Rock64 stuck in boot, please help!

[Malmgren]

Hi.
Tonight my Rock64 was unexpectedly shut down (UPS ran out of battery) and after that it doesn't seem to boot and I don't know how to get in to it. It answers on SSH port, but when trying to log in I get:

Code:

"System is booting up. Unprivileged users are not permitted to log in yet. Please come back later. For technical details, see pam_nologin(8)."
Connection closed by 192.168.168.8

So it's obviously stuck somewhere in the boot process, but I don't know where and why. Anyone can think of any other way to access it? It's booted from eMMC and unfortunately I have got no other way to read eMMC.

It's running Debian Buster, if it's of any help.

edit: Ok, you might call me stupid, but I just realized that I've got a hdmi port that I've never used. Plugged in my tv and a keyboard and thought I'd find the solution. Still stuck though. I can see the kernel booting and the network getting up, but then nothing more happens. No errors, no nothing. I can switch TTY with the keyboard (ctrl+alt+F2 etc) but that's about it (the other tty's are black). Wtf?

[Rocklobster]

Assuming you are booting from SD I'd try and burn a fresh image to a different SD card. Sounds like the power out may have corrupted the file system. I always keep a spare imaged SD card close to my Rock64 to cover disasters like that.

[Malmgren]

Assuming you are booting from SD I'd try and burn a fresh image to a different SD card. Sounds like the power out may have corrupted the file system. I always keep a spare imaged SD card close to my Rock64 to cover disasters like that.

Nope. Booting from eMMC. I did however find an old USB-eMMC adapter in a box here, so I have now analyzed the contents of the eMMC. Didn't get me much though. Seems the root is never getting remounted rw so there's absolutely nothing written to any log files upon a try to boot. I don't really know where to continue digging?

One alternative right now would be to simply back up everything important using the USB-eMMC adapter and simply starting from scratch. Would be happy if I don't have to do that though...

Oh, also I did some fsck:ing on the eMMC. No errors there. However this MIGHT just be the first time I actually got to boot the Rock64 after upgrading from Stretch to Buster so maybe the power outage wasn't the problem at all but rather the reboot.

[Rocklobster]

A reboot after a Distro upgrade might be the cause.

I never do a Distro upgrade. It never seems to end well. A fresh install might be the way forward to rule out any other underling cause. I use Armbian Linux booting from SD and have never experienced a problem like this. I recently installed Buster and all went well.

[z4v4l]

how about connecting it through UART?

[Malmgren]

Ok. A clean reinstall it is. Can anyone point me to instructions on how to put an image (from ayufans release) on the eMMC card using the USB-eMMC adapter? I have done it before but the documentation of this platform really is a mess, can't seem to find the correct instructions...

Sorry, found it now. https://www.balena.io/etcher/ it is. :-P

[xalius]

If you have the emmc usb adapter you can just use Etcher to write an image to it, like a normal sdcard.

[Malmgren]

If you have the emmc usb adapter you can just use Etcher to write an image to it, like a normal sdcard.

Yep, that's what I ended up doing. First rescuing all important stuff (using that same adapter) and then burning a new Buster image. So I'm now back on track  

/Daniel