After power loss, boot never gets to white LED

[josepht]

Hi,

I got a RockPro64 that I set up about a week ago.  Board, EMMC, USB EMMC adapter, power supply, USB serial adapter, heat sink, enclosure, all from the Pine64 online store.  I followed the NOOB guide and flashed ayufan's bionic minimal (bionic-minimal-rockpro64-0.7.9-1067-arm64.img) to the EMMC.  I was able to connect over the serial console, boot, ssh, etc., everything working great.  Didn't power the device down, but did `sudo shutdown -r now` a time or two, no problems.

Then my house lost power for a bit, and it hasn't booted since.  The green light where the power connects comes on as it should whenever power is connected.  The lights on the ethernet port blink like normal.  But whenever I turn it on, the red LED near the power button blinks indefinitely and the white LED there never comes on.

I tried re-flashing the EMMC with the same image I'd used before (I was using dd both times), no improvement.

I tried connecting pins 23 and 25 as the "RockPro64 Main Page" suggests for bypassing SPI, no improvement.

I tried using the "recover" button as described in the "OTG mode" section on the "RockPro64 Main Page", no improvement -- white light never comes on, red light keeps blinking, nothing shows up on a desktop (as reported by lsusb) if I connect it to the USB 3 port.

The USB serial adapter's lights blink when I connect it and turn on the RockPro64, but nothing actually gets sent (as reported by minicom on my desktop, connected the same way I'd connected it successfully before).

I'd very much appreciate any suggestions as to how to troubleshoot this further.

Thanks,
-Joseph

[tllim]

Hi,

I got a RockPro64 that I set up about a week ago.  Board, EMMC, USB EMMC adapter, power supply, USB serial adapter, heat sink, enclosure, all from the Pine64 online store.  I followed the NOOB guide and flashed ayufan's bionic minimal (bionic-minimal-rockpro64-0.7.9-1067-arm64.img) to the EMMC.  I was able to connect over the serial console, boot, ssh, etc., everything working great.  Didn't power the device down, but did `sudo shutdown -r now` a time or two, no problems.

Then my house lost power for a bit, and it hasn't booted since.  The green light where the power connects comes on as it should whenever power is connected.  The lights on the ethernet port blink like normal.  But whenever I turn it on, the red LED near the power button blinks indefinitely and the white LED there never comes on.

I tried re-flashing the EMMC with the same image I'd used before (I was using dd both times), no improvement.

I tried connecting pins 23 and 25 as the "RockPro64 Main Page" suggests for bypassing SPI, no improvement.

I tried using the "recover" button as described in the "OTG mode" section on the "RockPro64 Main Page", no improvement -- white light never comes on, red light keeps blinking, nothing shows up on a desktop (as reported by lsusb) if I connect it to the USB 3 port.

The USB serial adapter's lights blink when I connect it and turn on the RockPro64, but nothing actually gets sent (as reported by minicom on my desktop, connected the same way I'd connected it successfully before).

I'd very much appreciate any suggestions as to how to troubleshoot this further.

Thanks,
-Joseph

When USB serial adapter's light blink this means there is message sending, please make sure the UART parameter setup correctly.

[josepht]

Hi,

I got a RockPro64 that I set up about a week ago.  Board, EMMC, USB EMMC adapter, power supply, USB serial adapter, heat sink, enclosure, all from the Pine64 online store.  I followed the NOOB guide and flashed ayufan's bionic minimal (bionic-minimal-rockpro64-0.7.9-1067-arm64.img) to the EMMC.  I was able to connect over the serial console, boot, ssh, etc., everything working great.  Didn't power the device down, but did `sudo shutdown -r now` a time or two, no problems.

Then my house lost power for a bit, and it hasn't booted since.  The green light where the power connects comes on as it should whenever power is connected.  The lights on the ethernet port blink like normal.  But whenever I turn it on, the red LED near the power button blinks indefinitely and the white LED there never comes on.

I tried re-flashing the EMMC with the same image I'd used before (I was using dd both times), no improvement.

I tried connecting pins 23 and 25 as the "RockPro64 Main Page" suggests for bypassing SPI, no improvement.

I tried using the "recover" button as described in the "OTG mode" section on the "RockPro64 Main Page", no improvement -- white light never comes on, red light keeps blinking, nothing shows up on a desktop (as reported by lsusb) if I connect it to the USB 3 port.

