Raspberry Pi 5 secure boot firmware failure to find boot.sig log message is misleading

[bradfa]

Describe the bug

For Raspberry Pi 5 EEPROM firmware version 2025.03.10, after configuring secure boot by programming the OTP public key hash and properly inserting the public key into the EEPROM, when booting an SD card which does not have a boot.sig file but DOES have a boot.img file, then the firmware will complain that it cannot find the boot.img file, like:

  5.16 secure-boot
  5.18 Loading boot.img ...
  5.21 [sdcard] boot.img not found
  5.24 Error 6 loading boot.img

This appears to just be a logging issue to me, where the Loading boot.img ... is printed always as a marker to indicate that both boot.img and boot.sig are being read. But the error issued indicates that boot.img is missing when in fact boot.sig is the file which could not be properly read.

Steps to reproduce the behaviour

1. Flash EEPROM 2025.03.10 with secure boot enabled (my test also has the OTP secure boot hash set but unsure if this matters) and boot a secure-boot enabled SD card. Observe that the firmware logs show the expected loading of boot.img and boot.sig like:

  5.21 secure-boot
  5.23 Loading boot.img ...
  5.26 boot.sig
  5.27 hash: bec15c9668e5d52dd0eb8afe47bea3350b006cf892f3a9591258c70a68c1654e
  5.34 ts: 1733479805
  5.36 rsa2048: 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
  8.96 Verifying
 15.96 RSA verify
 15.08 rsa-verify pass (0x0)

2. Delete the boot.sig file.
3. Reboot.
4. Observe that now the firmware complains that boot.img could not be read:

  5.34 secure-boot
  5.36 Loading boot.img ...
  5.39 [sdcard] boot.img not found
  5.42 Error 6 loading boot.img

Device (s)

Other

Bootloader configuration.

rpi-eeprom-config does not appear to function correctly when secure boot is enabled, but I believe this was the config I used to build the firmware:

[all]
BOOT_UART=1
POWER_OFF_ON_HALT=0
BOOT_ORDER=0xf461
ENABLE_SELF_UPDATE=0

System

No response

Bootloader logs

No response

USB boot

No response

NVMe boot

No response

Network (TFTP boot)

No response

[timg236]

Yes, I can see that could be confusing. In signed boot mode it loads pairs of files .sig / .img and the .img isn't loaded if the .sig isn't found. It might be possible to change the text to say Unable to load signed file (boot.img + boot.sig)

[KOLACH1]

Hello! I have the same problem (but I've only just started learning this platform and don't understand what you mean by “secure boot”). I only have Raspberry Imager and that's it.

[lurch]

@KOLACH1 "secure boot" is something that you have to explicitly enable, see https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/raspberry-pi.html#secure-boot

If you've "only just started learning this platform" then it seems extremely unlikely that you'll have enabled secure boot, in which case your problem isn't the same as this one. Please create a new issue, providing as much detail as possible. Thanks.