Hardware: Raspberry Pi CM4, Home Assistant Yellow Boot support: Only NVMe SSD (NO SD slot available on Yellow board) Image: Raspberry Pi OS Lite Bookworm ARM64 (2025-05-13), flashed with Raspberry Pi Imager (latest, Windows)
What I did:
Flashed the image to NVMe SSD via USB adapter, using Raspberry Pi Imager (latest) from Windows
In advanced options ("gear" icon), set:
Hostname: raspberrypi
User: mleas
Password: Mleas#2025
Enabled SSH
Wi-Fi disabled (I use Ethernet, Pi is visible and pings fine on the network)
Flashed with "Erase" option before every attempt (all partitions deleted via Windows Disk Manager before writing)
Boot: Device comes online, I can ping it on the network
Problem:
SSH connection always fails:
ssh mleas@<ip>
Password: (I type Mleas#2025)
--> Permission denied, please try again.
Tried alternate users (pi, admin…), tried multiple keyboards, checked QWERTY/AZERTY layout, typed password in Notepad and pasted = always fails
No screen, no serial console access, no SD card slot, only NVMe boot
No error during flash, tried different USB adapters/cables/PCs, nothing changes
Important: This setup DID work at the very beginning of my project (I could log in SSH with the custom user), but after several flashes (to try a Sonoff Zigbee key for Home Assistant), SSH login is now systematically denied.
No other media available to try. No SD card, no other boot device.
Question:
What could cause SSH login to fail even when the custom user/password/SSH are correctly set in advanced options and flashed cleanly?
Is there a bug with Raspberry Pi Imager and CM4/Yellow booting only from NVMe?
Is there any trick to force SSH credentials on Bookworm ARM64 for this specific hardware?
Thanks a lot for any help. I’m stuck and open to any real-world tested workaround (even a post-flash hack using Windows/Mac/Linux if needed).
At this point, the only brute-force solution would be to try to manually inject a custom shadow or passwd file, but on ARM64, it’s not guaranteed without root access.
If you need a formatted post or a manual injection script (shadow/passwd or an SSH service allowing root login without password), let me know. Ready to try anything.
Thanks for reading. Any advice is welcome!
What I did:
Flashed the image to NVMe SSD via USB adapter, using Raspberry Pi Imager (latest) from Windows
In advanced options ("gear" icon), set:
Hostname: raspberrypi
User: mleas
Password: Mleas#2025
Enabled SSH
Wi-Fi disabled (I use Ethernet, Pi is visible and pings fine on the network)
Flashed with "Erase" option before every attempt (all partitions deleted via Windows Disk Manager before writing)
Boot: Device comes online, I can ping it on the network
Problem:
SSH connection always fails:
ssh mleas@<ip>
Password: (I type Mleas#2025)
--> Permission denied, please try again.
Tried alternate users (pi, admin…), tried multiple keyboards, checked QWERTY/AZERTY layout, typed password in Notepad and pasted = always fails
No screen, no serial console access, no SD card slot, only NVMe boot
No error during flash, tried different USB adapters/cables/PCs, nothing changes
Important: This setup DID work at the very beginning of my project (I could log in SSH with the custom user), but after several flashes (to try a Sonoff Zigbee key for Home Assistant), SSH login is now systematically denied.
No other media available to try. No SD card, no other boot device.
Question:
What could cause SSH login to fail even when the custom user/password/SSH are correctly set in advanced options and flashed cleanly?
Is there a bug with Raspberry Pi Imager and CM4/Yellow booting only from NVMe?
Is there any trick to force SSH credentials on Bookworm ARM64 for this specific hardware?
Thanks a lot for any help. I’m stuck and open to any real-world tested workaround (even a post-flash hack using Windows/Mac/Linux if needed).
At this point, the only brute-force solution would be to try to manually inject a custom shadow or passwd file, but on ARM64, it’s not guaranteed without root access.
If you need a formatted post or a manual injection script (shadow/passwd or an SSH service allowing root login without password), let me know. Ready to try anything.
Thanks for reading. Any advice is welcome!
Statistics: Posted by mleas44 — Fri Jun 13, 2025 8:44 am