Mobian won't boot after ton of updates

[bartgrefte]

Last night I fired up my PineTab after not having used it in some time. After having solved apt-get update "The following signatures were invalid..." Mobian had a ton (a little over a 1000) updates to install, after that was done I entered the reboot command.

Since then the only sign of life is the occasional clicking of the camera's when holding the power button (from 2-3 up to 10s), other than that nothing happens. No error, nothing.

Besides reflashing Mobian, are there any ways of figuring out why Mobian won't boot?

[johns]

Last night I fired up my PineTab after not having used it in some time. After having solved apt-get update "The following signatures were invalid..." Mobian had a ton (a little over a 1000) updates to install, after that was done I entered the reboot command.

Since then the only sign of life is the occasional clicking of the camera's when holding the power button (from 2-3 up to 10s), other than that nothing happens. No error, nothing.

Besides reflashing Mobian, are there any ways of figuring out why Mobian won't boot?

Make sure you are holding the power button down for a full 10s and then releasing it. I do sometimes have to do that more than once for it t boot.. This could be some user error on my part, but I think sometimes it's because it's actually on, so you have to hold the button long enough to turn it off, then again long enough to turn it on.

Do you have the UART cable?

Once when I couldn't get it to boot, I learned via the serial cable that it stopped booting because it needed an fsck. You could try booting it from a JumpDrive image and running fsck.

-john

[bartgrefte]

Make sure you are holding the power button down for a full 10s and then releasing it. I do sometimes have to do that more than once for it t boot.. This could be some user error on my part, but I think sometimes it's because it's actually on, so you have to hold the button long enough to turn it off, then again long enough to turn it on.

Yup, full 10 seconds.

Do you have the UART cable?

Once when I couldn't get it to boot, I learned via the serial cable that it stopped booting because it needed an fsck.

Unfortunately, no, though I might be able to diy it. At first glance it's basically a peace of headphone cable followed by a FTDI-like USB adapter.

You could try booting it from a JumpDrive image and running fsck.

That's an idea, never used JumpDrive before, now to find a MicroSD card that isn't in use...

[bartgrefte]

You could try booting it from a JumpDrive image and running fsck.

Well, for some reason several W10 installs are incapable of finding a driver for the RNDIS network set up by JumpDrive, so tried Ubuntu, that worked. Running fsck through telnet didn't work, said it couldn't find /etc/fstab (yikes). Then ran fsck from Ubuntu, didn't show anything wrong with the partitions on the PineTabs eMMC, still no boot.

Gonna diy a debug cable once I find a cable with the right connector.

[johns]

You could try booting it from a JumpDrive image and running fsck.

Well, for some reason several W10 installs are incapable of finding a driver for the RNDIS network set up by JumpDrive, so tried Ubuntu, that worked. Running fsck through telnet didn't work, said it couldn't find /etc/fstab (yikes). Then ran fsck from Ubuntu, didn't show anything wrong with the partitions on the PineTabs eMMC, still no boot.

Gonna diy a debug cable once I find a cable with the right connector.

From JumpDrive, you may also be able to check system logs on the PineTab's eMMC to look for errors. (Which may or may not show anything, depending on how far the device is getting in the boot process..)

-john

[bartgrefte]

From JumpDrive, you may also be able to check system logs on the PineTab's eMMC to look for errors. (Which may or may not show anything, depending on how far the device is getting in the boot process..)

-john

I improvised a debug-cable with a computerspeaker-cable and Adafruit FTDI Friend. From what I can tell from the output, Mobian seems to boot (at least partially), it ends with

Code:

