Dead eMMC?
#1
I've just received a RockPro64 with a 16GB eMMC module. I installed DietPi fine on the module and booted okay, spending a couple of hours configuring. But the next time I came to boot, I had to make several attempts before it actually worked. And then today, it booted on the third attempt but since then, nothing.

I'm powering from the 12V 5A supply I bought from Pine64.

At each attempt, the power LED comes on, but then nothing.

I tried booting from an SD card, and that worked fine. So I reflashed the OS image to the eMMC. I used Etcher for this and noticed that it took an unnaturally long time for Etcher to validate the image. (It did eventually.) But the RockPro64 still won't boot from the eMMC.

Do I have to conclude that this is a dead module? I've read about other people having problems with eMMC modules, so I'm starting to wonder if this is an unreliable way to go.
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#2
I might have been too hasty about using SD cards. Just flashed another (known good) card with DietPi. It booted and I went through the initial config. Then DietPi said it was rebooting (normal for that part of the process). It shut down the RP64, but the board never came back up again. When I recycled power to bring it back up, I found the SD card is corrupt.

I've now spent hours on this (not to mention $200 on Pine64 kit) and am tempted to throw the whole lot in the trash.
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#3
(11-19-2018, 01:47 PM)machina Wrote: I might have been too hasty about using SD cards. Just flashed another (known good) card with DietPi. It booted and I went through the initial config. Then DietPi said it was rebooting (normal for that part of the process). It shut down the RP64, but the board never came back up again. When I recycled power to bring it back up, I found the SD card is corrupt.

I've now spent hours on this (not to mention $200 on Pine64 kit) and am tempted to throw the whole lot in the trash.

Sometimes, in proper shut down can cause corruption. Please try out ayufan build to check whether works for you.

About the eMMC issue, do you get any error message while programming?
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#4
Okay, here's where we stand with this now:
* The eMMC card booted a couple of times with DietPi, but refused to come back up after a reboot. Now it won't boot at all. Burning an image to it with Etcher seems to go okay during the write phase but then takes an age during verification. And it still won't boot. (When I say won't boot in all these cases I mean, power LED okay, no white LED, no screen output). I tried again using the Pine64 Installer (and the DietPi image from the list supplied) and it bombs out during verification saying the card is corrupt. So I'm starting to think the eMMC is faulty. But...
* Using a 32GB SD card, I twice got it to boot (reflashing the card in between), but on reboot the OS reported the card as corrupt. This was with DietPi (which is, by the way, the OS I want to use and am already using successfully on an original Pine64 - https://mansfield-devine.com/speculatrix...nd-dietpi/).
* I tried a 64GB SD card with DietPi. This has so far not corrupted. However, the board never comes back up from a reboot - I have to cycle the power to get a reboot, sometimes twice. As I'm going to be using this headless and remotely as a personal cloud server, that's less than useful. Also, from my previous experience, I'm going to be constantly worried that a card corruption is only one reboot away.
* Tried the 32GB SD card again with the Ayufan Ubuntu 18.04 minimal. Booted once. Failed to reboot. Now won't boot at all from that card (no white LED).

I will try with one more SD card I have available. But unless I can get a reliable reboot from the command line, I simply can't use this thing. And I feel certain that eMMC card is faulty. I ordered another (32GB) eMMC card but have since requested cancellation of the order because I'm not confident this kit is up to the job and don't want to waste more money on it.
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#5
(11-20-2018, 02:07 AM)machina Wrote: Okay, here's where we stand with this now:
* The eMMC card booted a couple of times with DietPi, but refused to come back up after a reboot. Now it won't boot at all. Burning an image to it with Etcher seems to go okay during the write phase but then takes an age during verification. And it still won't boot. (When I say won't boot in all these cases I mean, power LED okay, no white LED, no screen output). I tried again using the Pine64 Installer (and the DietPi image from the list supplied) and it bombs out during verification saying the card is corrupt. So I'm starting to think the eMMC is faulty. But...
* Using a 32GB SD card, I twice got it to boot (reflashing the card in between), but on reboot the OS reported the card as corrupt. This was with DietPi (which is, by the way, the OS I want to use and am already using successfully on an original Pine64 - https://mansfield-devine.com/speculatrix...nd-dietpi/).
* I tried a 64GB SD card with DietPi. This has so far not corrupted. However, the board never comes back up from a reboot - I have to cycle the power to get a reboot, sometimes twice. As I'm going to be using this headless and remotely as a personal cloud server, that's less than useful. Also, from my previous experience, I'm going to be constantly worried that a card corruption is only one reboot away.
* Tried the 32GB SD card again with the Ayufan Ubuntu 18.04 minimal. Booted once. Failed to reboot. Now won't boot at all from that card (no white LED).

