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+--- Thread: Pinebook picky about which EMMC will boot (/showthread.php?tid=17535)
Pinebook picky about which EMMC will boot - flatulent_piney - 10-30-2022
I have 2 pinebook pros which we will call PBA (which contains EMMCA_A) and PBB (which contains EMMC_B).
-PBA has had the keyboard replace and PBB has gotten the screen replaced.
-PBB did not want to boot properly after getting a new screen.
-I troubleshot the problem by swapping EMMC_B into PBA for testing. EMMC_B fired up and booted. I tried EMMC_A in PBB and got a proper boot after pressing the reset button.
-I swapped both EMMC back to original position. PBB needed to have the reset button pressed but booted EMMC_B just fine after that.
~2 weeks later
-PBB needs a reinstall of the OS on EMMC_B
-used USB/EMMC adapter to reflash the OS and now EMMC_B is no longer bootable on PBB, but works fine in PBA
-EMMC_A boots from PBB if the reset button is pressed. EMMC_B will NOT boot in PBB no matter how many times I press the reset button, but works fine in PBA
- I decided on a permanent EMMC swap to save myself some work. EMMC_A flashed with new image and placed into PBB will no longer work. Even after pressing the reset button. Now I cannot boot either EMMC from PBB (which is presumably still in good working order.)
I have a couple more troubleshooting tricks up my sleeve, but I am running out of ideas on this one and would like to know what the community thinks. PBA has the nvme adapter so I can use the manjaro-arm-flasher to flash the EMMC and see if that helps. Perhaps setting up the OS completely on PBA and then swapping to PBB might do the trick? Could the set up be causing the trouble? I also havent tried booting from SD or distros other than Manjaro, but I will try that stuff as I move through this issue.
RE: Pinebook picky about which EMMC will boot - wdt - 10-30-2022
Reset button? -- do you mean power button?
Do try to boot from SD
You (all of us) have NO IDEA what the flash controller is doing with the raw flash cells
Usually it all works OK
But sometimes it helps to blank the flash
Writing /dev/zero is not blanking, but a good 1st step
fstrim IS blanking, if it is working it may take more than a minute to return to the prompt,
this is good. repeat the command, it may not do it completely,,,
repeat until the prompt returns instantly (fstrim -v will give more info)
fstrim will only work on a filesystem, and not FAT,,,, so.....
write /dev/zero to the 1st GB,, fdisk 1 partition to as much of drive as possible
(as early as possible),, then ext2 that partition, then mount and fstrim it
OR if you have a windows machine, the formater from the SD association will also blank
(called something like SD_CardFormatter0500SetupEN.exe, version might be different)
RE: Pinebook picky about which EMMC will boot - flatulent_piney - 10-31-2022
yep, reset button. the one one the motherboard. Reset and recovery, right above the EMMC.
So here is where I have gotten:
- setting up the entire OS on PBA and moving that EMMC to PBB did not work at all
- old sd card with old version of manjaro will boot. Brand new card flashed with newest manjaro does not boot
- when old sdcard is in the slot it will randomly boot to EMMC (about 75%R chance boot to old version of manjaro 25% chance boots to EMMC)
- no LED of any kind unless I put the old sdcard in the sdslot
- I did write the EMMC with zeros and then used the shred option from the partion manager on my desktop. I will give it a shot with fstrim later if that is still advised.
As I said I will try with fstrim and see if that helps. I am also going to try older versions and other distros I just havent had time yet. I will continue to update this thread with my progress.
RE: Pinebook picky about which EMMC will boot - wdt - 10-31-2022
>- no LED of any kind unless I put the old sdcard in the sdslot
this suggests that there is no uboot on the emmc- maybe?
so... save emmc mbr,,,, copy 1st 16M from SD ->emmc,,,, restore mbr
also, that it boots sometimes from emmc suggests that the SD is slow,
that the uboot search does not find the boot config files on SD
Maybe with an emmc boot fsck the SD partitions?
(I am also assuming that GPT is not on any of this media, manjaro did not use GPT))
RE: Pinebook picky about which EMMC will boot - flatulent_piney - 11-01-2022
Quote:this suggests that there is no uboot on the emmc- maybe?
I tried copying the mbr from the working SD card but I am not sure I did it right .....mounted both book partitions and copied the working one to the non-working emmc. No joy. But your earlier comment got me to thinking about the uboot.... I flashed tow-boot to the spi and now everything works. Guess the spi got corrupted or something? Thank you for helping.
RE: Pinebook picky about which EMMC will boot - wdt - 11-01-2022
Maybe you don't understand?
