Cannot boot from SD on Convergence 3 GB model
#1
I recently purchased a 3 GB convergence edition pinephone and much as I like KDE Plasma on the desktop, I found it rather slow and frequently lagging, so I tried to test Mobian-Posh.
Sadly, the phone never actually boots from the SD card, I'm always greeted by the spinning KDE gear.
fdisk -l and lsblk on the phone do list the SD card.
I put the latest Mobian, Ubuntu Touch and PostmarketOS as well as an old Mobian build (see below) onto the card with either bmaptool or dd, without any issues, though none of them boots.
These threads from various forums

https://gitlab.com/mobian1/issues/-/issues/86
https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=11259
https://www.reddit.com/r/PINE64official/...pinephone/

suggest that this is due to the convergence edition having 3 GB of RAM but apparently displaying it internally as 4, which the builds have to take into account.
However, these threads are from 2020 so I can hardly imagine that this is still the issue. They also mention a Mobian 3rd September 2020 nightly build which works, however it is not listed anymore and the closest thing I found was the 5th September 2020 non-nightly release, though it also did not work.

A very recent thread

https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=15703

describes the SD card not working on a 3 GB model, though since it is at least found in my case, I am not sure how related this issue is.

Thanks a lot in advance for any help!
  Reply
#2
(01-19-2022, 09:27 PM)Natzer Wrote: I recently purchased a 3 GB convergence edition pinephone and much as I like KDE Plasma on the desktop, I found it rather slow and frequently lagging, so I tried to test Mobian-Posh.
Sadly, the phone never actually boots from the SD card, I'm always greeted by the spinning KDE gear.
fdisk -l and lsblk on the phone do list the SD card.
I put the latest Mobian, Ubuntu Touch and PostmarketOS as well as an old Mobian build (see below) onto the card with either bmaptool or dd, without any issues, though none of them boots.
These threads from various forums

https://gitlab.com/mobian1/issues/-/issues/86
https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=11259
https://www.reddit.com/r/PINE64official/...pinephone/

suggest that this is due to the convergence edition having 3 GB of RAM but apparently displaying it internally as 4, which the builds have to take into account.
However, these threads are from 2020 so I can hardly imagine that this is still the issue. They also mention a Mobian 3rd September 2020 nightly build which works, however it is not listed anymore and the closest thing I found was the 5th September 2020 non-nightly release, though it also did not work.

A very recent thread

https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=15703

describes the SD card not working on a 3 GB model, though since it is at least found in my case, I am not sure how related this issue is.

Thanks a lot in advance for any help!

Sounds like you could use Balena Etcher 
  It is a free app to flash your sd cards. it makes flashing easy.

As for the different releases, virtually all the Mobian releases did work, 
But I would recommend trying the most recent release.

Welcome to the forum...
(I am using my Pine phone with the brand new keyboard to post tonight)

Oh
This phone runs on Mobian
      LINUX = CHOICES
         **BCnAZ**
               Idea
   Donate to $upport
your favorite OS Team
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#3
The recent thread you refer to is mine.  The issue is still unresolved but we did notice that any SD card inserted in the slot tends to be slightly askew and support has asked me to send an image of the physical slot.  Perhaps you can do the same.  https://ibb.co/gZ7vGMx
  Reply
#4
(01-20-2022, 11:38 AM)slomobile Wrote: The recent thread you refer to is mine.  The issue is still unresolved but we did notice that any SD card inserted in the slot tends to be slightly askew and support has asked me to send an image of the physical slot.  Perhaps you can do the same.  https://ibb.co/gZ7vGMx

Your problem is you have your SDcard in the SIM slot :-)
You need to put a SIM in that slot, and the SDcard above it (closer to the back cover).

To OP - have you tried a different SDcard? If lsblk from KDE is seeing it OK you shouldn't have a (significant) h/w problem. The "old" 3Gb issue is long gone - any recent image should be fine.
  • ROCKPro64 v2.1 2GB, 16Gb eMMC for rootfs, SX8200Pro 512GB NVMe for /home, HDMI video & sound, Bluetooth keyboard & mouse. Arch (6.2 kernel, Openbox desktop) for general purpose daily PC.
  • PinePhone Pro Explorer Edition, daily driver, rk2aw & U-boot on SPI, Arch/SXMO & Arch/phosh on eMMC
  • PinePhone BraveHeart now v1.2b 3/32Gb, Tow-boot with Arch/SXMO on eMMC
  Reply
#5
(01-20-2022, 12:04 PM)dukla2000 Wrote:
(01-20-2022, 11:38 AM)slomobile Wrote: The recent thread you refer to is mine.  The issue is still unresolved but we did notice that any SD card inserted in the slot tends to be slightly askew and support has asked me to send an image of the physical slot.  Perhaps you can do the same.  https://ibb.co/gZ7vGMx

Your problem is you have your SDcard in the SIM slot :-)
You need to put a SIM in that slot, and the SDcard above it (closer to the back cover).

