Pinebook Pro won't turn on

[wdt]

>I did not really know what I was doing though so I failed

su
cd Downloads
ls pine* (right place?)
xzcat pinebookpro-debian-desktop-mrfixit-191123.img.xz |dd of=dev/emmc bs=1M
sync
(replace emmc with right mmcblkX,,, bs large unless you want it to take forever)

edit-- personally I like LARGE uptime, 33d before reboot for kernel change
Without "good" sleep, this is not feasible. So, I am using manjaro 19.2, updated (~6%/d)
This is on sd card, with sleep there is no card read waking, so doesn't matter card slower than emmc
Do NOT neglect to edit extlinux.conf after upgrade (manual edit to enable update-upgrade, see manjaro forums)

[leibide]

>I did not really know what I was doing though so I failed

su
cd Downloads
ls pine*      (right place?)
xzcat  pinebookpro-debian-desktop-mrfixit-191123.img.xz |dd of=dev/emmc  bs=1M
sync
(replace emmc with right mmcblkX,,, bs large unless you want it to take forever)

edit-- personally I like LARGE uptime, 33d before reboot for kernel change
Without "good" sleep, this is not feasible.  So, I am using manjaro 19.2, updated (~6%/d)
This is on sd card, with sleep there is no card read waking, so doesn't matter card slower than emmc
Do NOT neglect to edit extlinux.conf after upgrade (manual edit to enable update-upgrade, see manjaro forums)

Thank you for your help. I entered exactly what you wrote, but changed emmc to dev/mmcblk2 in the output file. All I got was this though:
dd: unrecognized operand 'sync'
Should there be a space before the 'I' symbol (I tried both ways)?
What does xzcat do? The SD card already has an unsuccessful boot image on it and I did not format it first. I couldn't get the computer to recognize it so that I could format it. That must be where I went wrong.

[wdt]

sync is the next line, after dd finishes (an implicit <CR>,,return at the end of each line)
if you want to stack commands together, separate them with ";",, ie command1; command2; command3
a bit risky if you are not sure if they may not complete without error
dd will completely overwrite mmcblk2 (in this case, up to the length of the input file)
I'm not sure if I understand right, this set of commands run from booted SD
i thought you said you had a SD boot and NOT a emmc boot?
spaces around "pipe",,, "|" are only for clarity
xzcat is same as cat, just for xz archives,, decompresses and output to terminal (standard output),,
| redirects to dd which uses it as input

[leibide]

Thank you for your help. I'm uncomfortably aware that my problem does not belong here. Feel free to move me elsewhere. Here is some more detail on my experience anyway : yes, wdt, I can indeed boot from an SD card, but not from the emmc. The mrfixit Debian is the only os I've successfully booted. The old 20.04 Manjaro is still stuck on the emmc and I would love to replace it with Debian for now. When it boots up, the Debian on the SD card fails to run a software upgrade : the upgrade application hung for more than 30 minutes and i haven't tried it since. The computer does not power off properly : I select 'shut down' and get stuck with a black screen and a green LED light. The SD card shows up as MNJRO in file manager. Presumably this is short for Manjaro. Therefore I presume my attempt to write a Debian image to the SD card that would prompt to install onto the emmc is incomplete . The help I got with DD commands is much appreciated. It's basic stuff for others, but I'm grateful someone took the time to walk me by the hand through it. With my new understanding of how this works, I had a go at following the instructions to create a proper bootable SD card of Debian. This is where I got: 
dd: failed to open 'dev/mmblk2': No such file or directory
I had used the same SD card.
Question: what's the right file path for the SD card? The computer is just called ciaran@ciaran

[wdt]

