Troubleshooting • Boot Issue After Cloning USB to eMMC on Raspberry Pi 5 – Kernel Panic

Hi all,

I'm using a Raspberry Pi 5 and tried to migrate my OS from a working USB flash drive to the onboard eMMC using rsync.

What I did:
-Booted from USB
-Used rsync to clone root and boot partitions to the eMMC
-Updated fstab and cmdline.txt to use the correct eMMC UUIDs
-Unmounted, powered off, removed USB, and tried to boot from eMMC

What happened: PICTURE: https://imgur.com/a/bKLrqjL

-Now I'm getting kernel panic during boot from eMMC
-Plugging the USB back in doesn’t help — still stuck in kernel panic
-Tried flashing Raspberry Pi OS Lite on a microSD card, but the Pi won’t boot from SD card either

What I might have done wrong:
-Highest Possibly cmdline.txt is incorrect or not pointing to the actual eMMC root UUID
-Might’ve missed syncing a critical file or corrupted something during rsync
-Could also be a bootloader or boot order issue preventing fallback to USB or SD

What I need help with:
How can I force the Pi to boot from USB or SD again?
What steps can I take to recover the system or safely reset the boot process?
Should I reflash the bootloader or try wiping eMMC?
I have access to another computer to prep SD/USB if needed. Any help would be appreciated!

Statistics: Posted by d2d — Mon Apr 07, 2025 2:43 am — Replies 0 — Views 18

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