balenaEtcher error for BlueOS flash

Blue Robotics Software BlueOS
1

Hi,

I am trying to upgrade my BlueROV2 from companion to BlueOS, and have done this previously with no issues, however, this was with SD cards purchased from Blue Robotics with BlueOS preloaded previously.

Here I am preparing a 128GB SandDisk Extreme micro SD card to flash the BlueOS img onto the SD using balenaEtcher.

The BlueOS download is zipped, as the instructors specify this.
The SD card has been formatted to ExFat.

When I use the flash from file or flash from url to the SD card, this error appears:

“Something went wrong. If it is a compressed image, please check that the archive is not corrupted. Error spawning the child process”

I have tried both the file and url method, and used multiple formatted SD cards and get the same error each time.

I have dived into github chat forums and this is a common problem with no solution that I can find.

Is there an alternative to balenaEtcher that you could recommend? Or if you have a solution to this error I would be very grateful.

2

Hi @Kristen_M -
Welcome to the forums!
Can you try unzipping the downloaded archive, and flashing the .img file from Balena? The instructions do specify you don’t need to do this, but depending on your host OS it could be necessary… worth a try at least!
What BlueOS version did you download? The file should be BlueOS-raspberry.zip
?

Your download could be corrupted, trying to download it again or verifying the file size against the download listing could solve the issue as well.

Can you share what “github chat forums” posts you’re referring to that discuss this as a problem?