There is NO install for mrfixit's debian, the install is a dd (to emmc)
To install to SD, use etcher, I assume you have another computer?
From this other computer, using etcher, unless you already have done it
Then boot it, set up user, don't bother upgrading at this point
Copy pinebookpro-debian-desktop-mrfixit-191123.img.xz (mrfixit debian) to Downloads
on SD card (/home/$USER/Downloads ($USER is whatever your login name is)
Then boot with SD inserted, lsblk and mount|grep mmc will tell which mmcblk is which
(/ is on SD card, partition 2, p2,,,,, boot on same card,, p1, emmc is obviously other mmcblk
this is if the SD card boots OK, first boot will ask for a user and password other than rock64 IIRR)
Then run commands above, will install mrfixit as OOTB (out of the box), just as
when you first got PBP (on emmc)
One way to be sure you have booted mrfixit is run uname -r ,,,, will either be 4.4.210 or 4.4.213
--edit--
> the Debian on the SD card fails to run a software upgrade
You are connected to internet??? ping google.com succeeds??
It is a manual process for debian, apt-get update, apt-get upgrade,, mrfixit's upgrade is a bit "iffy",,try again
Understand, there are 2 different upgrades, mrfixit and debian, mrfixit is the icon one

[leibide]

"You are connected to internet???"

wdt, your suspicion has proved correct - I forgot to even connect to the internet. Doh!

"I assume you have another computer?"

Yes, an X86 desktop, though I've mostly been trying from a second Pinebkpro that I got my father.


I've followed your instructions. Here's what that looks like in the terminal window:


rock@Debian-Desktop:~$ lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 0 931.5G 0 disk
`-sda1 8:1 0 931.5G 0 part /media/rock/Disque Dur
mmcblk1 179:0 0 58.2G 0 disk
`-mmcblk1p2 179:2 0 58G 0 part /media/rock/ROOT_MNJRO
mmcblk1boot0 179:32 0 4M 1 disk
mmcblk1boot1 179:64 0 4M 1 disk
mmcblk1rpmb 179:96 0 16M 0 disk
mmcblk0 179:128 0 59.5G 0 disk
|-mmcblk0p1 179:129 0 64M 0 part /boot
`-mmcblk0p2 179:130 0 59.4G 0 part /
rock@Debian-Desktop:~$ mount|grep mmc
/dev/mmcblk0p2 on / type ext4 (rw,relatime,data=ordered)
/dev/mmcblk0p1 on /boot type vfat (ro,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=936,iocharset=utf8,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro)
/dev/mmcblk1p2 on /media/rock/ROOT_MNJRO type ext4 (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,data=ordered,uhelper=udisks2)
rock@Debian-Desktop:~$ cd Downloads
rock@Debian-Desktop:~/Downloads$ ls
mmcblk0 pinebookpro-debian-desktop-mrfixit-191123.img.xz
rock@Debian-Desktop:~/Downloads$ xzcat pinebookpro-debian-desktop-mrfixit-191123.img.xz|dd of=mmcblk0 bs=1M
0+634460 records in
0+634460 records out
5377097728 bytes (5.4 GB, 5.0 GiB) copied, 240.572 s, 22.4 MB/s
rock@Debian-Desktop:~/Downloads$ sync
rock@Debian-Desktop:~/Downloads$ uname -r
4.4.202
rock@Debian-Desktop:~/Downloads$


Then shutdown. Removed SD. Red LED light when I turned on, but nothing more. I should mention, Debian on this SD card did not shut down properly. It always gives a dark screen with a green LED. A white underscore flashes in the top left corner of screen for a few seconds also. With my new confidence in dd commands, I tried Bionic LXDE using the same instructions as before.
So from Downloads in Debian on SD card:
rock@Debian-Desktop:~/Downloads$ ls
bionic-lxde-pinebookpro-0.9.14-1159-armhf.img.xz
mmcblk0
pinebookpro-debian-desktop-mrfixit-191123.img.xz
rock@Debian-Desktop:~/Downloads$ ^C
rock@Debian-Desktop:~/Downloads$ xzcat bionic-lxde-pinebookpro-0.9.14-1159-armhf.img.xz|dd of=mmcblk0 bs=1M
0+450692 records in
0+450692 records out
3757047808 bytes (3.8 GB, 3.5 GiB) copied, 149.734 s, 25.1 MB/s
rock@Debian-Desktop:~/Downloads$ sync
rock@Debian-Desktop:~/Downloads$ cd
rock@Debian-Desktop:~$ uname-r
bash: uname-r: command not found
rock@Debian-Desktop:~$ uname
Linux


As with my attempt with Bionic LXDE on SD card, computer gives red then green light on turn on, then nothing more.

