New Umbrel on RasPi 5 - cannot access after install

Support and Troubleshooting
1

Ran my Umbrel for years on a RasPi4. The other day I logged in and it said the 1TB SSD disc was full. Looked into moving the install over to a 2TB SSD and it was too complicated. So I ordered a new RasPi5, which came this morning, and 2TB SSD (Samsung Electronics 870 EVO 2TB 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD). The plan was to start from scratch and download the blockchain all over again on the new Pi5 and new SSD. Then restore from my seed.

Followed the instructions here exactly Install umbrelOS on a Raspberry Pi 5 · getumbrel/umbrel Wiki · GitHub

The old Pi4 used a micro-SD but with the new installation it said the Pi5 can run just off the SSD. So not using a micro-SD card this time.

Plugged in the Pi5 with 2TB SSD and the ethernet cord plugged in like normal. Using the same official power supply as was using with the Pi4.

The Pi5 starts up and the light on the SSD is on. Nothing happens after that. Cannot access http://umbrel.local. It doesn’t appear on the list of devices on my router. Using Terminal (I’m on a Mac) ssh -t umbrel@umbrel.local does nothing.

What is going on here?

Edit- flashed the newest Pi5 Umbrel to a microSD card and it worked. Not sure why it wouldn’t boot off the SSD. Wish that was working so I didn’t have to use a microSD.

Edit2- well it was syncing and now stopped at 4.7%. I refreshed the browser and just get “Something went wrong”. No clue what to do. Frustrating.

Really disappointed in Umbrel. This is supposed to be easy and I followed the instructions exactly.

2

is it to late to try and clone the drive? Wow, this seems much more taxing.

3

That’s what I wanted to do initially but can’t seem to find an easy way to clone it.

4

What operating system do you have on your laptop or desktop?
?

5

MacOS 15.5 Sequoia.

6

Change of heart. Use the new Pi 5 to clone the drive.

To clone a 1 TB external SSD to a 2 TB external SSD using a Raspberry Pi 5 with Raspberry Pi OS:

  1. Set Up Pi 5: Flash Raspberry Pi OS (Bookworm, 64-bit) to a MicroSD card, boot, and update (sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y).
  2. Connect SSDs: Plug both SSDs into USB 3.0 ports.
  3. Identify Drives: Run lsblk to find SSDs (e.g., /dev/sda for 1 TB, /dev/sdb for 2 TB).
  4. Prepare 2 TB SSD: If not formatted, run sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb1.
  5. Mount Drives:
    sudo mkdir /mnt/source /mnt/destination
sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/source
sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/destination
  6. Clone with rsync:
    sudo rsync -avh --progress /mnt/source/ /mnt/destination/
    Or use Clonezilla: sudo apt install clonezilla -y; sudo clonezilla.
  7. Resize Filesystem: Run sudo resize2fs /dev/sdb1 to use full 2 TB.
  8. Verify: Check files (ls -l /mnt/destination) and unmount (sudo umount /mnt/source /mnt/destination).

Tips: Use a 5V/5A PSU and active cooling. Backup 1 TB SSD first. Cloning takes ~1–1.5 hours.

Put a fan on it too

7

I was able to clone the drive using Macrium Reflect X on a spare windows laptop. It just finished after about 8hrs. Umbrel started on the new Pi5 with a microSD and the new 2TB cloned drive. It shows just a few dozen gigs available tho like on the old 1TB. How do I SSH into the Umbrel node and resize the disc so it sees the full 2TB SSD?

8

There is a way to do it via UmbrelOS web interface. Login>Settings>Advanced settings>Open (select Terminal). Then resize the drive partition. I think fdisk to resize. Also, stop any app that is running until you get this done. Click the icon and select stop.