Hi,
I received my new PineBook Pro yesterday, and can't wait to get stuck in and put it to work. Apologies if this question has been answered somewhere already, I did have a look around and couldn't find a definite answer.
The new PineBook has Manjaro 20.04 installed by default on the EMMC. This works great. The issue comes when I try and boot from SD card. Every image that I've attempted to boot from SD so far has resulted in a black screen, although I'm fairly certain that the system has booted as on some images I hear the startup sound/chime, so it looks like a display/graphics issue. I've tried different SD cards, including ones that I know work on other SBCs. And I've tried several images so far:
- aryufans bionic and focal images
- armbian
- Manjaro 20.04
The only image that I've had working from SD card is the Manjaro image.
After having a dig around I found some references to the issue which looks like it could be an issue with Manjaros uboot and a post here but the proposed work around doesn't seem to work. I'm guessing quite a few people will come across this as the new PineBook Pros arrive with people.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
I have the same issue. I wanted to have something Debian or Ubuntu based on my Pinebook Pro, but so far nothing seems to be working. Now I have Bionic Mate flashed to the card (Class 10, 16GB), I heard the sound, when MATE starts up but the screen is black...
I tried so far Fedora, Armbian (both Deb and Ubi), Android, and now Bionic MATE but none of these worked. The only OS, which actually booted up was Debian desktop by mrfixit2001. But other's say that is no good to use... Jeez!
What I do usually:
1. DD the card to have it emptied, format it to GPT and then to EXT4
2. DD the new image with BS=4M
Nothing works, no screen. What do I do wrong?
06-04-2020, 11:02 AM
(This post was last modified: 06-04-2020, 11:03 AM by wdt.)
Err,, I am more and more convinced that mrfixit's Uboot is the best
If mrfixit will boot from SD, it's really simple
(note /dev/emmc = /dev/mmcblkX, be sure to use lsblk to get RIGHT X)
1 Save mbr or gpt mbr (the mbr on emmc),, either sector 0 or sector 0-33 (using dd of course)
2 dd if=/dev/SDcard of=/dev/emmc bs=1M count=16
3 sync
4 restore mbr or gpt mbr, again using dd
(06-04-2020, 11:02 AM)wdt Wrote: Err,, I am more and more convinced that mrfixit's Uboot is the best
If mrfixit will boot from SD, it's really simple
(note /dev/emmc = /dev/mmcblkX, be sure to use lsblk to get RIGHT X)
1 Save mbr or gpt mbr (the mbr on emmc),, either sector 0 or sector 0-33 (using dd of course)
2 dd if=/dev/SDcard of=/dev/emmc bs=1M count=16
3 sync
4 restore mbr or gpt mbr, again using dd
Thanks @ wdt ,
I'll give that a go! I started going down the rabbit hole of trying to compare differences between the different u-boots out there. From what I can see there are three main versions of uboot used in the pinebook pro images:
- mrfixit (forked from rockchip, with patches)
- ayufan (forked from rockchip, with patches)
- the one that manjaro uses (Forked from mainline uboot with a few patches)
I have done a bit of uboot development with work (for a custom NVIDIA SOC based board) and would quite like to try and get more familiar with the pinebook pro setup.
I too found that mrfixit's U-Boot seems to be the best. I moved from the default Debian to Manjaro and had problems with booting. Was almost ready to go back to the default Debian when someone suggested just going back to the default Debian's U-Boot. That seems to have solved all my known boot problems. I can boot Manjaro or Debian from the SD card.
--
Arwen Evenstar
Princess of Rivendale
(06-04-2020, 06:52 PM)Arwen Wrote: I too found that mrfixit's U-Boot seems to be the best. I moved from the default Debian to Manjaro and had problems with booting. Was almost ready to go back to the default Debian when someone suggested just going back to the default Debian's U-Boot. That seems to have solved all my known boot problems. I can boot Manjaro or Debian from the SD card.
Can you please explain in a noob friendly way, if I boot up from mrfixit's Debian release and flash the eMMC with DD I will be able to use Debian?
Or it just the U-Boot that needs to be updated? If so then how? Sorry, I am comfortable flashing stuff to SD cards since I have my PinePhone, but this is different and I don't want to mess up my PBP. 
(06-05-2020, 01:27 AM)cefre00 Wrote: (06-04-2020, 06:52 PM)Arwen Wrote: I too found that mrfixit's U-Boot seems to be the best. I moved from the default Debian to Manjaro and had problems with booting. Was almost ready to go back to the default Debian when someone suggested just going back to the default Debian's U-Boot. That seems to have solved all my known boot problems. I can boot Manjaro or Debian from the SD card.
Can you please explain in a noob friendly way, if I boot up from mrfixit's Debian release and flash the eMMC with DD I will be able to use Debian?
Or it just the U-Boot that needs to be updated? If so then how? Sorry, I am comfortable flashing stuff to SD cards since I have my PinePhone, but this is different and I don't want to mess up my PBP.
There is no need to flash debian or boot from it since you can get the files from https://github.com/mrfixit2001/updates_r...filesystem and write them to the eMMC with dd. See https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?...9#pid67159
There's also a stripped down script of the mrfixit update script, wittled down to specifically handle writing BSP u-boot files: https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pinebo...root_drive
(06-05-2020, 03:47 AM)khanku Wrote: (06-05-2020, 01:27 AM)cefre00 Wrote: (06-04-2020, 06:52 PM)Arwen Wrote: I too found that mrfixit's U-Boot seems to be the best. I moved from the default Debian to Manjaro and had problems with booting. Was almost ready to go back to the default Debian when someone suggested just going back to the default Debian's U-Boot. That seems to have solved all my known boot problems. I can boot Manjaro or Debian from the SD card.
Can you please explain in a noob friendly way, if I boot up from mrfixit's Debian release and flash the eMMC with DD I will be able to use Debian?
Or it just the U-Boot that needs to be updated? If so then how? Sorry, I am comfortable flashing stuff to SD cards since I have my PinePhone, but this is different and I don't want to mess up my PBP.
There is no need to flash debian or boot from it since you can get the files from https://github.com/mrfixit2001/updates_r...filesystem and write them to the eMMC with dd. See https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?...9#pid67159
Thank you very much! 
Now I am writing this from Bionic MATE. I got very nostalgic now, so I think once we have something official from Debian or Ubuntu with MATE, I'll switch from Manjaro. 
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