03-30-2021, 01:32 PM
(10-21-2020, 08:08 AM)Arwen Wrote: @v-man You might modify your "/boot" on the SD card to use the root file system on the eMMC. This might not be too bad as a work around.
This would not work in my case, I suppose, since strangely enough the kernel first started booting, and then the eMMC was not found to mount as the root device. Once the eMMC even 'disappeared' from a running system. I wrote these observations in my first post already, about nine months ago.
Having used the Pinebook running from an SD-Card only, I now finally got myself a replacement eMMC (just 32 GByte again), and in addition the NVMe adapter as well, just to have an alternative in case the eMMC replacement would not solve the problems.
I think the eMMC is more reliable now, but a problem is still there. So far I had four cases where the system would not boot successfully in about two weeks with maybe around 20 boots. The situation is different from before: I switched to Armbian (Debian Bullseye, by updating from the Buster image), which is working quite well. When the system hangs during boot-up, the screen stays completely blank (whereas before I would already get console output). At least last time, maybe before as well, the LED stayed red, did not even turn green, so I guess the Linux kernel was not even found?
Somewhere I read a comment about "silicon lottery" with the PineBookPro... and I guess I'm not a winner in this. ;-)
Especially in cases where the PineBook gets stuck some output on the display would be nice. Too bad, progress with u-boot is not fast enough for this to have come to Armbian or Manjaro images yet.
But my PineBook is quite usable again.
I also have a 'powerbank' now, a 10.000 mAh usb charger, which I need for my half-broken old Android phone anyway. This could probably help me boot the PineBook if at some point it won't boot without extra power, and I'm not near a power outlet.