I was messing with my boot partition on my PBP KDE Edition. Now, it doesnt boot to the OS.

During power-on, the light is orange and the system hangs there. Screen remains black. Power indicator remains orange.

I have not made any changes to uboot or other system properties.

I created a bootable SD card, but it still does not boot; same issue as above (light orange, screen black).

The Wiki mentions that the KDE edition has "uboot on the eMMC. Its boot order is: SD, USB, then eMMC."

Does this mean that I can not boot from SD or USB while my boot partition on eMMC is broken?

Any recommendations how to proceed?
My only thought is to buy a USB to eMMC adapter and restore my backup onto the boot partition. Let me know if there is another way.

Hi,

the ejection mechanism of the microSD slot in my rock64 that I got yesterday seems to be broken - each time I insert the card, it comes right back. I don't know how this mechanism works, but is there a way to fix that apart from soldering in a new slot? Seems a bit odd to send it back just because of such an issue.

Has anyone had this problem already? If yes, how did you fix it?

I've tried various methods, but I can't seem to get access to the internet from machines I connect to my phone's hotspot. I'm using NetworkManager's create new wifi network feature, though I've tried doing it manually too.

Just seems to refuse to talk to the modem's 4G connection.

I can get it working by using a SOCKS proxy (e.g. ssh -D root@myphonedefaultgw), but that is very limited and has a lot of issues.

I checked with my carrier (Consumer Cellular) and they have hotspot enabled on their end for my account so I doubt it's being filtered or something.

Anyone else have this issue and/or manage to figure it out? Actually posting via my semi-broken SOCKS workaround now.

Hey all! Took me forever to realize this but apparently UB ports has its own forum with a pinephone section. It seems thats where devs are more active and likely to pick up on bugs feedback and ideas. Our forum here seems more user based. I like the format here more and hope the ubports team can really tune in, but i would recommend people also post there for the highest likelihood of seeing fixes and improvements. Maybe if both forums could be merged through some api so posts in one are visible in the other, that would be fantastic!.

There is a project that lets you turn a Pi into an IP KVM for a very reasonable cost:
https://github.com/pikvm/pikvm

It currently requires getting an additional accessory for DVI input.

It would be nice if there was some version of the Pine64 that has a built in HDMI input port and supports OTG.

My thoughts on why Phosh is important:
https://amosbbatto.wordpress.com/2020/08...-of-phosh/

Feedback is welcome.

Hi there,

New Pinebook Pro user here; very excited to use this as my productivity laptop.

I am having problems in setting up software to math my workflow. Emacs is one important program for me; I have installed it from the repositories. However, launching emacs is giving me troubles. First, it refused to launch, I made a workaround by adjusting the gtk theme. However, emacs is refusing to display icons in its toolbar.

I was wondering if there is any way to display icons and make emacs work normally? If so, any help would be appreciated.

I tried to activate a new un-activated AT&T PrePaid sim card in my Brave Heart phone with Mobian running on it without succeeding.
 The phone does see the new AT&T sim,  but it will not dial out to the 611 number to activate.

The B.H. phone does function with a sim card I removed from my Android phone.
 But,
         The Android sim card does have a problem with data,
> an AT&T tech had previously suggested replacing that sim card when I called AT&T to fix the Android phone.

So I was hoping I could just activate a new sim card in my BH Pine phone directly.

Apparently Android has an app that makes it possible to activate the sim card.?

Is there an app I can put on Debian to activate a new sim card, or should I activate the card in the old Android phone, then move it to my Pine phone..?

Thanks,  B.C.

The new MCUBoot Bootloader (that we're loading into new PineTimes) shows a Boot Logo that's stored in External SPI Flash upon startup.

To change the Boot Logo, just prepare a 240x240 PNG file in 24-bit colour (or use a sample logo from the link below), and follow these steps...

PineTime Logo Loader

This calls GitHub Actions to create a custom firmware image (Mynewt) that writes the Boot Logo into External SPI Flash. The Boot Logo format (RGB565) is explained here...


