My pinebook 11" 1080p crashed and failed to boot - and how i recovered it.

In may 2019 I received my new 11" pinebook 1080p laptop with the default ubuntu bionic 18.04 and kde neon 5.14 desktop. I used it only a few times and after installing some seemingly innocuous packages using the software manager "discover" and also python pip it failed to boot. It displayed the circle splash screen on startup, but then remained blank and did not display the login request. (I had previously set it to NOT auto boot to the desktop).
I was able to get a console login using  CTRL-ALT-F2 and login as root. I use a wired lan connection via a usb ethernet adaptor and I had "automatic" internet access from the console.(May be more difficult using wifi). I ran startx, but it failed and "could not connect to server". "X -configure" did not fix the x server either. I used apt-get update (or upgrade, I forget which) and it downloaded about 100Mb of updates. This took a while and you need to press the shift key occasionally or the system goes into screen shutdown and cannot be woken-up. Shift does nothing and seems to prevent inactivity-shutdown.
Now the system would boot to the login screen, but this would only flash briefly and you could not login and the screen remained blank. I downloaded the current distribution image (20190428) from the pine64 website https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pinebook_Main_Page  . Be careful to get the 1080p version or standard version for your laptop screen resolution. I put this on a flash-memory card but this would not boot at all, not even the circles splash screen at startup.

I returned to using the console, booting off the internal MMC and tried to use apt-get again. This gave a message to use pkcon instead on this ubuntu version! I used 'pkcon update' which was messy, but downloaded more updates and installed them. (use the shift key trick above to avoid inactivity sleep blanking!)

The system now booted correctly. It had updated KDE neon to 5.15. It was able to boot from the flash disk that previously failed to boot.

Main points:
1) use CTRL-ALT-F2 to get a console. (It must partially boot to do this)
2) use "pkcon update" to update the entire system. its not the same as apt-get update! There are many updates to the factory supplied version
3) Booting from a flash-memory card can apparently be disabled by some unknown software issues on the MMC disk.
4) Use a USB-LAN adaptor and wired network if wifi does not work from the console.

Despite the recommended changes to "settings", "desktop behaviour", "screen locking" it still suffered unrecoverable inactivity shutdowns. (perhaps closing and opening the lid works - i did not try that) I have changed the shutdown time to maximum allowable 99 mins, but this does not help either! To prevent unrecoverable sleep events I have used the forum comments to use a separate profile, not the default, and set this to never sleep. This works. (settings > power management > activity settings > *define special behaviour, *never shutdown screen, *never suspend )

as root or sudo, shutdown -r now does not reboot the board. It looks like the board correctly shutdowns but it does not reboot. You have to press the Reset button or unplug/plug back the PSU.

Hello,

(1) Beside splicing the SATA power cable (which comes with the SATA card) is there another place on the board where one can pick up the 12v line (for the 80mm fan I'm adding to the Pine64 NAS case)

(2) If I were to use 4 drives (2 x 3.5" and 2 x SSD) in the Pine64 NAS case, with a Marvell 88SE9230 4-PORT, is using a PSU 12v 8A OK to power the board OK? Otherwise what is the Amp limit?

Hello,

I bought an RP-SMA -> U.FL antenna for the Wifi/BT module.

The antenna pigtail UF.L plugs looks much bigger than the plugs on the original antennas coming with the Wifi/BT module (let's around 1.5 larger).

I checked the RockPro64 wiki as well as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirose_U.FL and drew a blank.

Could you tell me what kind of plugs the Wifi/BT module uses?

TIA!

Hey all,

I picked up a ROCK64 from ebay for a project I am working on.  But I have been unable to get it to boot.

The board was new, in a sealed static bag, with a 32gb SanDisk card and a 3amp wall wort.  The board is marked "V2"

I have tried numerous images and numerous SD cards including Samsung EVO cards, numerous writing methods, pine64 installer, etcher, dd, etc.

99% of the time I just get 3 solid LEDs on the board and no video output.  One image booted to a command prompt ONE time, the MrFixit image that was prepared for the v3 board, linked in this post:  Rock64 v3 and SD-Cards.  However, that singular boot has never been repeated.

a few of the images I have tried:
 Armbian_5.88_Rock64_Ubuntu_bionic_default_4.4.180_desktop
 rock64-debian-mrfixit-050919_2
 xenial-minimal-rock64-0.5.10-118-arm64
 bionic-lxde-rock64-0.7.9-1067-arm64


and most of the options available in the pine64 installer for a rock64 v2.

I checked the power supply, and it shows 5.2v without load.  I don't have access to hardware to try to hit the serial TTY. 

I am fresh out of ideas here.  What is the likelihood that I am just unlucky and this board is bad?  Anybody have other ideas?

For those who want to discuss the newest update on the forum, please do so in this thread

Hi,
The June update on Pinebook Pro mentions sending units to developers. Will they be sent to any developers of fully libre distros, e.g. Guix?
Separate but related question - will all devices work with linux-libre kernel (without firmware blobs)? Is that a goal for Pinebook Pro?

Edit: moved to rockpro64 because it has the same RK3399 as Pinebook Pro does. Rockbook Pro would be a less confusing name

Hi,

From the reference manual "Rockchip RK3399 TRM V1.3 Part2", Table 7-6 shows the MIPI DPHY PLL Settings for 27 MHz reference Clock. However, the default clock is 24 MHz (pll_refclk) for the RK3399.

How is the table generated for 24 MHz?

Thanks.

Hi,

I have a rockpro64 with 4Gb and I am running Linux aarch64
I was trying DSI Non-burst mode in rockpro64 with the pine64 display, but display was not coming properly. This setup was working properly in DSI burst mode.
I have a question, Does High-speed data transfer occurs only in DSI burst mode?

Thanks.

Hello, All.

I am attempting to use a Rockpro64 with bionic-minimal-rockpro64-0.7.9-1067-arm64.img as a headless server.

When initially powered on, everything works as expected, but after an amount of time that seems to vary between six hours and two days, the Rockpro64 stops responding to ssh, pings, and web requests. I tried connecting a monitor and keyboard to troubleshoot the problem. From the Rockpro64, the following things are true:

1. I can successfully ping other computers on the network by IP address, but pinging domains fails.
2. I can ssh into localhost, but cannot ssh into any other servers, even by referencing their IP addresses.
3. "arp" runs extremely slowly, but "arp -n" completes near-instantaneously.
4. Restarting the Rockpro64 fixes the problem temporarily, until it inevitably  comes back.

It looks like a DNS issue to me, but I do not know where to look from there. Do any of you wonderful people have suggestions?