rk2aw questions

[antanas]

Hi. I have installed rk2aw and primary/fallback bootloaders from https://xff.cz/kernels/bootloaders-2024.04/ppp/ with spinor-flash-initial-setup.sh script. Then, I have installed mobian to emmc with installer image booted from SD card. Mobian does not load when just turning on the phone but if I enter rk2aw LED based menu and select primary (2 flashes) or fallback (3 flashes) bootloader, then selecting mobian option from uboot will actually load the OS. Looking at https://xnux.eu/log/098.html I was hoping that EFI stuff will work but I'm getting invalid elf header magic errors.
So I have few questions:
1. How to diagnose what is preventing booting with "Perform a normal rk2aw boot." option (1 flash)
2. What are the differences for ppp between floss and rkbin bootloaders? (menu looks the same for me).
3. Maybe primary bootloader does not work for me and I'm always taken to the fallback bootloader, so how can I verify which uboot bootloader menu is being shown?

I do not think this answers your question, but this is how I understand boot loaders.

PinePhonePro boot loaders:
**I am not sure about most of this. Please be kind and help me understand**

Tow-Boot[1] - Flash to SPI, Phone can be used as a USB Mass Storage device to access both eMMC and MicroSD. Boot via MicroSD with the phone volume/power buttons. Boot order is SPI, eMMC, MircoSD.

rk2aw[2] - Allows charging with the phone off (dead/flat battery)[2]. Provides the boot list on the phone. Allows turning the phone into a USB mass storage device. It looks for boot devices in this order MicroSD, eMMC, SPI. Hard to "brick" the boot loader[2].

rk2aw[2] + proprietary rkbin - Is really efficient on power[3]. (This is the default of spinor-flash-initial-setup.sh)

rk2aw[2] + foss u-boot - foss is required to use Levinboot[5]. Phone can be used as a USB Mass Storage device to access both eMMC and MicroSD[4]

I am personally running rk2aw + proprietary rkbin + DanctNIX Arch with Phosh on the eMMC.

[1] https://tow-boot.org/devices/pine64-pinephonePro.html
[2] https://xnux.e[2] https://xnux.eu/rk2aw/
u/rk2aw/
[3] https://xnux.eu/log/091.html
[4] https://xnux.eu/log/098.html
[5] Not I can not find the source.

Does archlinux boot for you by just turning on the phone? Did you need to do any modifications for uboot selection?

I've noticed that uboot version is actually displayed on the top so my primary bootloader is:
U-Boot 2024.04-rc1-megi-ppp-00176-g6dc0a49f522d-dirty (Feb 15 2024 - 22:51:58 +0100)
Backup bootloader is:
U-Boot 2024.04-rc1-megi-ppp-00176-g6dc0a49f522d-dirty (Feb 15 2024 - 22:51:46 +0100)

As you can see the only difference is the seconds in the timestamp. Could you please share which uboot versions are on your ppp?

I am also seeing these errors on uboot screen:
...
No EFI system partition
Failed to persist EFI variables
...
But mobian loads when I select it