Fix for Armbian not booting on PBP from eMMC

[agreenbhm]

I just finally found a solution for this and wanted to share at a high-level. 

In short: there's something not right about the DTB file from Armbian.  I replaced the Armbian file "/boot/dtb/rockchip/rk3399-pinebook-pro.dtb" with the file "/usr/lib/linux-image-5.<x>.<x>/rockchip/rk3399-pinebook-pro.dtb" from Kali and it boots like a champ after that.

After getting it to boot my 2.4ghz wifi worked but 5ghz did not.  Download the 3 files here to your /usr/lib/firmware/brcm folder: https://gitlab.com/kalilinux/build-scrip...rmware/pbp

[akront]

that worked well thanks. something is wrong with latest armbian dtb for pinebookpro

also the 5GHz did not work out of the box but worked with your fix, quality

thanks

[ajtravis]

Hi,

I've had a lot of issues with booting both the Pinebook Pro and Rockpro64 from eMMC, but *finally* discovered that the problems began when I upgraded to the 5.15 kernel. Downgrading, and pinning, to the 5.10 kernel fixes the problems booting from eMMC and *also* fixes ALL the problems I had with the Pine64 docking station not working! Incidentally, the HDMI on the dock does NOT work if using USB-C PD to power the Pinebook Pro: It only works if I use the 5V barrel connector to power the Pinebook Pro and power the dock from the Pinebook. The VGA display does work when using USB-C PD, though. I changed kernels using "armbian-config" and 'froze' the Armbian 'firmware' settings, but this failed to pin the packages and I broke it again as soon as I did an upgrade so I pinned the packages manually:

cat /etc/apt/preferences
Package: linux-dtb-current-rockchip64
Pin: version 21.08.2
Pin-Priority: 1001

Package: linux-headers-current-rockchip64
Pin: version 21.08.2
Pin-Priority: 1001

Package: linux-image-current-rockchip64
Pin: version 21.08.2
Pin-Priority: 1001


AFAIK, "armbian-config" should do this automatically, but doesn't...

This is the kernel I'm running now:

inux pinebook-pro 5.10.63-rockchip64 #21.08.2 SMP PREEMPT Wed Sep 8 10:57:23 UTC 2021 aarch64 aarch64 aarch64 GNU/Linux

Might be worth comparing the dtb's?

Bye,

  Tony.

[pineymousepad]

Even if you fix boot, Armbians apt updater is broken big time at the moment. Dev in forums is basically telling ppl to f off.

[igorp]

Dev in forums is basically telling ppl to f off

It is your stupid shopping decision and not devs in forums.

[TRS-80]

the file "/usr/lib/linux-image-5.<x>.<x>/rockchip/rk3399-pinebook-pro.dtb" from Kali

I have been poking around their sources, but so far unable to locate this file. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[diederik]

the file "/usr/lib/linux-image-5.<x>.<x>/rockchip/rk3399-pinebook-pro.dtb" from Kali

I have been poking around their sources, but so far unable to locate this file.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I don't have any specific Kali knowledge, but I have reason to believe there's some similarities between Kali and Debian ... which likely means it's just a compiled upstream dts file, which the kernel package extracts to /usr/lib/linux-image-<kernel-version>-arm64/rockchip/ directory.

[TRS-80]

Thanks for the pointer, @diederik  , however the Kali DTS/DTB ended up being kind of a red herring.

What was more important was getting some sort of bootloader on the SPI.  I used tow-boot, but that's just a lightly skinned u-boot really.  Anyway, the full details can be found in the following thread:

Getting Armbian working on second batch (Mid 2022) PineBook Pro

If anyone still wants to look at the DTB diff, you can follow the link in the 4th paragraph of above post where it says 'In this post, I will continue from where I left off here' (well, I ended up deciding to link it directly from here as well ).