Cannot boot up after hours off

[tsago]

I've probably posted about this here and there, and I am still struggling with this. If anyone has any ideas, I would really appreciate them.

After a long power-off time (let's say overnight), I cannot simply boot up.
LED stays off, no UART output.

If I keep trying, it eventually kicks in and boots up.
After that initial hurdle, there's absolutely no problem with subsequent shutdown > boot up cycles, works like a charm.
Currently running an up-to-date Manjaro build. No other Manjaro user seems to have this issue. (or maybe nobody bothered responding over there)

Might be worth noting that for the life of me I just cannot get this thing to reboot properly. (If I try a reboot, I always have to turn it off by long pressing the power button, then boot up)

This is absolutely driving me insane. Instead of normally powering the laptop on, I have to go through several voodoo steps and prayers before I can do anything with the laptop... Should I just go ahead and engage Pine support, perhaps going for a replacement?


edit: Just to update, the problem was that the eMMC chip was somehow faulty. I bought a replacement, put it in, and haven't had a single issue since.

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

I've probably posted about this here and there, and I am still struggling with this. If anyone has any ideas, I would really appreciate them.

After a long power-off time (let's say overnight), I cannot simply boot up.
LED stays off, no UART output.

If I keep trying, it eventually kicks in and boots up.
After that initial hurdle, there's absolutely no problem with subsequent shutdown > boot up cycles, works like a charm.
Currently running an up-to-date Manjaro build. No other Manjaro user seems to have this issue. (or maybe nobody bothered responding over there)

Might be worth noting that for the life of me I just cannot get this thing to reboot properly. (If I try a reboot, I always have to turn it off by long pressing the power button, then boot up)

This is absolutely driving me insane. Instead of normally powering the laptop on, I have to go through several voodoo steps and prayers before I can do anything with the laptop... Should I just go ahead and engage Pine support, perhaps going for a replacement?

The symptoms are not conclusively indicating an issue with hardware. I'd try to see if this is reproducible with a different OS distribution booting from alternative media. 

I have experience with alternative machinery and different OS's that presented similar problems - such as Macbooks running Debian, and NetBSD on SGI hardware.  
If the native OS behaved, I could rule out the machine itself.

If you are able to reproduce this with the PinebookPro Debian on SD, then you can zero in on this being a defective unit. 

— Jeremiah

[tsago]

The symptoms are not conclusively indicating an issue with hardware. I'd try to see if this is reproducible with a different OS distribution booting from alternative media. 

I have experience with alternative machinery and different OS's that presented similar problems - such as Macbooks running Debian, and NetBSD on SGI hardware.  
If the native OS behaved, I could rule out the machine itself.

If you are able to reproduce this with the PinebookPro Debian on SD, then you can zero in on this being a defective unit. 

— Jeremiah

That's a fair point. Here's what I did today:

1, Booted into SD-card-located debian build
1, Downloaded the official debian build
2, Unpacked it (unxz) and wrote it onto eMMC (dd if=<debian-image> of=/dev/mmcblk1 bs=4M status=progress), overriding the existing fresh Manjaro install


4, Booted with eMMC (no SD card inserted) into the debian build. 
5, ran the upgrade script by mrfixit
6, Rebooted after the script finished and outputted that I should reboot

==> first issue: laptop powered down, but did not boot back up (but maybe this is a post-update symptom?)

7, long-press power button (5~10 sec) > short-press (3 sec) > booted up (long press only because the power led did not turn on in 3 sec as expected)
8, new restart test

==> failed the same way again

9, long-press power button (5~10 sec) > short-press (3 sec) > booted up
10, another restart test

==> failed again

11, long-press power button (5~10 sec) > short-press (3 sec) > booted up
12, Two shutdown -> boot tests; both OK

13, In shutdown state, waited 1 hour
14, Press button to boot up

==> failed

14, long-press power button > short-press > booted up

---

What do you think? Is this a sufficient test to start doubting the hardware?
Do we have any specific support contacts that I can reach out to? (anybody aware?)

[pjsf]

Maybe a silly question but how are you 'rebooting' ? it's worth noting that pressing the power key in the current Manjaro build only suspends - an that wake from suspend is currently broken, requiring the PBP to be hard reset. If you're using the reboot command or the menu item/shutdown dialog then obviously that's not the issue.

[tsago]

Hi pjsf, I click the power button, get prompted for what I want to do, and select reboot (GUI button).
Are you implying that the "reboot" button actually incorrectly does a suspend?

---

Had help from mrfixit2001 on the chat yesterday.
Hypothesis was that maybe eMMC is bad.

I removed the eMMC module, then prepared an SD-card image of the debian build:
1, burned pinebookpro-debian-mrfixit-191127.img to SD
2, booted up and upgraded with the upgrade script
3, shut down, boot up

4, Restart test => works OK (improvement from tests off eMMC)
5, I still get stuck during bootup if UART is connected and I am getting serial console output to my PC). Getting stuck on:
[    0.000000] GIC: PPI partition interrupt-partition-0[0] { /cpus/cpu@0[0] /cpus/cpu@1[1] /cpus/cpu@2[2] /cpus/cpu@3[3] }
[    0.000000] GIC: PPI partition interrupt-partition-1[1] { /cpus/cpu@100[4] /cpus/cpu@101[5] }


6, Shutdown test => works fine

So it looks like there's something wrong with my eMMC module...

[Solra Bizna]

I still get stuck during bootup if UART is connected and I am getting serial console output to my PC

Are you using a "pinebook serial console" cable purchased from the Pine store? If so, be aware that some (all?) are actually the wrong voltage, and will cause issues when plugged in, including instability during boot.