PBP does not start from postmarket OS image burnt to sd card

[zkajdan]

Hi,

I have burnt the latest stable PBP image to an sd card, but after insertion and booting the display stays black (even though the light is on).

The output of lsblk (on my laptop) looks like

```
mmcblk0                                      179:0    0  29.5G  0 disk 
├─mmcblk0p1                                  179:1    0  228M  0 part 
└─mmcblk0p2                                  179:2    0  4.1G  0 part  /run/media/key/pmOS_root
```

which could be a problem maybe - there is no boot partition on mmcblk0p1 (I remember there was when recently I had flashed a manjaro image...)?

BTW for burning to sd I used the standard command,

```
dd if=some.img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=4M status=progress

```

It would be awesome if someone could help!! Thanks!

[mikehenson]

Hi,
I have burnt the latest stable PBP image to an sd card, but after insertion and booting the display stays black (even though the light is on).

Do you have Tow-Boot loaded on the SPI?

Here is my screen when I turn it ON.

[zkajdan]

Hi,
I have burnt the latest stable PBP image to an sd card, but after insertion and booting the display stays black (even though the light is on).

Do you have Tow-Boot loaded on the SPI?

Here is my screen when I turn it ON.

Thanks for the reply @mikehenson !

When I turn it on (without SD card inserted) the screen remains completely dark...
This never happened before and I have no idea why it does...

When the PBP came, it had manjaro installed, which broke after an upgrade... I burnt a fresh version of Manjaro on the sd, booted from sd, and before I could do anything  to the emmc I had the network-couldn't-connect problem from the other thread... and then I tried to install postmarket OS from sd... 

Now I have the screen remaining dark whether I boot from SD or without...

BTW I never changed the boot order - in the wiki they write that to boot from sd, you have to perform some manual actions, but in fact I didn't have to, that time I booted Manjaro from sd...

Do you have an idea what I could do? Thanks again!!

[mikehenson]

Do you have an idea what I could do? Thanks again!!

I think you need to get Tow-Boot on the SPI.

I am not sure pine64 uses the wiki anymore, I think they moved everything to "documentation"

From the RK3399_boot_sequence

1. loading from NOR flash on SPI1
   
2. loading from NAND flash on SPI1
   
3. loading from eMMC
   
4. loading from SD on the SDMMC controller
   
5. bringing up the OTG0 USB controller in device mode and accepting control transfers to load programs
   

The eMMC may have an issue booting. You may need to Disable the eMMC so you can boot off the SD. Once booted off the SD, I personnally would try to get Tow-Boot on the SPI.

[zkajdan]

Do you have an idea what I could do? Thanks again!!

I think you need to get Tow-Boot on the SPI.

I am not sure pine64 uses the wiki anymore, I think they moved everything to "documentation"

From the RK3399_boot_sequence

1. loading from NOR flash on SPI1
   
2. loading from NAND flash on SPI1
   
3. loading from eMMC
   
4. loading from SD on the SDMMC controller
   
5. bringing up the OTG0 USB controller in device mode and accepting control transfers to load programs
   

The eMMC may have an issue booting. You may need to Disable the eMMC so you can boot off the SD. Once booted off the SD, I personnally would try to get Tow-Boot on the SPI.

Thank you @mikehenson !! That's good to know about the documentation!
I don't have any time today, but I'll try to do as you said tomorrow!

[zkajdan]

Do you have an idea what I could do? Thanks again!!

I think you need to get Tow-Boot on the SPI.

I am not sure pine64 uses the wiki anymore, I think they moved everything to "documentation"

From the RK3399_boot_sequence

1. loading from NOR flash on SPI1
   
2. loading from NAND flash on SPI1
   
3. loading from eMMC
   
4. loading from SD on the SDMMC controller
   
5. bringing up the OTG0 USB controller in device mode and accepting control transfers to load programs
   

The eMMC may have an issue booting. You may need to Disable the eMMC so you can boot off the SD. Once booted off the SD, I personnally would try to get Tow-Boot on the SPI.

Thank you @mikehenson !! That's good to know about the documentation!
I don't have any time today, but I'll try to do as you said tomorrow!

@mikehenson I burnt Tow-Boot to SPI, which worked great, but then after removing the sd card screen still remained black, so removed the back cover, and maybe the emmc switch had been labeled "the other way round", it looked like off, so anyway I switched it and then, everything would have worked just as you said ...
But, unfortunately I hadn't read the instructions about what not to do when removing the back cover, and I broke the plastic stuff fixing the screen... and so, ruined it :-((((((

Anyway, many thanks again, it would have worked great really.

[mikehenson]

But, unfortunately I hadn't read the instructions about what not to do when removing the back cover, and I broke the plastic stuff fixing the screen... and so, ruined it :-((((((

OHH!! NO!!! I am sorry to hear you broke it.

[tophneal]

mikehenson I burnt Tow-Boot to SPI, which worked great, but then after removing the sd card screen still remained black, so removed the back cover, and maybe the emmc switch had been labeled "the other way round", it looked like off, so anyway I switched it and then, everything would have worked just as you said ...
But, unfortunately I hadn't read the instructions about what not to do when removing the back cover, and I broke the plastic stuff fixing the screen... and so, ruined it :-((((((

Anyway, many thanks again, it would have worked great really.

luckily you should be able to repair it! https://pine64.com/product-category/pine...are-parts/

[zkajdan]

@mikehenson 
@tophneal
many thanks!!

 @tophneal you mean this, right: https://pine64.com/product/pinebook-pro-...hd-camera/  - not this: https://pine64.com/product/pinebook-pro-bottom-case/, right?  (The latter's out of stock anyway.)

I also have an older PBP, which I was following a post to install Fedora on (at that time, it required some workarounds) - but I gave up on this one when I didn't get it to start more than about every 10th time or so (for hardware reasons).

Now I am thinking that while waiting for the spare part, I could see again if whether I get it to power on, and if so, try @mikehenson recommended procedure there.
Since the power-on problem is rather annoying though, I would love to get that solved before, so I created a separate thread for that:

https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=19708

Thanks again!

[tophneal]

@tophneal you mean this, right: https://pine64.com/product/pinebook-pro-...hd-camera/  - not this: https://pine64.com/product/pinebook-pro-bottom-case/, right?  (The latter's out of stock anyway.)

Oops definitely tried to juggle too much other stuff when posting and mixed those up lol

I would definitely suggest revisiting fedora on your other PBP if you can get it reliably booting again, the process is sooooo much simpler now. That forum post is outdated now. I was able to get it going on mine just by writing the official install img to SD and booting from it once I had TowBoot installed. I think at most I needed to add a copr repo to fill in some of the more specific gaps in support from the img. That may not even be needed now