The USB serial adapter's lights blink when I connect it and turn on the RockPro64, but nothing actually gets sent (as reported by minicom on my desktop, connected the same way I'd connected it successfully before).

I'd very much appreciate any suggestions as to how to troubleshoot this further.

Thanks,
-Joseph

When USB serial adapter's light blink this means there is message sending, please make sure the UART parameter setup correctly.

Hi, thanks for the reply!


It's set up correctly AFAICT, but I'm very new to this.  Here's what I've verified:

Starting with board disconnected from power and serial adapter disconnected from everything:
 - I made sure the serial adapter's yellow jumper is set to 3V3
 - I connected the serial adapter's GND to pin 6 on the board
 - I connected the serial adapter's RTX to pin 8 on the board

Then I plugged the serial adapter into my desktop's USB port.
 - Red light D3 and green light D5 on the serial adapter both come on solid at this point
 - `dmesg |grep usb` on the desktop shows this at the end:

```
[196690.938860] usb 1-13: new full-speed USB device number 53 using xhci_hcd
[196691.088292] usb 1-13: New USB device found, idVendor=1a86, idProduct=7523
[196691.088298] usb 1-13: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[196691.088302] usb 1-13: Product: USB2.0-Serial
[196691.089775] usb 1-13: ch341-uart converter now attached to ttyUSB0
```

so then I run `minicom -D /dev/ttyUSB0 -b 1500000`

With minicom open, I connect power to the board.
 - Green light D5 on serial adapter starts blinking (red light D3 stays on solid, no other lights do anything)
 - But I see nothing showing up in minicom.  It just sits there with:

```
Welcome to minicom 2.7
 
OPTIONS: I18n
Compiled on Nov 15 2018, 20:18:47.
Port /dev/ttyUSB0, 21:31:04
 
Press CTRL-A Z for help on special keys
 ```

and a status bar at the bottom:
```
CTRL-A Z for help | 1500000 8N1 | NOR | Minicom 2.7 | VT102 | Offline | ttyUSB0 
```

At this point, I've tried turning the board off an on with the power button, it doesn't change the symptoms -- green light D5 is on solid whenever the board is powered off, and blinks whenever the board is powered on, red light D3 is on solid regardless, and minicom shows nothing.

Don't know what to try next...

[evilbunny]

Don't know what to try next...

Have you tried turning flow control off in minicom?

ctrl+a+z -> o -> serial port setup

[josepht]

Don't know what to try next...

Have you tried turning flow control off in minicom?

ctrl+a+z -> o -> serial port setup

I had not.  That did the trick, thanks!  Not only did the transmission come through in minicom after doing that, but boot was successful as well.  I'm curious why that would be the case, but happy to be up and running regardless.

---

Playing around with it some more, I've found that if I have the serial adapter connecting the rockpro64 to my desktop, then the system can boot and function correctly.  But if I disconnect the serial adapter, I get the same behavior as before where the white LED never comes on and the red one blinks.

Is that normal?  I haven't found any mention of others having that issue online.  Am I missing some setup step to configure the system to not need the serial connection on boot?