I will try with one more SD card I have available. But unless I can get a reliable reboot from the command line, I simply can't use this thing. And I feel certain that eMMC card is faulty. I ordered another (32GB) eMMC card but have since requested cancellation of the order because I'm not confident this kit is up to the job and don't want to waste more money on it.

I had very bad results with dietpi on different sbc exept with a standard raspi3, and allways with strange problems with SD cards, it even somehow "broke" one of my SD cards permanently (after having similar issues like yours of randomly not booting the SD card finally decided to lock itself on RO mode), problem boards where totally different (odroid c2, orange pi pc2, rock64) so personally i would stay away from dietpi...

Dont take me wrong, seems a very polished OS, nice tools, maintained, etc, maybe i had bad luck with SBC cards (or sd cards), but 3 different SBCs with similar problems is a lot of bad luck, also your problem seem related but not exactly the same since i never had in my hands an EMMC...

Im using my rock64 with omv and can run for weeks without problems (when i restart it its because i keep tinkering with it, not because it have any problems), on top of it i have a dozen dockers, Nextcloud on docker dont work for you?
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#6
(11-20-2018, 07:04 AM)Trash_Can_Man Wrote: Im using my rock64 with omv and can run for weeks without problems (when i restart it its because i keep tinkering with it, not because it have any problems), on top of it i have a dozen dockers, Nextcloud on docker dont work for you?

Hmm, hadn't considered Docker. I'll look into that. Thanks for the tip.
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#7
Gah! Well, the saga continues. Got myself a new 32GB SD card (a Samsung) and used the Pine64 Installer to install the Ubuntu Container image - so this is Pine64's tool and the images it provides. Same exact story. Actually took two power-on attempts to get it to boot. Once it was booted, I had a simple look around without changing anything. Commanded a reboot and... you guessed it. Board wouldn't come back up. Tried several power cycles and, nothing. No white LED, no display activity.

I should point out that I'm doing all of this with just the basic board, no add-ons. I even took it out of the NAS case some time back. And I have been taking ESD precautions (grounded bracelet etc).

So maybe this board is faulty? That's now three different OS images, three different SD cards plus the now useless eMMC module.

I've used a lot of SBCs - first time I've had this kind of trouble.

EDIT: Ubuntu booted again after several power cycles. Tried with the Debian image too. Booted, but saw messages about failure to load rockchip firmware. Wouldn't reboot.
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#8
And another update. I got the Debian image booted again. It seems that reboots require leaving the power off for some indeterminate amount of time before trying again. But once I got to the login prompt, before I logged in, I started getting error messages:

[ 16.542523] cdn-dp fec00000.dp: Direct firmware load for rockchip/dptx.bin failed with error -2

...<several more of the same error>...

[ 128.549802] cdn-dp fec00000.dp: [drm:cdn_dp_request_firmware] *ERROR* Timed out trying to load firmware
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#9
And more grist for the mill: tried the Ubuntu with LXFE image. Wouldn't boot on first power-on. Booted on the second. Did an apt update okay but when I did an apt -y upgrade the system hung halfway through the installation part - complete freeze requiring power-down.

Tried the lightweight version of Ubuntu 18.04 64-bit – apt update is reporting 'Release file for ... is not valid yet' (does this for two ports.ubuntu.com repos and the deb.ayufan.eu/orgs/ayufan-rock64/releases/InRelease).

After a shutdown, it refuses to boot again (tried 6 attempts at powering on so far). At what point do we conclude this board is faulty?

-=sigh=-
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