03-06-2022, 04:30 AM
Hello community,
currently I'm using Armbian (Debian/ Bullseye) on my PinebookPro and I've been pretty ok with it. Yes, it is slow, and yes, internal speakers are terrible, and true, suspend does not work (in a usable fashion that's not quickly draining the battery), and well, occasionally the screen just stays blank when trying to boot... but the device is light and quiet.
But since I read on this forum that "my" Armbian was not supported anymore, and also hoping I'd get a U-Boot version with graphical output, I tried to install a different Linux this weekend. In conclusion I gave up for the time being, deciding my system was good enough for now, and I'd probably better soon switch to a 2013 ThinkPad 440s with twice the RAM, which I happened to get some time after having bought the PinebookPro.
I tried the Manjaro image writer script, and I tried downloading and booting the Manjaro image. First I tried SD cards with my Armbian still on the emmc, which would not boot. I kind of remembered (from my experience one, two years back) that this was probably the u-boot from the SD card trying to boot the system from the emmc (?).
Well, no problem, I thought, since I purchased the emmc to usb adapter some time last year: I'll just write the image straight to the emmc. This did work to some extend: I had u-boot output, the screen would switch to the Manjaro boot logo... and get stuck there. I could press escape and get system messages, though:
(Sorry, the left of the photo I took from the screen was not entirely readable.)
Strange, I thought, and tried to fix it by taking out the emmc again, and modifying the /etc/fstab on it. I changed the UUIDs for "/boot/" and "/" so they'd correspond to what was shown in "/dev/disk-by-uuid". This made the process get further, with "/" apparently being ok now, but "/boot" still would not get mounted, and so booting still failed, still giving me no keyboard input. The /boot partition UUID was suspiciously short, maybe due to the vfat file system on it.
This was where I had enough for now. I thought I'd still write it down in the forum, so maybe someone can use this feedback to improve the documentation and/ or the software. If someone can point out a simple way of installing a working Linux, I might also try that some time soon.
I read on the forum there's a new Armbian maintainer. Now it is based on Ubuntu, which would be fine with me once 22.04LTS is out.
But what's the right way of installing it? Do I have to "hide" the emmc by either overriding the partition (thus destroying my working system before having an alternative ready), or by taking it out/ disabling it with the hardware switch? The latter is quite annoying, since already my Pinebook case is damaged from: one screw has come through the now widened hole, and I ripped one of the speaker cables out by accident (not terrible, since I'm mostly using an external USB speaker anyways).
currently I'm using Armbian (Debian/ Bullseye) on my PinebookPro and I've been pretty ok with it. Yes, it is slow, and yes, internal speakers are terrible, and true, suspend does not work (in a usable fashion that's not quickly draining the battery), and well, occasionally the screen just stays blank when trying to boot... but the device is light and quiet.
But since I read on this forum that "my" Armbian was not supported anymore, and also hoping I'd get a U-Boot version with graphical output, I tried to install a different Linux this weekend. In conclusion I gave up for the time being, deciding my system was good enough for now, and I'd probably better soon switch to a 2013 ThinkPad 440s with twice the RAM, which I happened to get some time after having bought the PinebookPro.
I tried the Manjaro image writer script, and I tried downloading and booting the Manjaro image. First I tried SD cards with my Armbian still on the emmc, which would not boot. I kind of remembered (from my experience one, two years back) that this was probably the u-boot from the SD card trying to boot the system from the emmc (?).
Well, no problem, I thought, since I purchased the emmc to usb adapter some time last year: I'll just write the image straight to the emmc. This did work to some extend: I had u-boot output, the screen would switch to the Manjaro boot logo... and get stuck there. I could press escape and get system messages, though:
Code:
Waiting 10 seconds for device /dev/disk/by-partuuid/57[...] ...
ERROR: device 'PARTUUID=57[...]' not found. Skipping fsck
[not?] mounting 'PARTUUID=57[...]' on real root.
Mount: /new_root: can't find PARTUUID=57[...].
Your are now being dropped into an emergency shell.
?h: Can't access tty; job control turned off
[rootfs ]#(Sorry, the left of the photo I took from the screen was not entirely readable.)
Strange, I thought, and tried to fix it by taking out the emmc again, and modifying the /etc/fstab on it. I changed the UUIDs for "/boot/" and "/" so they'd correspond to what was shown in "/dev/disk-by-uuid". This made the process get further, with "/" apparently being ok now, but "/boot" still would not get mounted, and so booting still failed, still giving me no keyboard input. The /boot partition UUID was suspiciously short, maybe due to the vfat file system on it.
This was where I had enough for now. I thought I'd still write it down in the forum, so maybe someone can use this feedback to improve the documentation and/ or the software. If someone can point out a simple way of installing a working Linux, I might also try that some time soon.
I read on the forum there's a new Armbian maintainer. Now it is based on Ubuntu, which would be fine with me once 22.04LTS is out.
But what's the right way of installing it? Do I have to "hide" the emmc by either overriding the partition (thus destroying my working system before having an alternative ready), or by taking it out/ disabling it with the hardware switch? The latter is quite annoying, since already my Pinebook case is damaged from: one screw has come through the now widened hole, and I ripped one of the speaker cables out by accident (not terrible, since I'm mostly using an external USB speaker anyways).