Good Morning Pineland -

First, I am not really a noob even though this issue will sound like it! I have used Linux almost 20 years and ARM chips about 5...

Got my new Pinebook64 Pro a few days ago and love it. Couldn't wait to try some other distros. But I could not get it to boot from the MicroSD any way I tried. Ran updates, etc. to no avail. Then I tried the keyboard update for ANSI keyboard and it seemed to run fine, and requested a reboot.

After the reboot, the keyboard is mapped completely differently and I can't even enter the username or password.

I booted with an external keyboard, which works fine, and checked the keyboard setup, which was still reporting US English. I added a second layout, deleted the US English, and re-added US English. No dice.

So I guess my questions are:

• How do I get the correct keyboard layout back?
  
• And, once I do that, how do I get the MicroSD to boot?
  

Whereas there are a number of problems commonly reported, such as weak WiFi, no sound, unable to set the time, keyboard and trackpad issues, etc., those are all most likely due to software and firmware.  Issues with docks and dongles could be either software or hardware problems.  This thread is to help keep track of electrical and mechanical issues that cannot be addressed through software or firmware.

1) The NVMe SSD interface adapter sold in the Pine Store did not fit.  It was announced that a repair kit would be shipped.  When will it ship? Does the adapter that is currently in the Pine store work, or is it the same one that doesn't work?

2) The serial console adapter sold in the Pine Store is apparently the wrong voltage and the wrong chipset for the PBP.  Which 3.3V adapters have the correct chipset?

3) We need a Bill of Materials for mechanical parts, including specificity for screws, spacers, and the CPU heat transfer pad.

4) There are reports of the plastic underneath the USB ports breaking.

5) There are reports of the battery discharging while connected to external power via barrel port or USB-C.   What is the maximum amount of current that the PBP can safely use from external power?

6) There are reports of various high-pitched or whining noises that seem related to the PBP's power supply circuitry.

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