Okay, I FINALLY had to make an account because I am totally confused and dumfounded with Pinebook Pro.
One of my friends came by the other day and actually introduced it to me. At first I thought it was just a chromebook until I did some digging and saw how nifty it actually was. So as I'm digging around, I'm reading how I can install a bunch of linux operating systems. Hell yea....
But now the problem is... I guess I just really don't understand how the hell tp. I've done plently of Google and YouTube searches. Scrolled and scrolled through threads on your forum, but I am still at a lost....
It had Fedora on it right now, but the password to the account is unknown. Tried and tried to find ways to bypass it but from what I'm gathering is imma have to install another OS? (Let me know if I'm wrong)
After reading around a bit, I finally get the bottom of my PBP off, locate the eMMC switch (And some other one. Forgot the name)
Now, I'm pretty sure the I had to push the switch from TOP to BOTTOM to disable the eMMCwhatever. Cool. Got that handled. But now when I try to boot from SD (Should be as simple as inserting it and booting up, right?)
Well, that's where I'm stuck. No power, notta, nothing. But as soon as I remove the SD card, it boots right up to Fedora.
Any help would be awesome!
I think your "notta" should be "nada"...
Anyway, I don't know what you switched, but it seems like you did not switch off the eMMC. But don't worry about that right now, you don't need to switch it off. And your SD card is not imaged correctly. Your PBP *does* power up when you have the SD card in, but nothing is running to turn the power light on. You need a bootable image specific for SD card; the wiki has links for valid images. Then you need to write it to the card correctly. I suggest hopefully the wiki tells how to do this because the way I do it, with command "dd" is probably not the way you will. If that is how you are doing it, just make sure to write to the card itself, not a partition.
The card must have first, boot code, in our case U-Boot, next a FAT partition called for U-boot to read, next usually whatever your operating system needs. This is important. If those first two things are not at the very start of the card, and not aligned properly, the PBP will not boot, and again, the power light will not be turned on, because it is only turned on by software.
When you don't need the contents on your eMMC, you can try to find a USB adapter for the eMMC and write a new image to it.
I don't know if Fedora uses a different U-Boot, but that can also be an issue.
I also have experienced the issue that sometimes the micro SD card only boots from a restart, not from cold boot.
But I guess that can also be different dependent on the various U-Boots.
Once Fedora has loaded, try pressing CTRL + ALT + DEL and see if you can reboot.
Perhaps you also need to press the Fn key, as DEL has no dedicated key on the Pinebook Pro and shares the key with Backspace.
Perhaps you will start the micro SD card from that point.
Which distro did you write to the micro SD card?
(08-21-2021, 08:16 AM)KC9UDX Wrote: I think your "notta" should be "nada"...
Anyway, I don't know what you switched, but it seems like you did not switch off the eMMC. But don't worry about that right now, you don't need to switch it off. And your SD card is not imaged correctly. Your PBP *does* power up when you have the SD card in, but nothing is running to turn the power light on. You need a bootable image specific for SD card; the wiki has links for valid images. Then you need to write it to the card correctly. I suggest hopefully the wiki tells how to do this because the way I do it, with command "dd" is probably not the way you will. If that is how you are doing it, just make sure to write to the card itself, not a partition.
The card must have first, boot code, in our case U-Boot, next a FAT partition called for U-boot to read, next usually whatever your operating system needs. This is important. If those first two things are not at the very start of the card, and not aligned properly, the PBP will not boot, and again, the power light will not be turned on, because it is only turned on by software. Thank you for the quick replies. As for writing the image to my SD card, I've been using Etcher on my Windows computer. I was wondering about the whole writing it with the DD commands and was going to try that after work.
(08-21-2021, 02:38 PM)jiyong Wrote: When you don't need the contents on your eMMC, you can try to find a USB adapter for the eMMC and write a new image to it.
I don't know if Fedora uses a different U-Boot, but that can also be an issue.
I also have experienced the issue that sometimes the micro SD card only boots from a restart, not from cold boot.
But I guess that can also be different dependent on the various U-Boots.
Once Fedora has loaded, try pressing CTRL + ALT + DEL and see if you can reboot.
Perhaps you also need to press the Fn key, as DEL has no dedicated key on the Pinebook Pro and shares the key with Backspace.
Perhaps you will start the micro SD card from that point.
Which distro did you write to the micro SD card?
Like I stated earlier. I will have to try the restart way when I get off work, but as for the distro, I've tried a handful of them. Manjaro, Fedora, that DietPi even
Also consider, there have been many reports of SD cards that don't work in the PBP. I have not experienced this myself, so I cannot say which could work and which might not.
>(Let me know if I'm wrong),,,, you are wrong
Search these forums for shadow or passwordless,
boot SD, become root, edit emmc, make fedora passwordless
Not all uboots are universal, some don't "like" other distros
I am not impressed with fedoras version
(08-22-2021, 09:16 AM)wdt Wrote: >(Let me know if I'm wrong),,,, you are wrong
Search these forums for shadow or passwordless,
boot SD, become root, edit emmc, make fedora passwordless
Not all uboots are universal, some don't "like" other distros
I am not impressed with fedoras version
Like I said, I am a total Noob, but I am actually happy I found out about this Pinebook. Never knew it existed. I also saw something about PinePhones and PineTabs, so I think imma do some research on those.
Now, you keep mentioning something about uboots. Can you tell me a lot about it?
(08-22-2021, 05:28 AM)KC9UDX Wrote: Also consider, there have been many reports of SD cards that don't work in the PBP. I have not experienced this myself, so I cannot say which could work and which might not.
I sometimes have issues when I overwrite an existing image.
So far I was able to fix it with GParted.
>Can you tell me a lot about it?
Some, where it goes (located), how it works with rk3399
About specific versions,, no
Each is a tiny bit different, best if you get a serial cable, flip switch,
see what the initial boot is doing
there is a definite shortage of uboot information, in general
Even a good list of the commands
Well, if you have a U-Boot on your eMMC that doesn't like to boot SD cards (yes this happens) then it is time to disable the eMMC. You may as well do that anyway just to make things easier. But study the images in the wiki carefully (hopefully there are still good images there), to make sure you are switching the right switch. You could even remove the eMMC if you want. It just pulls straight up. It looks scary, but it isn't.
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