I'm making heavy work of this, but I feel I'm getting there. I'm happy to pull out the emmc and dd directly to that from another computer if necessary (I have an SD/emmc adapter for use on USB type A port).

[wdt]

As far as I can see, reading your post, you have done everything correctly
2 things to try,
An extra long press of powerbutton (20s+)
Pull the emmc, test it somehow, I'm not sure how,,
If you have win the SD card formater maybe
Explicitly blank the first 16M (emmc) ,, dd if=/dev/zero ...... bs=1M count=16

[leibide]

[...]
Pull the emmc, test it somehow, I'm not sure how,,
If you have win the SD card formater maybe
Explicitly blank the first 16M (emmc) ,, dd if=/dev/zero ...... bs=1M count=16

Will do. It will take longer than I thought - I don't already have an emmc to USB adapter like I thought I did (just SD) so I've ordered one on the Pine store.
Screen went crazy, then dark on the other bookpro we have today. It's OK now though after reconnecting the screen cable a few times. Maybe just bad luck, but I'll be more nervous about carrying the laptop around in a bag in future. It was an opportunity for me to swap emmcs around, and that got the other bookpro working just fine. So that just proves beyond doubt that fixing the emmc will fix my problem.

[wdt]

Sorry, reading more closely,, you did NOT do it right (I should pay better attention)
block devices are,,,,, /dev/something so of=mmcblk0 is NOT right
Also,, I think you should be writing to mmcblk1,
If you boot from SD card, / is on SD card
>/dev/mmcblk0p2 on / type ext4 (rw,relatime,data=ordered)

[leibide]

OK, I've tried that:

rock@Debian-Desktop:~$ cd Downloads
rock@Debian-Desktop:~/Downloads$ ls
bionic-lxde-pinebookpro-0.9.14-1159-armhf.img.xz
mmcblk0
mmcblk1
pinebookpro-debian-desktop-mrfixit-191123.img.xz
rock@Debian-Desktop:~/Downloads$ xzcat bionic-lxde-pinebookpro-0.9.14-1159-armhf.img.xz|dd of=dev/mmcblk1 bs=1M
dd: failed to open 'dev/mmcblk1': No such file or directory
rock@Debian-Desktop:~/Downloads$ xzcat bionic-lxde-pinebookpro-0.9.14-1159-armhf.img.xz|dd of=mmcblk1 bs=1M
0+452422 records in
0+452422 records out
3757047808 bytes (3.8 GB, 3.5 GiB) copied, 165.88 s, 22.6 MB/s
rock@Debian-Desktop:~/Downloads$ sync
rock@Debian-Desktop:~/Downloads$ uname-r
bash: uname-r: command not found
rock@Debian-Desktop:~/Downloads$ uname
Linux
rock@Debian-Desktop:~/Downloads$
rock@Debian-Desktop:~/Downloads$ cd
rock@Debian-Desktop:~$ uname-r
bash: uname-r: command not found
rock@Debian-Desktop:~$

As you can see, unfortunately dev/mmcblk1 was not recognised, only mmblk1, even though it's there. Uname-r did not give the readout I'd hoped for. Back to the red light on bootup after SD card removed. I've noticed that this Debian OS on the SD card can not connect to the internet. I've checked and double checked the password. I made two SD cards with Debian on them, but neither shuts down properly. I mention this just in case it might have an affect on writing an OS to the emmc from it.

If there's anything else I can do, tell me and I'll do it. Otherwise, it looks like I'll just have to wait until the emmc adapter arrives after all.
Edit: I also tried to dd the mrfixit Debian os yesterday.