Ok so it looks like the issue here might be this one related to the 8gb system not being supported by the current release of PatchboxOS: Patchbox Gets Corrupted on First Boot (Raspberry Pi 4 8GB) - #16 by clockwork
A second question: the instructions in that thread say:
Follow the config script as usual. If you are on Patchbox , you will need to switch to a wifi network that has internet access to download updates …
But the problem is that the RPi doesn’t recognize any USB devices and therefore can only accept IO via ssh’ing in from its wifi network. Connecting it my home wifi necessarily turns off its wifi network, so I can’t see a way to actually complete these steps in order. I essentially need a way to say “turn off your wifi access point, then connect to another one, then run these shell commands even though my ssh session is dead, and then reboot”