Edited on 27.03.2020 - due to Manjaro not using boot.scr anymore.

I have taken below steps to achieve booting from NVME. It can be probably mirrored on Debian with some small changes since Manjaro is using boot.scr and Debian extlinux.conf.


First download a package: uboot-pinebookpro-2017.09-2-aarch64.pkg.tar.xz. It has uboot files with @pcm720 patches included. Current Manjaro uboot package does not have nvme support enabled. This is subject to change.

1. Extract the files from the package: idbloader.img, trust.img, uboot.img.
2. Write uboot files (pay attention to your device - it has to be eMMC !!! In my case /dev/mmcblk2):

"dd if=idbloader.img of=/dev/mmcblk2 bs=32k seek=1 conv=fsync"
"dd if=uboot.img of=/dev/mmcblk2 bs=64k seek=128 conv=fsync"
"dd if=trust.img of=/dev/mmcblk2 bs=64k seek=192 conv=fsync"

3. Create partition on your NVME drive to rsync filesystem from eMMC.
4. Mount the partition - lets say in /mnt
5. "cd /mnt"
6. "mkdir dev proc sys mnt"
7. "rsync -aHxv --numeric-ids --progress /* /mnt --exclude=/dev --exclude=/proc --exclude=/sys --exclude=/mnt"
8. chroot to your newly synced partition "chroot /mnt".
9. "cd /boot/extlinux"
9. Edit extlinux.conf and change "root=LABEL=ROOT" to "root=/dev/nvme0n1p1" (if your new partition is first on disk).
10. Exit chroot "exit".
11. On eMMC !!! Rename extlinux directory to something else eg. extlinux.old.
12. Reboot machine - you should boot from NVME.
13. After sucessful reboot check "lsblk" it should be something like:

[root@pbp ~]# lsblk
NAME         MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
mmcblk2      179:0    0  58.2G  0 disk
└─mmcblk2p1  179:1    0  58.2G  0 part
mmcblk2boot0 179:32   0     4M  1 disk
mmcblk2boot1 179:64   0     4M  1 disk
nvme0n1      259:0    0 894.3G  0 disk
└─nvme0n1p1  259:1    0    20G  0 part /


In case you want to start the system from eMMC just rename extlinux.old to extlinux on eMMC. Opposite to what has been done in step 11.

Enjoy !

After reading the new blog post, I really liked the idea of having the pine logo on the camera/flash protector.

However, I also noticed that it is a single piece of glass that covers both the camera and the flash. This is weird because almost every phone on the market uses distinct pieces to cover the flash and cameras.

I suspect they do this because the light from the flash can reflect and refract directly into the camera which may screw up the pictures. As this is just my speculation it would be nice if someone with a developer phone could test it (I will test it with my braveheart when it arrives if no one can do it sooner).

If this is an actual issue, the solution could be as simple as "breaking" the glass in half (for example the nokia 5 smartphone does this).

The January Community Update is up. Starting this thread if you rather ask questions here than in the blog comments.

Hi all, Ive found that .appimage does not work I'm trying to use cura.appimage but it does not work just like openscad.appimage is there any way to fix that maybe I'm missing something.. somebody having any luck with bouth programs ?

I flashed Bionic onto the eMMC and now SD boot is no longer working.  I think the uboot is the issue, but I do not know how to go about fixing it.  Ideas?

Hi All,

Strange solution occurred this morning.

I've been trying out different OS on my PBP to see which I may stick with. So far have Mate Bionic image on the Emmc (from the tutorial instrcutions) and have SD cards with mate, chromium, manjaro.

Strangely I just shutdown from manjaro sd card and now the PBP will only power on with that specific SD Card in the slot.

i.e. I get 0 response (not even an orange LED) when pressing and holding the power button with any of the following attempts:

1. No SD Card boot - Ubuntu Mate from EMMC  (worked last night)
   
2. SD Card with Bootable Bionic Mate image
   
3. SD Card with Chromium Image
   

Hi to everybody I'm proud owner of the pinebook pro but I have some issues with it ..
So the problem is till now the CPU frequency monitor (left from the clock) was showing 1.99 GHz max but some how it show the scale only up to 1.51 GHz even on Performance mode.. I've try $ sudo lscpu | grep MHz the result was CPU max MHz:         1512.0000  CPU min MHz:           408.0000. (clearly it shows only the little cores but that's funny how till now always it was showing 1.99 GHz and now it goes only up to 1.51 can someone of you test the command sudo lscpu | grep and share the results) and give me some feedback what the cpu frequency monitor shows ?


thanks

I'm having great fun dorking around with the Pinebook Pro, I haven't recompiled the Linux kernel since about 2005 or so, so it's been a while. It's great fun to try and get everything up to speed, I appreciate all the work that went into this project.

