Hailo-8 on Raspberry Pi 5 Fails to Probe - Missing hailo8_fw.bin Firmware

General
,
1

I am working on setting up a Hailo-8 AI accelerator connected via a PCIe adapter to a Raspberry Pi 5 (ARM64/aarch64).

The system recognizes the card via lspci, and the hailo_pci kernel driver (version 4.21.0) loads correctly. However, the driver fails during the device initialization (probe) sequence.

The kernel log (dmesg) shows a clear error: the driver cannot find the necessary firmware file.

Key dmesg Error:

Failed with error -2 to write file hailo/hailo8_fw.bin

user-space tools like hailortcli scan cannot find the device.
What I have tried:
I have thoroughly searched for the hailo8_fw.bin file inside the following official packages, but could not find it.

Error Log :
airaai@airaai:~$ lspci | grep -i hailo
0001:01:00.0 Co-processor: Hailo Technologies Ltd. Hailo-8 AI Processor (rev 01)
airaai@airaai:~$ lsmod | grep hailo
hailo_pci 118784 0
airaai@airaai:~$ sudo dmesg | grep -i hailo
[sudo] password for airaai:
[ 6.152617] hailo_pci: loading out-of-tree module taints kernel.
[ 6.152629] hailo_pci: module verification failed: signature and/or required key missing - tainting kernel
[ 6.167445] hailo: Init module. driver version 4.21.0
[ 6.171236] hailo 0001:01:00.0: Probing on: 1e60:2864…
[ 6.171245] hailo 0001:01:00.0: Probing: Allocate memory for device extension, 13192
[ 6.171255] hailo 0001:01:00.0: enabling device (0000 → 0002)
[ 6.171261] hailo 0001:01:00.0: Probing: Device enabled
[ 6.171279] hailo 0001:01:00.0: Probing: mapped bar 0 - 00000000e97bf5d2 16384
[ 6.171285] hailo 0001:01:00.0: Probing: mapped bar 2 - 000000002edab60d 4096
[ 6.171289] hailo 0001:01:00.0: Probing: mapped bar 4 - 00000000d8c01bbe 16384
[ 6.171294] hailo 0001:01:00.0: Probing: Setting max_desc_page_size to 4096, (page_size=4096)
[ 6.171305] hailo 0001:01:00.0: Probing: Enabled 64 bit dma
[ 6.171311] hailo 0001:01:00.0: Probing: Using userspace allocated vdma buffers
[ 6.171320] hailo 0001:01:00.0: Disabling ASPM L0s
[ 6.171325] hailo 0001:01:00.0: Successfully disabled ASPM L0s
[ 6.171789] hailo 0001:01:00.0: Writing file hailo/hailo8_fw.bin
[ 6.202052] Failed with error -2 to write file hailo/hailo8_fw.bin
[ 6.202066] hailo 0001:01:00.0: Failed writing NNC firmware files. err -2
[ 6.202070] hailo 0001:01:00.0: FW loaded, took 30 ms
[ 6.202072] hailo 0001:01:00.0: Firmware load failed
[ 6.202147] hailo 0001:01:00.0: Failed activating board -2
[ 6.202173] hailo 0001:01:00.0: probe with driver hailo failed with error -2
airaai@airaai:~$ hailortcli scan
Hailo devices not found

2

Hey @Arvind_R,

We recommend sticking with the hailo-all installation step and avoiding version upgrades for now - we’ve been seeing compatibility issues like this pop up.

This could be a few different things:

  1. Might be a kernel issue - can you check your kernel version with uname -r?

  2. Try running hailortcli fw-control identify and let us know what you get

  3. This could also be a hardware connection problem - double-check that everything’s properly connected

Let me know what you find and we can troubleshoot from there!

1 Like
3

Hi @Arvind_R , i also faced the same issue but this is on version 4.20.0 but this is on lite os version only on gui version its just work fine. I’m not sure why

But I manage to solve the problem by replacing the firmware file. This works for me even though the existing firmware look the same

curl -o hailo8_fw.bin https://hailo-hailort.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/Hailo8/4.20.0/FW/hailo8_fw.4.20.0.bin

mkdir -p /lib/firmware/hailo

cp hailo8_fw.bin /lib/firmware/hailo/
1 Like
4

Hi @omria just wanted to inform why this causes the firmware problem because as i know first the pcie driver package will install_firmware and then the install_driver

function main() {
check_build_essential
install_firmware
install_driver
}

It’s able to install the firmware on the host /lib/firmware/hailo but the problem still persists.

1 Like