10 image, you will need to build a mbr image yourself or convert a gpt one which is quite easy.
Additional InformationRocky Linux also had this problem and they ended up distributing this one file uncompressed in their firmware package.

Ensure not to confuse a Pi 3B with a Pi 3B+ they look identical
Tagsaarch64, alma10, alma9, Raspberrypi

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Issue History

Date Modified Username Field Change
2025-07-11 20:22 FingerlessGloves New Issue
2025-07-11 20:22 FingerlessGloves Tag Attached: alma9
2025-07-11 20:24 FingerlessGloves Tag Attached: alma10
2025-07-11 23:33 sallyhaj Tag Attached: Raspberrypi
2025-07-11 23:33 sallyhaj Tag Attached: aarch64