So far, I have gotten the 

- firmware updates (trackpad)
- default image updates from MrFixit
- package updates from the Debian repo
- all the other password changes, directory renames, etc

Then, of course, more dorking around. I recompiled the kernel on my x86 laptop, to enable DM_CRYPT kernel so I could encrypt my home directly with LUKS, encrypted the SD card I had installed and was finally able to create the filesystem then mount under LUKS. 

After several reboots fiddling with the /etc/crypttab and /etc/fstab the Pinebook does not boot. I dont get to the splash screen, I have read in the wiki that I should reset the motherboard so I have ordered a very small screwdriver set from Amazon to reset it. 

It has booted one time after I let it be for about 5 minutes awaiting the splash screen, which makes me believe I have some type of connector issue. After all, a faulty kernel wouldn't boot after any length of time. I guess without some type of on-screen message I am really looking for some more advanced troubleshooting techniques?

T

Since the PinePhone Braveheart edition does not come with the AC(Wall) adapter I figured maybe we could start up a comparison of results/charge times for consideration.

The only adapters I have are from my current Personal(P30 Lite) and work phone (S9) and previous phone(Essential PH-1)

The S9 Adapter does not specify wattage just says 9.0V == 1.67A or 5.0V == 2.0A

The P30 Lite Adapter does not specify wattage just says 5V == 2A or 9V == 2A

The Essential adapter clearly says 27W 5V == 3A or 9V == 3A not sure I'll use this one since Pine says 15w...

I'll update this post with charge times once i have my device in hand.

I'm no electrician so those numbers mean nothing to me. I also realize that those are note actual = signs but it's the closest thing i could find to represent.

As of the latest firmware update for the keyboard and touchpad that is miles better for the keyboard, users have been reporting a sort of input lag with the touchpad. With the right libinput tweaks, it is a little annoying but usable.

I too did some experimenting, but did not get very far.

The keyboard is driven by the SH68F83, which presents two interfaces over USB - one for keyboard and one for touchpad. The touchpad is connected to the SH68F83 over an i2c bus. An eeprom is also connected to the SH68F83 i2c bus and is used only for persisting the kill switches states. When the touchpad is touched, interrupts are fired alerting the SH68F83 to read registers and proxy data back to the OS over USB.


@xalius has been attempting to reverse the the firmware that runs on the SH68F83, a USB/keyboard MCU with an 8051 core.

How I suspect the keyboard and touchpad firmware update process works:

1. A firmware fw_tp_update.hex is flashed to the SH68F83. This firmware appears to be named XW-TPUTOOL_TV3-US-H1-12-00.
   
2. The touchpad update firmware receives tpfw.bin over USB and then flashes it to the touchpad IC (likely over i2c at 400KHz, but could be some OOB bitbang over the i2c bus)
   
3. The fw_ansi.hex or fw_iso.hex are then flashed back to the SH68F83.
   

• Get a block of data from the USB transceiver. Using the TX* and RX* SFRs.
  
• Fill XPAGE, IB_OFFSET, and IB_DATA SFRs with the flash sector, offset into the sector, and data to write.
  
• Kick off a state "gate" by sequentially filling IB_CON1, IB_CON2, IB_CON3, IB_CON4, and IB_CON5 with a magic numbers.
  

• A proper dissassembly of the SH68F83's 8051 code from the firmware .hex files.
  
• A dump of sniffed i2c traffic during a firmware update of the touchpad.
  
• A dump of sniffed i2c traffic while using the touchpad, with correlation to what was happening on the touch pad (tapping, two fingers, scroll, pressing the buttons, etc.)
  
• What the heck is the HLK H2168? Datasheets or any info anyone can find about this chip are greatly appreciated.