Unable to boot: blinking red light

[houki]

It seems that after modifying my fstab on manjaro to mount a swap partition, the pinebook pro is unable to boot.

The problem is, the mmc has boot priority over the sd-card, so the only way to boot from sd is to disable the mmc, which leaves me unable to access the fstab in question. Enabling the mmc after boot doesn't make it visible either.


However, now I think about it, when I was installing manjaro, it did boot from the sd-card without having to disable the mmc.
Can it be something else that's wrong? A corrupted u-boot install maybe?

Unfortunately, I don't have a working UART cable (I ordered the official one that runs on 5V), nor do I have a usb to mmc adapter.

Does anyone have any ideas to fix this?

[tophneal]

What's installed on your eMMC? If this occurred after installing Manjaro to the eMMC, then you probably need to wipe it and reinstall. Easiest way to make that possible without the adapter or UART cable (at least in my opinion) would be to:

-Determine a working surface where you can take the bottom casing of PBP off.
-Place a soft material down by the edge of your surface, and lay the PBP keyboard tray onto it. The screen should be hanging off the edge, upside down. (I suggest doing this so that you don't have to worry about damaging the case by opening the lid w/o the bottom casing.)
-Remove the bottom casing (be sure to read the wiki for various precautions beforehand.)
-Flip the eMMC switch to OFF.
-Put the PBP on its side, so you can access the Power key.
-Insert your Manjaro installer SD card.
-Turn on the PBP.
-Once you see the PBP booting off of the SD, flip the eMMC switch back on.
-Use your Manjaro SD to either wipe the eMMC and shutdown (so you can put the PBP back together, boot back into the SD and try installing again.)

[houki]

Manjaro is on the eMMC.

I tried enabling the eMMC both during boot (the Manjaro splash screen at the earliest) and after boot, but in either case it didn't show up in /dev.
If I enable it any earlier it starts giving the blinking red power light again.

[houki]

So, I ended up buying the official USB to eMMC adapter from a nearby reseller.

And it seems I was unable to even mount the partition.
Fortunately, I was able to format it, so everything works again, although I need to reinstall my stuff again.

Thanks for the help!

EDIT:
Using the adapter it did show up in /dev on another computer, but I was unable to mount it due to a "bad superblock".

[henryzhou]

What's installed on your eMMC? If this occurred after installing Manjaro to the eMMC, then you probably need to wipe it and reinstall. Easiest way to make that possible without the adapter or UART cable (at least in my opinion) would be to:

-Determine a working surface where you can take the bottom casing of PBP off.
-Place a soft material down by the edge of your surface, and lay the PBP keyboard tray onto it. The screen should be hanging off the edge, upside down. (I suggest doing this so that you don't have to worry about damaging the case by opening the lid w/o the bottom casing.)
-Remove the bottom casing (be sure to read the wiki for various precautions beforehand.)
-Flip the eMMC switch to OFF.
-Put the PBP on its side, so you can access the Power key.
-Insert your Manjaro installer SD card.
-Turn on the PBP.
-Once you see the PBP booting off of the SD, flip the eMMC switch back on.
-Use your Manjaro SD to either wipe the eMMC and shutdown (so you can put the PBP back together, boot back into the SD and try installing again.)

Hi, 

I run into the same issue that after installing Manjaro to the eMMC the laptop doesn't boot (even with a bootable SD inserted)
I'm curious what makes Manjaro installation different from the other distro? 

Thanks

[tophneal]

What's installed on your eMMC? If this occurred after installing Manjaro to the eMMC, then you probably need to wipe it and reinstall. Easiest way to make that possible without the adapter or UART cable (at least in my opinion) would be to:

-Determine a working surface where you can take the bottom casing of PBP off.
-Place a soft material down by the edge of your surface, and lay the PBP keyboard tray onto it. The screen should be hanging off the edge, upside down. (I suggest doing this so that you don't have to worry about damaging the case by opening the lid w/o the bottom casing.)
-Remove the bottom casing (be sure to read the wiki for various precautions beforehand.)
-Flip the eMMC switch to OFF.
-Put the PBP on its side, so you can access the Power key.
-Insert your Manjaro installer SD card.
-Turn on the PBP.
-Once you see the PBP booting off of the SD, flip the eMMC switch back on.
-Use your Manjaro SD to either wipe the eMMC and shutdown (so you can put the PBP back together, boot back into the SD and try installing again.)

Hi, 

I run into the same issue that after installing Manjaro to the eMMC the laptop doesn't boot (even with a bootable SD inserted)
I'm curious what makes Manjaro installation different from the other distro? 

Thanks

Which image did you use? I wouldn't really say Manjaro is more difficult, but some images don't behave as one might instinctually expect them to. Have you been able to get booting again?

[henryzhou]

I'm using Manjaro ARM with GTK image downloaded from the wiki site https://manjaro.org/download/arm/pineboo...-pro-xfce/

After I DD the image to eMMC, the first time it boots from eMMC and asks for installation parameters.
Then it fails to boot from either eMMC or SD card. The power light is blinking in red.

If I switch off the eMMC switch at the back, it's able to boot from SD card.
But if I turn on the eMMC switch (after booting from SD card) the system does not recognize the eMMC. I only have /dev/mmcblk1 which is SD card.

So I wonder if there's a way to let me flash the eMMC without the USB reader (I order it online but don't know when it'll shipped)

[wdt]

try this,, dmesg |grep mmcblk ,, to make sure there is only 1 mmc device, then
# echo fe330000.sdhci >/sys/bus/platform/drivers/sdhci-arasan/bind (#signifying root, don't type #)
then ,, dmesg|tail ,,was it successful?
(with the switch on, obviously, sometimes easy to forget)

[henryzhou]

try this,, dmesg |grep mmcblk    ,, to make sure there is only 1 mmc device, then
# echo fe330000.sdhci >/sys/bus/platform/drivers/sdhci-arasan/bind   (#signifying root, don't type #)
then ,,  dmesg|tail   ,,was it successful?
(with the switch on, obviously, sometimes easy to forget)

i got "echo :write error : No such device"

---

Reference: https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?...9#pid54349

I need to first unbind it before bind

# echo fe330000.sdhci >/sys/bus/platform/drivers/sdhci-arasan/unbind
# echo fe330000.sdhci >/sys/bus/platform/drivers/sdhci-arasan/bind