[    4.325948] WARNING: CPU: 3 PID: 0 at kernel/context_tracking.c:128 ct_kernel_exit.constprop.0+0x8c/0x94
[    4.335452] Modules linked in:
[    4.338845] CPU: 3 PID: 0 Comm: swapper/3 Tainted: G      D            6.1-sunxi64 #1
[    4.347061] Hardware name: PineTab, Development Sample (DT)
[    4.352630] pstate: 204003c5 (nzCv DAIF +PAN -UAO -TCO -DIT -SSBS BTYPE=--)
[    4.359588] pc : ct_kernel_exit.constprop.0+0x8c/0x94
[    4.364638] lr : ct_idle_enter+0xc/0x1c
[    4.368474] sp : ffffffc00954bdb0
[    4.371787] x29: ffffffc00954bdb0 x28: 0000000000000000 x27: 0000000000000000
[    4.378925] x26: ffffff8001a30000 x25: 0000000000000000 x24: 0000000000000000
[    4.386062] x23: ffffffc00924eae0 x22: ffffffc008f290f0 x21: ffffffc076c74000
[    4.393199] x20: ffffffc008f18008 x19: ffffff807fb9b630 x18: ffffffc0094fb678
[    4.400337] x17: ffffffc0093859d0 x16: 000000009a82e42e x15: 00000000b4a4ad16
[    4.407473] x14: 0000000000000004 x13: ffffffc00926e018 x12: ffffffc00924eac0
[    4.414611] x11: 0000000000000001 x10: 0000000000000b00 x9 : ffffffc0080dc6b0
[    4.421748] x8 : ffffff8001a30b60 x7 : 0000000000000000 x6 : 000000000e10478c
[    4.428885] x5 : 4000000000000002 x4 : ffffffc076c74000 x3 : ffffffc00954bdb0
[    4.436022] x2 : 4000000000000000 x1 : ffffffc008f27630 x0 : ffffffc008f27630
[    4.443160] Call trace:
[    4.445606]  ct_kernel_exit.constprop.0+0x8c/0x94
[    4.450310]  ct_idle_enter+0xc/0x1c
[    4.453800]  default_idle_call+0x4c/0x11c
[    4.457814]  do_idle+0x240/0x2b0
[    4.461048]  cpu_startup_entry+0x2c/0x30
[    4.464973]  secondary_start_kernel+0x12c/0x130
[    4.469508]  __secondary_switched+0x64/0x68
[    4.473694] ---[ end trace 0000000000000000 ]---
[   14.045988] sun4i-drm display-engine: [drm] Cannot find any crtc or sizes
[  316.009865] random: crng init done

For more, see https://www.ravenslair.nl/files/PineTab.txt

Maybe worth noting: The keyboard backlight does not switch on as usual, nor does the key-combo work, maybe that gives an idea about where in the boot process it got stuck? Also not seeing it appear on the network.

edit:
After going through the output again:
U-Boot menu
1: Mobian GNU/Linux 6.1-sunxi64
2: Mobian GNU/Linux 5.15-sunxi64
Just tried option 2, that works

[diederik]

After going through the output again:
U-Boot menu
1:      Mobian GNU/Linux 6.1-sunxi64
2:      Mobian GNU/Linux 5.15-sunxi64
Just tried option 2, that works

It would be useful to know which EXACT 6.1 kernel you tried it with. 
The very early kernel versions, like 6.1.1, tend to have various bugs. Often around X.Y.7, most obvious bugs have been fixed and things are more likely to work properly.

[bartgrefte]

It would be useful to know which EXACT 6.1 kernel you tried it with. 
The very early kernel versions, like 6.1.1, tend to have various bugs. Often around X.Y.7, most obvious bugs have been fixed and things are more likely to work properly.

Hmm, I have to enable email notifications, thought I'd done that (hence the late reply).

Seems I've got 6.1+sunxi64-1 which is upgradable to 6.1.9, running apt as we speak, got a ton of updates again so this is gonna take a while.

edit: 6.1.9 same problem....

[diederik]

It would be useful to know which EXACT 6.1 kernel you tried it with.

Seems I've got 6.1+sunxi64-1 which is upgradable to 6.1.9, running apt as we speak, got a ton of updates again so this is gonna take a while.

apt should tell you from which kernel it is upgrading to 6.1.9. There is now (in Debian) 6.1.12, but with 6.1.9 the most obvious 'defects' should be fixed.

[bartgrefte]

apt should tell you from which kernel it is upgrading to 6.1.9. There is now (in Debian) 6.1.12, but with 6.1.9 the most obvious 'defects' should be fixed.

Waited some time for more updates, now on kernel 6.1.12 and still no boot, same output as #6