PBP does not boot: broken boot partition

[barn]

I was messing with my boot partition on my PBP KDE Edition. Now, it doesnt boot to the OS.

During power-on, the light is orange and the system hangs there. Screen remains black. Power indicator remains orange.

I have not made any changes to uboot or other system properties.

I created a bootable SD card, but it still does not boot; same issue as above (light orange, screen black).

The Wiki mentions that the KDE edition has "uboot on the eMMC. Its boot order is: SD, USB, then eMMC."

Does this mean that I can not boot from SD or USB while my boot partition on eMMC is broken?

Any recommendations how to proceed?
My only thought is to buy a USB to eMMC adapter and restore my backup onto the boot partition. Let me know if there is another way.

[tophneal]

Try disabling your emmc, booting from a live SD install, turn on and rebind the emmc, then try repairing your /boot

[barn]

Try disabling your emmc, booting from a live SD install, turn on and rebind the emmc, then try repairing your /boot

I wasnt aware of that switch!

However... no luck. Upon flipping the switch (#24) and then attempting to boot, the power-on light does not turn on at all; neither orange or green, no light at all. After I flip the switch back, and try to boot with SD card, I get the orange light again. I tried a few times back and forth, but same results. Might be a hardware issue with my switch?

[tophneal]

It probably isn't a hardware issue, it's probably something small that was missed.

Not all of this will apply to your situation, but the steps to boot to SD should: https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?...2#pid72682 Compare what you did with these steps. It also has the commands for how you can rebind the emmc when booting into a live SD.

[barn]

Very peculiar....

I decided to try again but with a USB. This time, the light became green after about 25 seconds. However, screen was still black after another 3 min.

Then I tried the SD card again. But same result: only orange light.

Then I tried with both SD and USB plugged in, and the PBP booted successfully using the USB. I suspect that it was just a coincidence that both were plugged in, but odd indeed.

Not sure why PBP is not booting from SD card. The SD works with RPi4.

Also not sure why eMMC switch isn't working as expected. Is there another way to verify if there is something I can fix with that?

---

Correction... I just noticed that my system is using /boot from USB, but the root partition from SD card. I used etcher to create the devices, but not sure why this odd dependency has occurred! If I only have one of the two devices plugged in, it doesnt boot lol

Anyways, from here I can repair boot partition on emmc. Thanks!

ps, if there are steps I can apply for fix for emmc switch, please share

[wdt]

>ps, if there are steps I can apply for fix for emmc switch, please share
Change uboot? You didn't mention, I guess you are using manjaro???
It is all pretty opaque, I continue to think mrfixit's uboot is the best,
and for that matter, it is best rescue distro, IMO
Since you mention rpi4, I guess you know to ONLY use quality uSD?

[barn]

>ps, if there are steps I can apply for fix for emmc switch, please share
Change uboot? You didn't mention, I guess you are using manjaro???
It is all pretty opaque, I continue to think mrfixit's uboot is the best,
and for that matter, it is best rescue distro, IMO
Since you mention rpi4, I guess you know to ONLY use quality uSD?

To clarify, the issue i saw with "eMMC switch" was that the physical switch to disable eMMC does not seem to work. After flipping switch, PBP does not boot at all (no lights).

But yes, i got myself into this mess because I was messing with boot for nvme, and I am now going to look into using uboot instead, because that would be a better solution.

I agree, manjaro probably wasnt a good choice as a "rescue" distro. but i kinda wanted to try the XFCE version, so i thought i was killing two birds, but i now suspect that using manjaro+xfce was part of the issue. however, after repairing my boot and installing Manjaro+XFCE to SD card, the SD boots correctly, so i am not sure why it was such a pain to get the initial boot to execute when the eMMC boot was broken.

[wdt]

Since the light is different, something must be happening
(and it DID boot from removable media, just oddly)
Since you have it fixed, you may not wish to bother more,,
what happens when emmc physically removed,, vrs installed, swich flipped
IIUR, switch shorts emmc clock
If you find probe points, could measure R open/closed

[tpchuckles]

[quote pid='74191' dateline='1596728581']
tophnealTry disabling your emmc, booting from a live SD install, turn on and rebind the emmc, then try repairing your /boot
[/quote]

when you say a "live SD install", is this something other than one of the many img files from here like the latest of ubuntu+xfce4?

I may be in a similar boat as OP. dd on my debian install wrote me a bootable uSD which i booted from. dd from there to my emmc must've blown up my boot partition? I wasn't sure if it was an issue with the uSD (forgot to run "sync" at the end with the emmc install, and may've removed the uSD card before shutdown was finished. even the uSD wasn't booting), so i reflashed the uSD from a windows PC (only working pc with an SD slot remaining in the house, lol) using Etcher, and the uSD still won't boot.

found this thread, flipped the emmc switch and it's still not booting off the uSD.

edit: just kidding. tried mrfixit's stock debian image and it booted right up. i guess that answers the question? not all bootable SD images are "live images"? idk

[gimy16]

I commented in another post that I had more or less the same problem; but my PBP won't boot even with SD and USB. Only the orange light was lighting and a black screen.

I got an eMMc to USB adapter and I used this to install Manjaro in the eMMc in another PC. You can try this; my problem was that the eMMc was empty because I probably did something to it.

I hope this is useful for you.