Problem booting from sd-card

[giel]

Hi everyone,
I wanted to try Armbian for my new pinebook, so I tried the following:

- I downloaded the image https://dl.armbian.com/pinebook-a64/Ubun...desktop.7z
- I unzipped ofcourse :-)
- I inserted on old sdcard
- Then "sudo dd bs=30M if=Armbian_5.56_Pinebook-a64_Ubuntu_bionic_default_3.10.107_desktop.img of=/dev/mmcblk1p1"
- no errors when finished
- Then reboot

Result: booted into default KDEneon, not Armbian on SD card.

Am I doing anything wrong here?

Kind regards,
Giel

[martinayotte]

- Then "sudo dd bs=30M if=Armbian_5.56_Pinebook-a64_Ubuntu_bionic_default_3.10.107_desktop.img of=/dev/mmcblk1p1"

The output device should be "of=/dev/mmcblk1" for the whole device, not "of=/dev/mmcblk1p1" which is the first partition ...

[giel]

thanks for your reaction! Makes sense :-) Ill try that this evening! Ill let you know......

[giel]

I tried of=/dev/mmcblk1.....
When I reboot the screen stays black....
After removing the sd-card the pinebook boots fine into KDE Neon....
sha256sum of the image was good
no errors during dd.....
Could it be that my sd-card is too old or to slow?

[dkryder]

i'd probably have formatted the sdcard before writing the armbian image.

[giel]

Thanks for your reply! How do I do that from commandline?

Maybe its something else:
I saw in the script on https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=4998 the following line just before the dd-command:
umount -f /dev/mmcblk1*

I didn't do that.... Maybe that's the problem?...... But is it possible to dd to an unmounted sd-card?... Apparently it is if iI read the script right.....

[jezek]

Maybe its something else:
I saw in the script on https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=4998 the following line just before the dd-command:
umount -f /dev/mmcblk1*

I didn't do that.... Maybe that's the problem?...... But is it possible to dd to an unmounted sd-card?... Apparently it is if iI read the script right.....

Last week I tried to write numerous images to SD card using the "dd" command (but not armbian). It worked every time, without unmounting the drive first. No problems with boot. Edit: Maybe it wasn't mounted yet, that's why it worked. :/

But give the unmount a shot.
Edit: It is wise to unmount device before dd to it. Or you can end up with corrupt result.

Have you tried any other image than armbian?

[giel]

I tried another pinebook image from wiki.pine64.org (xenial mate simple...)
This is what I did:
smitsg@smitsg-pc:/data$ sudo umount -f /dev/mmcblk1*
[sudo] password for smitsg:
umount: /dev/mmcblk1: not mounted.
umount: /dev/mmcblk1p1: not mounted.
smitsg@smitsg-pc:/data$ sudo dd bs=30M if=simple-image-pinebook1080p-0.7.28.img of=/dev/mmcblk1
0+1 records in
0+1 records out
12587008 bytes (13 MB, 12 MiB) copied, 2.43098 s, 5.2 MB/s
smitsg@smitsg-pc:/data$
And after reboot: blank screen

I think have to buy another sd-card...... Or should I use bs=1M?

[jezek]

The bs in dd command means block size, and stands for size of chunks being copied at once and with the right value it can improve copy speeds. For me the default value (bs=512) and bs=1M worked fine, haven't tried other values. I think 30M is too much, but I don't think it is the source of failure.

I don't know, about the simple xenial image you mentioned, but on 1080p pinebook, this  ayufan's xenial mate image in his releases github repository booted fine. However I don't use it, cause I failed to figure out how to successfully play videos (only black screen instead video, sound works).

[pfeerick]

Thanks for your reply! How do I do that from commandline?

There's no need to format anything if you are writing a disk image... it will completely obliterate any prior file system and partition layouts if done properly.

After doing a dd, it may be a good idea to run 'sync' afterwards just to make sure everything has been written to the card before you remove it.

Which model pinebook is it? The original, or the 1080p one? As I gather you need to be using the right image for the different display, or at least change some settings...