Updated stock Manjaro, now won't boot (brick?)

[manjarens]

There was an issue with a u-boot update on manjaro arm sometime back in October. This is what I had to do to fix it:

https://forum.manjaro.org/t/arm-testing-update-2021-10-12-thunderbird-kde-frameworks-uboot-yay-and-kernels/86177/18

just in case this may help some other newb like yours truly:
To fix the uboot 2021.10 issue, you have to disable the eMMC on the board switch, then insert an SD card with a recent manjaro arm image on it, power up the pinebook pro, and while the u-boot countdown is rolling you flip the eMMC switch back, so it boots from your existing installation.
Then reinstall the uboot-pinebookpro package from pamac (doing so will downgrade it to 2021.07, as of present date) and run the dd commands listed on pamac’s update log.

Hopefully it might help.

[wdt]

Most arm devices get a factory image, and maybe a update, also a factory image
All debugged and mostly reliable
Only SBC and hacked set-top boxes get a variety of os's, you see posts
in the tv box forums about which is the pin to short emmc to force a sd boot
Given the variety of hardware that uboot runs on, it is amazing it does so well
---
So, if you can get a sd card boot, that will be easiest, after that not so clear what is best
I think personally, I would try to set (edit) extlinux.conf back to the previous version
There might be a backup extlinux.conf that just requires a (2) renames (ie, save new one as bak2)

[KC9UDX]

Apparently my wife's PBP (which was received early when Manjaro was first the default OS) was "soft bricked" by a recent Manjaro update. I solved it yesterday by booting a new copy of Manjaro from an SD card. I dd'd the SD card's U-Boot to the eMMC. I edited extlinux.conf so that Manjaro would boot from the correct partition. Then I mounted and chrooted to the eMMC, and did a pacman update. For some reason I had to repeat what I did with the U-Boot. But now it boots and updates without issue.

For all my vitriol against linux and especially Arch, it was relatively painless. Especially better than just prior taking my wife's car to the car wash and having the window fall inside the door when trying to pay for the car wash. Of course, after waiting in a long queue to get to the payment console, only to have to convince everyone behind me to let me back out.

[pineymousepad]

Is there a proper guide somewhere someone would so kindly please point me to on how to "boot with SD Card"? Is the eMMC adapter required for this?
Seriously I just did an pacman update and it bricked within first week of opening the PBP from the mail.... Wtf? If this system is so vulnerable to bricking from a simple update shouldn't have this shipped with the eMMC adapter??

[wdt]

Is there a proper guide somewhere someone would so kindly please point me to on how to "boot with SD Card"? Is the eMMC adapter required for this?
Seriously I just did an pacman update and it bricked within first week of opening the PBP from the mail.... Wtf? If this system is so vulnerable to bricking from a simple update shouldn't have this shipped  with the eMMC adapter??

I assume you are using manjaro.....an update installs a new kernel, BUT only copies the uboot files to /boot
This is NOT installed, you have to do the dd commands to put the uboot files in 1st 16M (idbloader.img, uboot.itb)
So, on emmc, it still has 'old' uboot files, since emmc has priority in initial search these are still what are being used
(not any uboot files on SD)
After uboot loads the search priority changes, a bootable SD ahead of emmc
So, any SD that booted before will still likely boot
You do have a backup SD boot card??? If not, you should
If the old extlinux.conf was renamed to *.bak, then do some re-nameing to use previous kernel, previous extlinux
or else edit new one
NOTE: if you have any other SBC, do not, by accident put a uSD in that will boot, say A64, it will NOT work,
and it WILL soft brick and WILL need a hard reset, hold power button 20+s (from personal experience)
-----
No emmc adapter required, just expand,write suitable image to SD card (I reccomend mrfixit)
ie,,, xzcat some.image.xz |dd of=/dev/sd-card bs=1M....... (zcat if it is gz image)

[pineymousepad]

Is there a proper guide somewhere someone would so kindly please point me to on how to "boot with SD Card"? Is the eMMC adapter required for this?
Seriously I just did an pacman update and it bricked within first week of opening the PBP from the mail.... Wtf? If this system is so vulnerable to bricking from a simple update shouldn't have this shipped  with the eMMC adapter??

I assume you are using manjaro.....an update installs a new kernel, BUT only copies the uboot files to /boot
This is NOT installed, you have to do the dd commands to put the uboot files in 1st 16M (idbloader.img, uboot.itb)
So, on emmc, it still has 'old' uboot files, since emmc has priority in initial search these are still what are being used
(not any uboot files on SD)
After uboot loads the search priority changes, a bootable SD ahead of emmc
So, any SD that booted before will still likely boot
You do have a backup SD boot card??? If not, you should
If the old extlinux.conf was renamed to *.bak, then do some re-nameing to use previous kernel, previous extlinux
or else edit new one
NOTE: if you have any other SBC, do not, by accident put a uSD in that will boot, say A64, it will NOT work,
and it WILL soft brick and WILL need a hard reset, hold power button 20+s (from personal experience)
-----
No emmc adapter required, just expand,write suitable image to SD card (I reccomend mrfixit)
ie,,, xzcat some.image.xz |dd of=/dev/sd-card bs=1M....... (zcat if it is gz image)

Oh nice yeah ill try puting an image on a SDCard, I do just get a black screen with no command prompt when I power it on (without SDcard yet).. I appreciate your post, there a guide somewhere of video or photos of what you just said? Like the dd commands, im a bit concerned I might not do something right..

[wdt]

Be sure /dev/sd-card is "right"
Do lsblk both before and after you plug in sd carrier/adapter, note the difference AND the size

[jiyong]

Is there a proper guide somewhere someone would so kindly please point me to on how to "boot with SD Card"? Is the eMMC adapter required for this?
Seriously I just did an pacman update and it bricked within first week of opening the PBP from the mail.... Wtf? If this system is so vulnerable to bricking from a simple update shouldn't have this shipped  with the eMMC adapter??

I assume you are using manjaro.....an update installs a new kernel, BUT only copies the uboot files to /boot
This is NOT installed, you have to do the dd commands to put the uboot files in 1st 16M (idbloader.img, uboot.itb)
So, on emmc, it still has 'old' uboot files, since emmc has priority in initial search these are still what are being used
(not any uboot files on SD)
After uboot loads the search priority changes, a bootable SD ahead of emmc
So, any SD that booted before will still likely boot
You do have a backup SD boot card??? If not, you should
If the old extlinux.conf was renamed to *.bak, then do some re-nameing to use previous kernel, previous extlinux
or else edit new one
NOTE: if you have any other SBC, do not, by accident put a uSD in that will boot, say A64, it will NOT work,
and it WILL soft brick and WILL need a hard reset, hold power button 20+s (from personal experience)
-----
No emmc adapter required, just expand,write suitable image to SD card (I reccomend mrfixit)
ie,,, xzcat some.image.xz |dd of=/dev/sd-card bs=1M....... (zcat if it is gz image)

Oh nice yeah ill try puting an image on a SDCard, I do just get a black screen with no command prompt when I power it on (without SDcard yet).. I appreciate your post, there a guide somewhere of video or photos of what you just said? Like the dd commands, im a bit concerned I might not do something right..

Here is a video with the PineTab, but it should be similar with the Pinebook Pro: https://youtu.be/q9IldnmrcKg
You can start from 1:50 and the command is at around 3:30 and in the description of the video.
And you might have to replace zcat with xzcat.