To OP - have you tried a different SDcard? If lsblk from KDE is seeing it OK you shouldn't have a (significant) h/w problem. The "old" 3Gb issue is long gone - any recent image should be fine.

Thats embarrassing, I should have put my glasses on.  I did make a mistake putting the card in the wrong slot when I took the picture, but that was not the initial problem because I previously had a working SIM card installed and the SD above it.  You can see in the video ATT displayed in the upper left.  I pulled the SIM because it was so hard to use the phone and I did not want to accidentally consume all my data.
I just retested with factory image on 2 different SD cards in the correct slot this time.  Neither one of them boots or shows up in lsblk but one did show up briefly in dmesg as new high speed SDIO device, then went away before finishing the boot.
Sorry for confusing the issue further.
  Reply
#6
Thanks a lot for the answers and the wecome!

Putting the current Mobian version on the SD card with balenaEtcher actually worked, so the phone being the 3 GB convergence edition was actually a red herring - sorry for the false alarm!
I wonder though if I have accidentially omitted a step after these two earlier commands

sudo bmaptool copy ~/tmp_ubuntu/ubuntu-touch-pinephone.img /dev/sdb1

xz --decompress --stdout ~/tmp_postos/20220119-0539-postmarketOS-v21.12-sxmo-de-sway-1.7.0-pine64-pinephone-installer.img.xz | sudo dd of=/dev/sdb1 bs=4M status=progress

or if there is another reason that only etcher worked (the SD card is a newly purchased Samsung evo).


I do had a major other issue though, that has been described earlier here:

https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?...461&page=2

A couple of minutes after a debian splatscreen stating that it is "resizing file system during initial boot" appeared, the phone would only show a blackscreen (with background lighting).
I did follow the advice in the thread, i.e. already resizing partition 2 on the card before putting it into the phone (with growpart & resize.f2fs commands). Notably at one point during the process it said "Not enough space to migrate blocksTry to do defragement: Skip" without any further output for about 40 min (the SD card is 256 GB and my adapter is only USB 2.0, I would assume that is the reason it took so long), after which I got a success prompt.
A small remark: To my understanding, an unmounted device can be safely pulled out of the computer - so it might be just superstition but after all the hassle I did turn it off before doing so.

It finally worked, though I am still confused as to why the phone did not boot from SD card after it was treated with bmaptool/dd in the first place and furthermore why the manual resizing putting in the card was neccessary (faulty card?).
  Reply
#7
I hope it is not too much clutter, but maybe it can be of use to someone.
This is the output of fsck for the two partitions on the finally working SD card:

fsck from util-linux 2.36.1
e2fsck 1.46.2 (28-Feb-2021)
boot: clean, 57/129024 files, 50692/516096 blocks


fsck from util-linux 2.36.1
Info: [/dev/sdb2] Disk Model: STORAGE DEVICE 
Info: Segments per section = 1
Info: Sections per zone = 1
Info: sector size = 512
Info: total sectors = 499646431 (243967 MB)
Info: MKFS version
  "Linux version 5.9.0-5-amd64 (debian-kernel@lists.debian.org) (gcc-10 (Debian 10.2.1-1) 10.2.1 20201207, GNU ld (GNU Binutils for Debian) 2.35.1) #1 SMP Debian 5.9.15-1 (2020-12-17)"
Info: FSCK version
  from "Linux version 5.9.0-5-amd64 (debian-kernel@lists.debian.org) (gcc-10 (Debian 10.2.1-1) 10.2.1 20201207, GNU ld (GNU Binutils for Debian) 2.35.1) #1 SMP Debian 5.9.15-1 (2020-12-17)"
    to "Linux version 5.10.0-10-amd64 (debian-kernel@lists.debian.org) (gcc-10 (Debian 10.2.1-6) 10.2.1 20210110, GNU ld (GNU Binutils for Debian) 2.35.2) #1 SMP Debian 5.10.84-1 (2021-12-08)"
Info: superblock features = 0 :
Info: superblock encrypt level = 0, salt = 00000000000000000000000000000000
Info: total FS sectors = 499646424 (243967 MB)
        Invalid CP CRC offset: 0
Info: CKPT version = 5eb48857
Info: Checked valid nat_bits in checkpoint
Info: checkpoint state = 181 :  trimmed nat_bits unmount

[FSCK] Unreachable nat entries                        [Ok..] [0x0]
[FSCK] SIT valid block bitmap checking                [Ok..]
[FSCK] Hard link checking for regular file            [Ok..] [0xa]
[FSCK] valid_block_count matching with CP            [Ok..] [0xa8e8a]
[FSCK] valid_node_count matching with CP (de lookup)  [Ok..] [0x13306]
[FSCK] valid_node_count matching with CP (nat lookup) [Ok..] [0x13306]
[FSCK] valid_inode_count matched with CP              [Ok..] [0x1321a]
[FSCK] free segment_count matched with CP            [Ok..] [0x1d5ba]
[FSCK] next block offset is free                      [Ok..]
[FSCK] fixing SIT types
[FSCK] other corrupted bugs                          [Ok..]

