Pinebook Pro won´t boot either from eMMC or microSD

[axel]

Sorry things are not too clear to me either

So when I try to boot without SD card, the screen stays off but the power LED goes orange then green - and I can toggle the caps and num lock LEDs. However pressing ctrl-alt-f2 doesn't seem to do anything.

When I insert a Manjaro SD card and boot, I'm getting:

EXT4-fs error (device mmcblk1p2): ext4_journal_check_start:83: Detected aborted journal
EXT4-fs (mmcblk1p2): Remounting filesystem read-only
EXT4-fs error (device mmcblk1p2): ext4_journal_check_start:83: Detected aborted journal
_

however I can't seem to type anything at the prompt. Is this caused by my previous SD card boot when I might have interrupted Manjaro during boot from SD card (after it prompted for host name, user name, password, locale etc)

[wdt]

I'm guessing that you don't have a linux box and card reader to do the fsck on/with
Hard to say why journal is bad, but since it is ro, fsck will work on it (in pbp)
sudo fsck.ext4 /dev/mmcblk1p2
Sometimes, when video is wrong, vt also fails to display
This makes it more likely that the kernel upgrade was somehow wrong

[axel]

I'm guessing that you don't have a linux box and card reader to do the fsck on/with
Hard to say why journal is bad, but since it is ro, fsck will work on it (in pbp)
sudo fsck.ext4 /dev/mmcblk1p2
Sometimes, when video is wrong, vt also fails to display
This makes it more likely that the kernel upgrade was somehow wrong

I managed to boot debian from SD card. I suppose it is safe to unmount /dev/mmcblk1p2?
Running the command shows "/dev/mmcblk1p2 is mounted. Cannot continue, aborting"

Also if the kernel update went wrong, any easy way to reverse that?

Thanks for all your help

[wdt]

There are 4 or more different debians so....
Run lsblk, find out which is emmc and which SD, emmc also has boot0&1 on it
If mmcbk1p2 is /, you won't be able to unmount it
Check,, mount |grep mmc
From the sounds of it, the SD is what had the bad filesystem and
now you have a different SD
So, if you have a SD carrier, put manjaro SD, in carrier, into usb port and fix it there
(lsblk again to check) It will be /dev/sda,,,, sudo fsck /dev/sda2
The reason for this, debian doesn't use pacman, so downgrading is quite hard using debian
So, fix manjaro SD, so it is bootable, then use chroot to emmc and then either
if an older kernel is in /var/cache/pacman/pkgs ,,, pacman -U linux-pinebookpro-..... OR
chroot, install downgrade, you may have to enable AUR repository in settings (of package manager)
then run,,, sudo downgrade linux

[axel]

I was booting mrfixit debian for PBP - but makes sense that it doesn't have pacman etc to repair an arch linux installation.

I tried all morning booting Manjaro - most of the time I got some "authentication failure, automatic login failed". I also tried older images - xcfe-pbpro-20.06 and kde-plasma-pbp-20.08.

When running an image of kde-plasma-20.10 I get to go through the setup wizard, pbp reboots, manjaro spinner for some time.. I press esc and see this error message: "EXT4-fs error (device mmcblk1p2): ext4_check_bdev_write_error:215: comm systemd-hwdb: Error while async write back metadata"

At this point I don't even care if I need to do a clean re-install instead of trying to rescue my current system. But if I can't even boot Manjaro SD card, then I assume I can't easily do a fresh install either

EDIT:

I tried again with another SD card and now I'm getting this after reboot from the wizard

Code:

EXT4-fs error (device mmcblk1p2) in ext4_do_update_inode:5087: Journal has aborted
EXT4-fs error (device mmcblk1p2): ext4_dirty_inode:5853: inode #162587: comm systemd-sysuser: mark inode dirty error
EXT4-fs error (device mmcblk1p2) in ext4_dirty_inode:5855: IO failure
EXT4-fs error (device mmcblk1p2): ext4_journal_check_start:83: Detected aborted journal
EXT4-fs (mmcblk1p2): Remounting filesystem read-only
EXT4-fs error (device mmcblk1p2): ext4_journal_check_start:83: Detected aborted journal

writing the mrfixit to the same card it boots

[wdt]

Like I said, boot mrfixit, put bad manjaro card in SD carrier/dongle,
plug into usb port, fix it there
Also check emmc, actually everything that is not mounted
Or do you not have a dongle?

[axel]

Like I said, boot mrfixit, put bad manjaro card in SD carrier/dongle,
plug into usb port, fix it there
Also check emmc, actually everything that is not mounted
Or do you not have a dongle?

I actually don't have a dongle but I'm on Mac if that helps (to write the SD card etc)

[wdt]

well, usb2 dongles don't cost all that much,
re mac,,,https://www.maketecheasier.com/mount-access-ext4-partition-mac/

[axel]

@wdt I think I'm a step closer! Not sure why I haven't thought of this before but I flashed Manjaro on a USB drive...

So here is what's happening. Without the Manjaro USB same as before. The power LED turns green but nothing is happening (except from being able to toggle num and caps lock LEDs)

When I plug in the Manjaro USB and power on the PBP, it boots and even straight back into my Manjaro from eMMC!!! Everything seems to work except that I have neither wifi or lan (ip a only shows loopback interface)

There must be something messed up with my boot partition and when the USB is plugged in it seems to recognize the BOOT_MNJRO partition there?

My lsblk shows the following:

Code:

sda (30G) - that's my USB
- sda1 213M (mount point /boot)
- sda2 4.9G
mmcblk2 58.2G
- mmcblk2p1 213.6M (no mount point!)
- mmcblk2p1 58G (mounted at /)
mmcblk2boot0 4M
mmcblk2boot1 4M
zram0 5.6G [SWAP]

checking for linux kernel in pacman cache I see

Code:

- linux-pinebookpro-5.7.0-1-aarch64.pkg.tar.xz
- linux-pinebookpro-5.7.0-2-aarch64.pkg.tar.xz
- linux-pinebookpro-5.7.0-3-aarch64.pkg.tar.xz

There are no linux-he* files.

uname -a shows

Code:

Linux pinebookpro 5.8.14-1-MANJARO-ARM #1 SMP Wed Oct 7 09:18:37 CEST 2020

Not sure if relevant, my /etc/fstab is just one line

Code:

LABEL=BOOT_MNJRO /boot vfat defaults 0 0

I assume this causes the PBP to simply boot from the partition on the USB. And something must be wrong that otherwise it doesn't boot from the same partition on the eMMC.


So what's my move here? Shall I revert the kernel using the latest 5.7 from my cache? Do you happen to know the command?

[wdt]

It's too bad you don't have a linux box or a usb stick with a linux boot for mac,
makes it a lot harder
When you have a cross device boot like this (unless deliberatly setup), it is ripe for mis-configuration
I suspect that sda2 and mmcblk2p1 have the same label,,,, sudo blkid
So, I would say redo usb stick, change labels on stick (dosfslabel (sda1) ,, e2label (sda2))
and edit /etc/fstab (on sda2) and /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf (on sda1) to match new labels
Since mmcblk2 has only 1 partition, it is an older manjaro install, since march?? it has been a 2 partition install
Once the usb is booting right (both /boot and / on sda) do an install on emmc
Backup anything important 1st of course, before the install
--edit--
after playing a bit more with elementary, it strikes me that as a mac user, you would find this more familiar,
the meta key is the pine key, virtual desktops are called "workspace"
I do have s3 sleep (on elementary), don't remember if I changed uboot (---I did, mrfixit uboot)