The early boot spew (on a successful boot with the serial adapter attached) has a couple warnings, not sure if they're relevant:

```
U-Boot SPL board init
 
U-Boot SPL 2017.09-rockchip-ayufan-1025-g482cd6ec8b (Jul 26 2018 - 08:18:48)
booted from eMMC
Trying to boot from MMC1
NOTICE:  BL31: v1.3(debug):d98d16e
NOTICE:  BL31: Built : 15:03:07, May 10 2018
NOTICE:  BL31: Rockchip release version: v1.1
INFO:    GICv3 with legacy support detected. ARM GICV3 driver initialized in EL3
INFO:    Using opteed sec cpu_context!
INFO:    boot cpu mask: 0
INFO:    plat_rockchip_pmu_init(1151): pd status 3e
INFO:    BL31: Initializing runtime services
WARNING: No OPTEE provided by BL2 boot loader, Booting device without OPTEE initialization. SMC`s destined for OPTEE will return SMC_UNK
ERROR:   Error initializing runtime service opteed_fast
INFO:    BL31: Preparing for EL3 exit to normal world
INFO:    Entry point address = 0x200000
INFO:    SPSR = 0x3c9
 
 
U-Boot 2017.09-rockchip-ayufan-1025-g482cd6ec8b (Jul 26 2018 - 08:18:55 +0000)
 
Model: Pine64 RockPro64
DRAM:  3.9 GiB
DCDC_REG1@vdd_center: ; enabling
DCDC_REG2@vdd_cpu_l: ; enabling
DCDC_REG3@vcc_ddr: ; enabling (ret: -38)
DCDC_REG4@vcc_1v8: set 1800000 uV; enabling
LDO_REG1@vcc1v8_dvp: set 1800000 uV; enabling
LDO_REG2@vcc3v0_touch: set 3000000 uV; enabling
LDO_REG3@vcc1v8_pmu: set 1800000 uV; enabling
LDO_REG4@vcc_sd: set 3300000 uV; enabling
LDO_REG5@vcca3v0_codec: set 3000000 uV; enabling
LDO_REG6@vcc_1v5: set 1500000 uV; enabling
LDO_REG7@vcca1v8_codec: set 1800000 uV; enabling
LDO_REG8@vcc_3v0: set 3000000 uV; enabling
SWITCH_REG1@vcc3v3_s3: ; enabling (ret: -38)
SWITCH_REG2@vcc3v3_s0: ; enabling (ret: -38)
vcc1v8-s0@vcc1v8_s0: set 1800000 uV; enabling (ret: -38)
dc-12v@dc_12v: set 12000000 uV; enabling (ret: -38)
vcc-sys@vcc_sys: set 5000000 uV; enabling (ret: -38)
vcc3v3-sys@vcc3v3_sys: set 3300000 uV; enabling (ret: -38)
vcc-phy-regulator@vcc_phy: ; enabling (ret: -38)
vdd-log@vdd_log: ; enabling (ret: -38)
MMC:   sdhci@fe330000: 0, dwmmc@fe320000: 1
SF: Detected gd25q128 with page size 256 Bytes, erase size 4 KiB, total 16 MiB
*** Warning - bad CRC, using default environment
 
In:    serial@ff1a0000
Out:   serial@ff1a0000
Err:   serial@ff1a0000
Model: Pine64 RockPro64
normal boot
```


Thanks again for all the help!

[nuumio]

I followed the NOOB guide and flashed ayufan's bionic minimal (bionic-minimal-rockpro64-0.7.9-1067-arm64.img) to the EMMC.

U-Boot SPL 2017.09-rockchip-ayufan-1025-g482cd6ec8b (Jul 26 2018 - 08:18:48)
booted from eMMC

I noticed that you have pretty old image and U-Boot. I'd try latest 0.7.11-1075 image: https://github.com/ayufan-rock64/linux-b...m64.img.xz

And update kernel (4.4 or mainline) and U-Boot to latest

Code:

$ apt list --installed|egrep "^(linux-image|u-boot-rock).*installed"

WARNING: apt does not have a stable CLI interface. Use with caution in scripts.

linux-image-4.20.0-1083-ayufan-g686e1f1aa461/unknown,now 4.20.0-1083-ayufan arm64 [installed]
linux-image-4.4.154-1128-rockchip-ayufan-g61b4b1151f9a/unknown,now 4.4.154-1128-rockchip-ayufan arm64 [installed]
u-boot-rockchip-rockpro64-2017.09-rockchip-ayufan-1035-gd646df03ac/unknown,now 2017.09-rockchip-ayufan-1035-gd646df03ac all [installed]

Hope it helps!

[josepht]

I noticed that you have pretty old image and U-Boot. I'd try latest 0.7.11-1075 image: https://github.com/ayufan-rock64/linux-b...m64.img.xz

Will do, thanks!


I installed the image I did because http://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/ROCKPro...age_Builds links to http://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/ROCKPro...re_Release which links to the 0.7.9 image.  Is the wiki just out of date, or is the 0.7.9 release the current "stable" one or something?

---

I noticed that you have pretty old image and U-Boot. I'd try latest 0.7.11-1075 image: https://github.com/ayufan-rock64/linux-b...m64.img.xz

Will do, thanks!


I installed the image I did because http://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/ROCKPro...age_Builds links to http://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/ROCKPro...re_Release which links to the 0.7.9 image.  Is the wiki just out of date, or is the 0.7.9 release the current "stable" one or something?

Oh, sorry, https://github.com/ayufan-rock64/linux-build/releases/ makes it pretty clear which is latest vs pre-release and stable vs development...