Done: 42.011306 secs
  Reply
#8
(01-19-2022, 09:27 PM)Natzer Wrote: ...
fdisk -l and lsblk on the phone do list the SD card.
...

What do you see? My phone is running arch from the eMMC (/dev/mmcblk2) and has Mobian installed on the SDcard (/dev/mmcblk0) below:

Code:
$ uname -a
Linux duklapp 5.16.1-2-danctnix #1 SMP PREEMPT Tue Jan 18 22:10:53 UTC 2022 aarch64 GNU/Linux
[csn@duklapp ~]$ lsblk
NAME         MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
mmcblk0      179:0    0 29.8G  0 disk
├─mmcblk0p1  179:1    0  504M  0 part
└─mmcblk0p2  179:2    0 29.3G  0 part
mmcblk2      179:32   0 29.1G  0 disk
├─mmcblk2p1  179:33   0  128M  0 part /boot
└─mmcblk2p2  179:34   0   29G  0 part /
mmcblk2boot0 179:64   0    4M  1 disk
mmcblk2boot1 179:96   0    4M  1 disk
zram0        254:0    0    0B  0 disk
[csn@duklapp ~]$ sudo fdisk -l
Disk /dev/mmcblk0: 29.81 GiB, 32010928128 bytes, 62521344 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x26185598

Device         Boot   Start      End  Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/mmcblk0p1 *      16384  1048575  1032192  504M 83 Linux
/dev/mmcblk0p2      1048576 62521310 61472735 29.3G 83 Linux


Disk /dev/mmcblk2: 29.12 GiB, 31268536320 bytes, 61071360 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x8bbaad07

Device         Boot  Start      End  Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/mmcblk2p1 *      2048   264191   262144  128M  c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/mmcblk2p2      264192 61071359 60807168   29G 83 Linux
  • ROCKPro64 v2.1 2GB, 16Gb eMMC for rootfs, SX8200Pro 512GB NVMe for /home, HDMI video & sound, Bluetooth keyboard & mouse. Arch (6.2 kernel, Openbox desktop) for general purpose daily PC.
  • PinePhone Pro Explorer Edition, daily driver, rk2aw & U-boot on SPI, Arch/SXMO & Arch/phosh on eMMC
  • PinePhone BraveHeart now v1.2b 3/32Gb, Tow-boot with Arch/SXMO on eMMC
  Reply
#9
(01-19-2022, 09:27 PM)Natzer Wrote: I recently purchased a 3 GB convergence edition pinephone and much as I like KDE Plasma on the desktop, I found it rather slow and frequently lagging, so I tried to test Mobian-Posh.
Sadly, the phone never actually boots from the SD card, I'm always greeted by the spinning KDE gear.
fdisk -l and lsblk on the phone do list the SD card.
I put the latest Mobian, Ubuntu Touch and PostmarketOS as well as an old Mobian build (see below) onto the card with either bmaptool or dd, without any issues, though none of them boots.
These threads from various forums

https://gitlab.com/mobian1/issues/-/issues/86
https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=11259
https://www.reddit.com/r/PINE64official/...pinephone/

suggest that this is due to the convergence edition having 3 GB of RAM but apparently displaying it internally as 4, which the builds have to take into account.
However, these threads are from 2020 so I can hardly imagine that this is still the issue. They also mention a Mobian 3rd September 2020 nightly build which works, however it is not listed anymore and the closest thing I found was the 5th September 2020 non-nightly release, though it also did not work.

A very recent thread

https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=15703

describes the SD card not working on a 3 GB model, though since it is at least found in my case, I am not sure how related this issue is.

Thanks a lot in advance for any help!

Sounds like you need to try a different method of flashing your sd cards...

The issue with the 3GB phones was only a problem for a few days,  that was many months in the past..
      LINUX = CHOICES
         **BCnAZ**
               Idea
   Donate to $upport
your favorite OS Team
  Reply
#10
I am inserting the SD card into the correct slot and the phone does nothing upon boot. I have had a lot of trouble writing Manjaro phosh to the SD card as it continually fails to verify regardless of which version I've tried. I've tried 3 IIRC. I failed with postmarketOS. I tried 1 version of that. I succeeded with Manjaro plasma for some reason. I am using balenaEtcher. I am attemtping to recover files after an upgrade of Manjaro bascially bricked it.
  Reply


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