emmc boots intermittently?
#1
Actually very rarely. I have to reboot several times (5-7 times) with a hard reboot by depressing the power switch for 10 seconds or so, before it will attempt to boot once. The screen remains off (I can tell when the backlighting is on or off), in those cases when it does not boot. Both Manjaro and Debian boot fine from the microSD card. I did reflash the emmc with the 20.04 version of Marjaro from the OSDN.net site, but the problem persists. My PBP is from the latest (May 2020) batch, with the Manjaro pre-install, which I have since reflashed. It behaved the same both with the preinstalled distro and after reflashing the emmc.

Any ideas?

Thanks.
#2
You might want to try removing the back panel and ensuring the eMMC is properly seated on the board. Apparently they already did.
#3
Yes,  That has been happened to a few PBP's in every batch since the first batch.
#4
If I am going to open the back, I may as well install a bigger emmc or possibly even an NVME SSD. I did not however order the 128GB emmc, precisely because I did not want to open the laptop.

Is the emmc a standard device, or do I have to order one specifically from Pine64? I suspect the NVME is a custom adapter.

Thanks.
#5
@haziz , I had similar problems with Manjaro on eMMC. My PBP was from an earlier batch, so I manually loaded Manjaro. It seemed to work for a few boots, but them black screen. Booting the same version on SD card worked fine.

Turns out the U-Boot for Manjaro, both the Pine64 version and from Manjaro web site, is not as reliable as default Debian I had been using. Whence I restored those boot files, (but left "/boot" and "/" alone), Manjaro works great. (At least all that I have played with.)
--
Arwen Evenstar
Princess of Rivendale
#6
(06-08-2020, 01:36 PM)tophneal Wrote: You might want to try removing the back panel and ensuring the eMMC is properly seated on the board.

I did open the back, and the emmc is well seated. The boot from the emmc is still cranky and intermittent.

(06-08-2020, 03:13 PM)Arwen Wrote: @haziz , I had similar problems with Manjaro on eMMC. My PBP was from an earlier batch, so I manually loaded Manjaro. It seemed to work for a few boots, but them black screen. Booting the same version on SD card worked fine.

Turns out the U-Boot for Manjaro, both the Pine64 version and from Manjaro web site, is not as reliable as default Debian I had been using. Whence I restored those boot files, (but left "/boot" and "/" alone), Manjaro works great. (At least all that I have played with.)

Just the u-boot.itb file or everything in the boot partition?

Thanks.

(06-08-2020, 03:36 PM)haziz Wrote:
(06-08-2020, 01:36 PM)tophneal Wrote: You might want to try removing the back panel and ensuring the eMMC is properly seated on the board.

I did open the back, and the emmc is well seated. The boot from the emmc is still cranky and intermittent.

(06-08-2020, 03:13 PM)Arwen Wrote: @haziz , I had similar problems with Manjaro on eMMC. My PBP was from an earlier batch, so I manually loaded Manjaro. It seemed to work for a few boots, but them black screen. Booting the same version on SD card worked fine.

Turns out the U-Boot for Manjaro, both the Pine64 version and from Manjaro web site, is not as reliable as default Debian I had been using. Whence I restored those boot files, (but left "/boot" and "/" alone), Manjaro works great. (At least all that I have played with.)

Just the u-boot.itb file or everything in the boot partition?

Thanks.

Actually the Debian image does not even have a uboot file, it does have "rk3399-pinebookpro.dtb" and a couple of others.
#7
@haziz, it's hard for me to explain. And I am too tired to do a acceptable job, (been a long day for me).

But, basically you want the low level boot loader, that is NOT in a file system. So NOT in "/boot". It's usually written with "dd" using specific offisets on the destination device. We do need to update the Wiki on installing U-Boot. Except that each new problem, needs a custom solution. We will get there.
--
Arwen Evenstar
Princess of Rivendale
#8
This is how I fixed my PBP's boot issues:

Download idbloader.img, uboot.img, & trust.img from https://github.com/mrfixit2001/updates_r...filesystem

Then run commands below assuming the files are in your ~/Downloads folder and your terminal is in your home folder:

Code:
SYSPART=$(findmnt -n -o SOURCE /)
DEVID=$(echo $SYSPART | sed -e s+'p[0-9]$'+''+)
sudo dd if=Downloads/idbloader.img of=$DEVID bs=32k seek=1 conv=fsync
sudo dd if=Downloads/uboot.img of=$DEVID bs=64k seek=128 conv=fsync
sudo dd if=Downloads/trust.img of=$DEVID bs=64k seek=192 conv=fsync



This fixed my boot issues hopefully it helps you. Also, I found this from elsewhere on this or the Manjaro forums.


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