The mbr is 1 (one) sector, often specific to THAT media (that it is on),, the very 1st sector
Uboot is at 8M, 2-3M big, idbloader (on SD/emmc) starts at 64 sectors (32K), about 1M big
When you copy (with dd) the 1st 16m, you also copy the SD mbr, it is likely not right
That is why you first of all,,save emmc mbr, and last, restore it
(or you could make note of sector numbers (eemc) and edit SD mbr to be correct FOR emmc, on emmc)
Be aware that uboot on SPI is different (location) than uboot on SD/emmc
RE: Pinebook picky about which EMMC will boot - ajtravis - 11-02-2022
(10-30-2022, 06:15 AM)flatulent_piney Wrote: [...]
I have a couple more troubleshooting tricks up my sleeve, but I am running out of ideas on this one and would like to know what the community thinks. PBA has the nvme adapter so I can use the manjaro-arm-flasher to flash the EMMC and see if that helps. Perhaps setting up the OS completely on PBA and then swapping to PBB might do the trick? Could the set up be causing the trouble? I also havent tried booting from SD or distros other than Manjaro, but I will try that stuff as I move through this issue.
Hi, I had similar problems after updating Armbian but I finally tracked the problem down to the 'firmware' version (kernel, dbd etc.): None of the Armbian releases with Linux kernels newer than 5.10 will boot from eMMC, but they boot fine from SD. If I downgrade the Armbian 'firmware' using "armbian-config" to a release using the 5.10 kernel, before installing it to eMMC, it will then boot and run from eMMC via "Tow-Boot" in SPI.
I can get the latest release of Manjaro to boot from SD, but it doesn't detect the eMMC as /dev/mmcblk2, so I can't use the "manjaro-arm-installer" to install it to eMMC. The latest release uses a 6.0 Linux kernel.
Try Armbian with a 5.10 kernel as I've described and see if it boots from eMMC. However, you are better off using "Tow-Boot" in SPI than trying to get it to boot directly from eMMC.
This is the current Manjaro with a 6.0 kernel booted from SD (Armbian present in eMMC, but not detected):
Code:
[root@pinebook-pro ~]# uname -a
Linux pinebook-pro 6.0.2-3-MANJARO-ARM #1 SMP PREEMPT Sun Oct 16 16:24:03 UTC 2022 aarch64 GNU/Linux
[root@pinebook-pro ~]# lsblk -f
NAME FSTYPE FSVER LABEL UUID FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
mmcblk1
├─mmcblk1p1 vfat FAT16 BOOT_MNJRO 7034-E65D 443.1M 9% /boot
└─mmcblk1p2 ext4 1.0 ROOT_MNJRO af018c04-7d54-4dc2-84f5-51da5012037b 22.6G 15% /
zram0 [SWAP]
nvme0n1 This is the Armbian I installed to eMMC with a 5.10 kernel and dbd (Manjaro SD present in /dev/mmcblk1):
Code:
Linux pinebook-pro 5.10.60-rockchip64 #21.08.1 SMP PREEMPT Wed Aug 25 18:56:55 UTC 2021 aarch64 aarch64 aarch64 GNU/Linux
root@pinebook-pro:~# lsblk -f
NAME FSTYPE FSVER LABEL UUID FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
mtdblock0
mmcblk2
└─mmcblk2p1 ext4 1.0 acd39700-8723-46ef-b204-b09d04e03f7e 47.7G 10% /var/log.hdd
/
mmcblk2boot0
mmcblk2boot1
mmcblk1
├─mmcblk1p1 vfat FAT16 BOOT_MNJRO 7034-E65D
└─mmcblk1p2 ext4 1.0 ROOT_MNJRO af018c04-7d54-4dc2-84f5-51da5012037b
zram0 [SWAP]
zram1 39.7M 8% /var/log
zram2
nvme0n1 HTH,
Tony.
RE: Pinebook picky about which EMMC will boot - wdt - 11-05-2022
If you read OP, both emmc were recognized,
I can say that plug in emmc have different standards,
I bought a 128G emmc from ameridroid that neither of my carriers recognized
I had to buy another, this one usb3
(also this 128G had no bootN sections on it)
Something to do with the speed I think
RE: Pinebook picky about which EMMC will boot - ajtravis - 11-05-2022
(11-05-2022, 12:32 PM)wdt Wrote: If you read OP, both emmc were recognized,
I can say that plug in emmc have different standards,
I bought a 128G emmc from ameridroid that neither of my carriers recognized
I had to buy another, this one usb3
(also this 128G had no bootN sections on it)
Something to do with the speed I think
Hi,
I'm using the OEM 64GB eMMC module that was installed into my PBP by Pine64.
After (much) further experimentation, I can now boot older versions of Manjaro that do detect the PBP eMMC.
I've got the latest Armbian Jammy booting from eMMC by downgrading the kernel before flashing it to eMMC.
I believe this is either a kernel or dbd issue or may be both, because my hardware has not changed.
Bye,
Tony.