MCUBoot Bootloader for PineTime Smart Watch


  pinetime-safe-small.jpg (Size: 381.96 KB / Downloads: 808)

The challenge before me is to bring up a mainline Debian install on the RockPro64. It will be a headless server with at least one SATA disk. I know there will be snags, but I'm hoping to work through them and maybe turn to you folks for help. I'll document what I discover along the way so others can use this as a guide.

Problem 1: (deferred) NAS case defects.

The first unit I received was warped or otherwise misshapen. (Maybe damaged in shipping?) The board's screw holes did not quite align with the case's standoffs, and the ports did not quite align with the case holes, so I could not mount the board.

The second unit I received has other problems, but at least the mounting holes are properly aligned, so I can move forward with the project. I will revisit the remaining case defects later.

Problem 2: (solved) Debian installer image.

The netboot installer daily build has been failing for the past week, so the link to the latest installer is (at the time of this writing) broken.

I browsed for earlier builds and used the last one that succeeded. Following the readme in that directory, I decompressed and concatenated the rockpro64 part with the generic part to form a complete SD card image, and wrote it to a microsd card using dd. This allowed me to proceed, but only briefly, as a related problem came up later. (See problem 4.)

Solution:  It turns out the installer daily builds stop working whenever the Debian archive's kernel is upgraded, because the kernel module ABI no longer matches the version used by the installer. Submit a report to the debian-installer maintainers and/or contact them on irc to see if someone has time to update the installer, and then wait for a new daily build.

Problem 3: (workaround exists) Serial console.

Connecting my USB-to-TTL UART/serial adapter to pins 6, 8, and 10 of the rockpro64 (described here) established communication, but the serial line settings were wrong. At 115200 bps, booting yielded a little garbage, then several lines of readable text, then a lot more garbage. At 1500000 bps, only garbage was received for the entire boot sequence.

I found this report that the boot firmware runs the console at 115200 while the Debian installer runs at 1500000, which was helpful information, but it didn't explain why 1500000 bps didn't work at all.

It turns out the 1.5 Mbps speed is too fast for the CP2102 chip that is used on many USB-to-serial adapters, including mine. (My adapter was advertised as supporting that speed, but I suppose that was false advertising.)

Workaround: Reconfigure the installer. I mounted the SD card on my computer, opened the extlinux/extlinux.conf file in a text editor, and added this text on its own line at the end of the default boot stanza (the section that starts with "label l0"): 

• Tell the installer to create the /boot partition on the same SD card that contains the installer image. This becomes partition 2 on that card.
  
• Set the bootable flag on partition 2.
  
• After installing, create the boot/dtbs/rockchip directory on partition 2.
  
• Copy boot/dtbs/rockchip/rk3399-rockpro64-v2.dtb from partition 1 (the installer partition) to the same directory on partition 2.
  
• Create the /extlinux directory on partition 2.
  
• Create an extlinux/extlinux.conf file in that directory on parition 2, with this content: (The value after root= must match what the installer says in its "You will need to boot manually" message.)
  

• Mount the installer SD card on a computer, and create a file called preseed.cfg in the root directory, containing this text:
  

• Tell the installer about the preseed configuration by appending preseed/file=/media/preseed.cfg to the  kernel command line. Together with the argument we added earlier for the serial console speed, the append line should look like this:
  

• Boot from the installer SD card and proceed through the installation process, but stop at the "Finish the installation" screen. Do not press the <Continue> button yet.
  
• Switch away from the installer's virtual screen to a terminal screen, by pressing Control+A and then 2.
  
• Start a shell in the newly installed filesystem (which is already mounted at /target) by running these commands:
  

• Add these lines to the end of /etc/apt/sources.list:
  

• Create a file called /etc/apt/preferences.d/unstable-rockpro64.pref containing this text:
  

• Upgrade the newly installed system's kernel packages to the latest available from the unstable suite, using these commands:
  

• Exit the installed filesystem environment:
  

• Return to the installer's virtual screen, by pressing Control+A and then 1.
  
• Finally, press the <Continue> button on the "Finish the installation" screen.