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Sorry for the weird thread subject but I'm not able to summarize better this behavior.

Scenario:
Pinebook 14" with default Ubuntu 16.04 (same shipped with the pinebook itself, just updated with apt + pine* scripts for uboot and kernel)

Problem:
Sometimes when powered off it cannot correctly power back on in a useful state since, even if the system is running, the screen is black (may lit up but no X session is there)

How to replicate:
Use the pinebook with AC adapter plugged in (charging), power it off, unplug the AC adapter, power back on --> black screen of death
Use the pinebook with battery, power it off, plug the AC adapter in, power back on --> black screen again

How to "workaround":
Just randomly powering it off and on again with AC adapter in until I get the "pinebook splashscreen" --> at this point boots fine

Tried different OSes:
Yes same thing on a SD card installed OS, or even worse --> with that never gets to a working X session (boots and does all stuff lilke expanding the ext4 partition) but screen just flashes in backlit black for 2 times and never comes along  (tried this image as last one: https://osdn.net/projects/manjaro-arm/st...03.img.xz/)
Sometimes I've successfully used a plain vanilla console-based armbian to try to recover a "always in black screen mode" (I discovered that I had ext4 to be checked due to my poweroff/on to restore a usable screen).

Battery state:

It's OK. It can stand many hours of work, and voltages are fine, charges regularly (if we exclude the black screen issue)

Image flashing issues:

I dont' think so, really, checked the sums, flashed with different sdcarcs and different methods  (dd with conv=fsync, etcher, name it... I do this stuff on a daily basis so at least here it's not a place to check for possible issues I think).


that said...


Any clues any of you mighty piners?

I suspect my pinebook is just faulty, but maybe I'm getting something wrong or we can discover something potentially useful for others users as well.
I have similars problems but AC power relationed.

If I use ac adaptor with debian/ubuntu distros, black screen of death appears less.

Do you tried differents manjaro versions, kde, i3, lxqt?

I used manjaro kde install and changed for xfce.

With manjaro I don't have black screen of death but many times I can't boot system, fails on uboot. And I need to restart system manually.

Perhaps is a uboot problem. Or in worst way a hardware problem...
Put in a SD card with a mainline build and power the unit on
(04-30-2019, 03:22 AM)erchache2000 Wrote: [ -> ]I have similars problems but AC power relationed.

If I use ac adaptor with debian/ubuntu distros, black screen of death appears less.

Do you tried differents manjaro versions, kde, i3, lxqt?

I used manjaro kde install and changed for xfce.

With manjaro I don't have black screen of death but many times I can't boot system, fails on uboot. And I need to restart system manually.

Perhaps is a uboot problem. Or in worst way a hardware problem...


I've tried only i3 version of manjaro on sdcard, armbian on sdcard and default ubuntu 16.04 on eMMC


can you tell me which one works best for you

(04-30-2019, 03:41 AM)Luke Wrote: [ -> ]Put in a SD card with a mainline build and power the unit on

Any mainline kernel 5.0 image ?

Can you point me one to use with which you may be more confident for debugging.

Also: should I boot the sdcard image with AC plugged or not? What is  best practice  in this case?
(04-30-2019, 03:43 AM)penzoiders Wrote: [ -> ]
(04-30-2019, 03:22 AM)erchache2000 Wrote: [ -> ]I have similars problems but AC power relationed.

If I use ac adaptor with debian/ubuntu distros, black screen of death appears less.

Do you tried differents manjaro versions, kde, i3, lxqt?

I used manjaro kde install and changed for xfce.

With manjaro I don't have black screen of death but many times I can't boot system, fails on uboot. And I need to restart system manually.

Perhaps is a uboot problem. Or in worst way a hardware problem...


I've tried only i3 version of manjaro on sdcard, armbian on sdcard and default ubuntu 16.04 on eMMC


can you tell me which one works best for you

(04-30-2019, 03:41 AM)Luke Wrote: [ -> ]Put in a SD card with a mainline build and power the unit on

Any mainline kernel 5.0 image ?

Can you point me one to use with which you may be more confident for debugging.

Also: should I boot the sdcard image with AC plugged or not? What is  best practice  in this case?

Try Monjaro or Anarsoul ArchLinux, both runs mainline Linux kernel.
Using Manjaro KDE on eMMC or SD card, I get the same issue. Haven't found a fix yet. Haven't been able to use it for the last couple months.
Can confirm; after plugging in AC power adapter, I power cycled the device maybe 7 or 8 times and finally it booted properly into the OS. Battery was well above 50% at the time, so I doubt it is a power state issue, but just thought I'd mention it.
I finally had the chance to try the mainline image, nothing changes, as MECZero states with AC adapter we got a black screen when waking it up after sleep or poweroff.
In this state it's pretty unusable, in fact I don't use it due to this issues (since when I bought it).

I think that, since I'm not alone (thanks MECZero for joining the lucky team), probably it's an hardware issue of the pinebooks produced in our batch.

is it possible to find a spare board (even used for testing, or used, this is out of stock https://store.pine64.org/?product=pinebo...14-version and I'm not very much eager to spend 45$ just to try) to try if replacing that component the issue gets fixed?

Or can I ask some kind user to try to replicate the issue on their pinebooks to see if it's an issue only on mine (and MECzero's) one?
So you 2 don't feel too lonely, I can confirm this same behavior on my 1080P. Although, alternating power source when starting does not yield any of the predicted results. I've encountered this so far with Manjaro LXQT and KDE, on SD and eMMC. When using Armbian, I didn't encounter any of these booting issues.

I'm not sure if it's because I'm currently in the process of charging the battery from a full drain, but while my AC has been plugged in, the amount of times I have to power cycle to get into Manjaro seems to be increasing.
I have the same or similar problem with Manjaro LXQt or KDE using various SD cards since about February on my Pinebook 1080.

Interestingly the boot was always successful, just the display was not on. I was able to operate the Pinebook with the keyboard blindly and it does what you want, so the issue is somewhere near the display.

Since a few weeks I use the Archlinux from Anarsoul without problems, my version has a 4.20 kernel though.

Also it seems to work for many other manjaro user, so I am a  it clueless about the reason.
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