NOOBS

[Bluesman]

Just received my Rock64. Is it possible to boot from USB hard drive?

[MarkHaysHarris777]

Just received my Rock64. Is it possible to boot from USB hard drive?

No, not really.  There is no eufi, nor bios, in the Pinebook. Consequently you cannot boot the typical canonical linux thumb drives, etc;

However, you can boot from SD card, and you can write the images to the internal eMMC module !  Also, it is possible to run parts (if not all) of your /rootfs from usb storage.  

[stuartiannaylor]

Just received my Rock64. Is it possible to boot from USB hard drive?

No, not really.  There is no eufi, nor bios, in the Pinebook. Consequently you cannot boot the typical canonical linux thumb drives, etc;

However, you can boot from SD card, and you can write the images to the internal eMMC module !  Also, it is possible to run parts (if not all) of your /rootfs from usb storage.  

http://opensource.rock-chips.com/images/...170321.pdf

1.2 System Boot RK3328 provides system boot from off-chip devices such as SDMMC card, eMMC memory, serial nand or nor flash. When boot code is not ready in these devices, also provide system RK3328 TRM-Part1 Copyright ©2017 FuZhou Rockchip Electronics Co., Ltd. 14 code download into them by USB OTG interface. All of the boot code will be stored in internal bootrom. The following is the whole boot procedure for boot code, which will be stored in bootrom in advance. The following features are supports.  Support system boot from the following device:  Serial Nor Flash, 1bit data width  eMMC Interface, 8bits data with  SDMMC Card, 4bits data with  Support system code download by USB OTG

I did read and can not find the quote by tkaiser on the armbian forum.

Its not implemented but the RK3328 is capable of running https://github.com/ARM-software/arm-trusted-firmware

TKaiser http://www.cnx-software.com/2017/06/08/r...d-usb-3-0/

Funnily one result of ‘Armbian board bring up’ adventure could be that something like Armbian isn’t necessary any more afterwards. There’s 16 MB of SPI NOR flash on thise device which can hold ATF (ARM trusted firmware) and UEFI (including applications) so once software support is finished Pine Inc can start to pre-populate the SPI flash with a bootloader that allows to boot any Server Base System Architecture (SBSA) compliant 64-bit distro (compare with PC world where hardware initialization and configurations happens in BIOS/EFI and OS runs device agnostic above). Then also no need for SD card or eMMC any more since the OS can be loaded from USB or network too.

[fire219]

I think Mark got his wires crossed.

As of right now, you could have the kernel on SD or eMMC, and the root filesystem on USB.

However, after the SPI flash bootloader is ready, it should be possible to boot completely from USB. But that's not quite ready yet.

[MarkHaysHarris777]

I think Mark got his wires crossed.

As of right now, you could have the kernel on SD or eMMC, and the root filesystem on USB.

However, after the SPI flash bootloader is ready, it should be possible to boot completely from USB. But that's not quite ready yet.

... the question is answered correctly as asked by the OP, the way he asked it.  SPI flash does not work yet, and even when it does work,  although the SPI can load from USB,  it cannot load USB operating system thumb drives;  only the USB operating system thumb drives for our images!   But this is a mute point, since SPI flash does not work yet.

Also, having the /rootfs on USB is not the same as booting from USB, obviously.

[fire219]

I think Mark got his wires crossed.

As of right now, you could have the kernel on SD or eMMC, and the root filesystem on USB.

However, after the SPI flash bootloader is ready, it should be possible to boot completely from USB. But that's not quite ready yet.

... the question is answered correctly as asked by the OP, the way he asked it.  SPI flash does not work yet, and even when it does work,  although the SPI can load from USB,  it cannot load USB operating system thumb drives;  only the USB operating system thumb drives for our images!   But this is a mute point, since SPI flash does not work yet.

Also, having the /rootfs on USB is not the same as booting from USB, obviously.

Was referring to this when I said your wires were crossed...

There is no eufi, nor bios, in the Pinebook.

[MarkHaysHarris777]

Was referring to this when I said your wires were crossed...

There is no eufi, nor bios, in the Pinebook.

oh, ok...  the reason for the comment was to make sure that everyone viewing ( noobs and everyone ) that what allows most notebooks to boot from the usb port ( most modern x86 systems ) is either eufi, or bios.  Since the Pinebook is missing both of those ( not to mention its also embedded arm ) booting from usb in the classical sense of the word is simply not possible.

[martinayotte]

Using my Pine64 with Armbian Mainline and proper UBoot, I've attached a SPI-NOR on SPI bus, I'm able to boot from USB dongle or USB drive.
So, it could be possible/doable with Pinebook too, but would required a lot of work to backport all required changes into a Legacy build.

[MarkHaysHarris777]

Was referring to this when I said your wires were crossed...

There is no eufi, nor bios, in the Pinebook.

oh, ok...  the reason for the comment was to make sure that everyone viewing ( noobs and everyone ) that what allows most notebooks to boot from the usb port ( most modern x86 systems ) is either eufi, or bios.  Since the Pinebook is missing both of those ( not to mention its also embedded arm ) booting from usb in the classical sense of the word is simply not possible.

   


Martinayotte makes a good point !   ... but keep in mind, I'm not talking about what could be done in the future of possibilities;  I'm simply trying to answer the question, "is it possible to boot the Pinebook from usb,"  and this assuming the classical sense of the conversation when someone typically asks if they can boot a notebook from usb !

You've heard me mention in the past that I'm a card carrying member of the FSF;  well, in the pic above you can see the cards I'm talking about laying on my Pinebook keyboard!   I am FSF hacker #9604;  and when you're a hacker with the FSF your membership card is an official usb boot stick !   ... in this case, my cards ( you get to see both sides ) contain Trisquel Linux a completely free blobless OS gnu+linux system. 

And now to emphasize the point...  in the classical sense of the OPs question ( and many have this question ) if I put my membership card ( FSF ) into any one of my notebooks I can bootup Trisquel Linux ...  well, except for my Pinebook;  because these cards will NEVER bootup in the Pinebook -- not now nor in the future ever !