Manjaro eMMC installation challenges...

[SageFox]

Hey All. So I've been attempting to install Manjaro KDE 20.04 through their emmc flasher file which I put on a bootable Micro sd written through the Etcher program.

This is to overwrite a fairly broken XFCE Manjaro build that just wasn't working out (slow window dragging, some parts not working, but could play videos.)

After inserting the flashed sd card, I boot up the Pinebook Pro. The Manjaro splash screen comes up, waited for an hour to realize I needed to hit the esc. key to bring the installation window.

Then it asks which drive to write it to, asking to choose the eMMC drive from 4 options:

Mmcblk2
Mmcblk2boot0
Mmcblk2boot1
Mmcblk1

Also telling me that the currently booted sd card is mmcblk1

So I chose mmcblk2 and then it tells me image does not exist
So I restart, figured why not, Ill try my other option mmcblk1
And it tells me the same thing : image does not exist


What am i doing wrong >_<

Should I try the other 2 options? I feel like this is russian roulette.

[jiyong]

I had to check the Youtube video I created when installing Manjaro 20.02, it said the booted SD card is Mmcblk1, so the eMMC should be 2.
I didn't go with the boot partitions.

The install process will extract the image on the SD card.
Do you get the error message immediately after selecting Mmcblk2?
What storage size is the SD card?
I guess 16 GB and larger should be fine.

[gorignak]

I'm having this same problem. As soon as I select mmcblk2 I get the "image does not exist" error. I'm using a 16GB SD card.

[dnikkel]

I just received my Pinebook Pro this past week and decided I wanted to run Manjaro XFCE rather than KDE.  So I downloaded the XFCE eMMC installer.  I hit the same problem with the Image does not exist message after selecting the destination drive.  Of coure, Googling the issue I found this thread.  

I decided to try reflashing the image to see if it made any difference.  Interestingly, I ended up getting a different error  instead.  Repeat the process, yet another different error.

So, it's becoming clear I'm getting crappy SD images for some reason.  I was making the images on an old Macbook I have running Mint, using dd from the command line.  I was using brand new 64gb Samsung Evo Select cards.  So, puzzling.  

A different forum thread I came across for a different install issue suggested downloading the image on the Pinebook and flashing the SD card from it.  So I gave that a try and I got a perfectly good SD image that booted and ran through to a successful installation.

I uncompressed the .xz file in the file manager and then used this dd command to write the .img file:

Code:

sudo dd if=/home/dave/Downloads/Manjaro-ARM-xfce-pbpro-20.04-emmc-installer-20.04.img of=/dev/mmcblk1 bs=4M status=progress conv=fsync

I had a few other wierd things happen related to SD images for the PBP.  Before I made the deciison to switch to XFCE, I created an SD image just to boot and run from the SD card.  My inital SD images (made on my Macbook as above) would not boot at all.  The cards arrived formatted in exFat and I wondered if something about their partition tables was casuing issues.  I deleted all the existing partitions and reformatted tham with a single ext4 partition.  After that, following the very same process gave me bootable images.  So I think the initial state of your SD card can effect the outcome as well.  If I'd done the initial flashing on the PBP, who knows, might have been fine.

So, my path to success was to:
1. Delete existing partitions on the SD card and reformat with ext4 (this may not matter, the main benefit may be rewriting the partition table)
2. Download and flash the images on the Pinebook.

Good luck.  Please let us know if try this and whether it solves the issue.

Dave