Hi, love my pbp, Manjaro KDE plasma (last month download) on emmi. Cannot get it to boot from sd. I took off the back cover, switched the emmi off, and was able to boot an sd with Armbian Debian xfce 5. When I replaced cover and rebooted with the emmi switched back on, the sd was ignored again. So, the boot order does not begin with the spi, and then the sd, as stated in the documentation. I suppose that if the spi is blank, the system tries first the emmi and then the sd.
How do I get the sd first order? Isn't that how it is supposed to work? Install what you want on the fast memory and then try out different os's with the sd card, always able to revert to the emmi when the sd card is removed?
This should have an easy fix, but it seems to be a source of confusion to noobies (that's me). Thanks for advice.
07-19-2021, 11:27 PM
(This post was last modified: 07-19-2021, 11:36 PM by wdt.)
In this case, the uboot on the emmc is not playing well with the OS on the SD
There are 2 different boot orders
1st, the boot rom, with limited memory, only that on cpu, searches SPI, emmc, SD
It searches for idbloader at 64 sectors in, for the byte signature, this sets up memory on board
Then, on same media uboot is loaded (now that there is enough memory to load it)
uboot, nearly always, alters the boot order,, for example
strings uboot.img |grep -i boot_target
boot_targets=mmc1 nvme0 usb0 mmc0 pxe dhcp ,,,, (mmc1 is SD, mmc0 is emmc)
uboot searches for boot.scr OR extlinux.conf OR bootaa64.efi
manjaro does have a BSP uboot in its repository, that might work
You do have to manually install it, and do make a backup of extlinux.conf 1st of all
Some of the earlier versions overwrote extlinux WITHOUT making a backup,,
and the new extlinux was incorrect, I don't know if that has been fixed
--edit--
manually install,, packman just puts the files in /boot (idbloader, uboot, trust AND overwrite extlinux))
and you have to then dd them to right place
(07-19-2021, 10:07 PM)straightwalker Wrote: Hi, love my pbp, Manjaro KDE plasma (last month download) on emmi. Cannot get it to boot from sd. I took off the back cover, switched the emmi off, and was able to boot an sd with Armbian Debian xfce 5. When I replaced cover and rebooted with the emmi switched back on, the sd was ignored again. So, the boot order does not begin with the spi, and then the sd, as stated in the documentation. I suppose that if the spi is blank, the system tries first the emmi and then the sd.
How do I get the sd first order? Isn't that how it is supposed to work? Install what you want on the fast memory and then try out different os's with the sd card, always able to revert to the emmi when the sd card is removed?
This should have an easy fix, but it seems to be a source of confusion to noobies (that's me). Thanks for advice.
Which distro is on your SD?
The Manjaro U-boot is known to give issues with other distros.
And sometimes it only works from a restart and not from cold boot.
Distros based on the latest Armbian Buster should be able to boot from SD, as indicated by someone from Q4OS.
https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?...3#pid96373
Thank you, jiyong. The armbian focal xfce on sd does boot if I disable the onboard emmc. Thanks, wdt, that explains a lot. I think I saw elsewhere on the forum the dd statements for placing the dbloader and uboot files. I will be sure to backup the extlinux.conf file before trying.
>I will be sure to backup the extlinux.conf file before trying.
Even earlier, 1st thing, before pacman, then compare the 2 before rebooting
I have found that often--restart-- is ...problematic, often hangs
problem solved, more or less
I searched for uboot in the software update screen and found a manjaro uboot that had a recent date. I backed up the files in /boot and then pressed "reinstall" on the update screen, held my breath and rebooted after the reinstall. Manjaro KDE plasma login screen came up as usual, even though the Armbian SD (focal xfce 5.) was loaded in the micro slot. So, the reinstall did not change the boot order. Disappointing. However, some time later I restarted the Manjaro, and the Armbian loaded! Quite surprised, I fooled around with the Armbian (seemed in good working order, generally as snappy as the KDE) and shut everything down.
After a pause, I started up again and got the usual Manjaro login screen. This time, I did not log in. I pressed the restart choice instead. Armbian loaded again, perfectly. So, no problem. I press the power button and either log in to Manjaro or choose restart and log in to Armbian.
I think that the reinstalled uboot is responsible for this, but I'm not sure.
Thanks for the help. Would have been lost without it.
I should add that when I first got the pbp some combo of downloads and installations bricked everything. I ended up having to flash zeroes to the SPI (took a couple of days) and then installed Manjaro KDE directly to the emmc (using another machine and the usb-emmc stick & Etcher). So, it was a bit out of control, but as far as I know, I ended up with a clean Manjaro KDE on the emmc, a blanked out SPI, and an SD with a clean Armbian Focal xfce 5. When I disabled the emmc, the Armbian loaded perfectly, but it would not load with the emmc enabled. So, I'm guessing that it was the new uboot that made the difference.
It may have changed, but AFAIK, in manjaro pacman
does NOT install the uboot files in the 1st 16M, where they are supposed to be located,
but just dumps them into /boot
If it is mainline,, the files will be idbloader.img and u-boot.itb
There may also be a file,, INSTALL that gives instructions about the dd command
IOW,, the install is not really an install, only 1/2 an install
-----
Nothing will end up on the SPI, unless you deliberately write to it,
/dev/mt0 or some such (it is not a trivial procedure)
Manjaro has a BSP uboot in its repository, which could be useful.
It must be manually installed, and extlinux must be backed up.
conf First and foremost,
I'm not sure whether this has been resolved, but some of the previous versions overwrote extlinux WITHOUT generating a backup, and the new extlinux was inaccurate.
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boot order
