PBP blank screen after updating Manjaro

[Franko]

Question about whether I buggered my PBP up at a deep level, far beyond my abilities to repair...

Received my new PBP and it booted up fine for the first time. As expected, Manjaro prompted me to update it, so I went ahead with it. Straightforward of course but it took awhile as there seemed to be quite a few updates, but nothing unusual. However, at the end the process the screen went to what looked like a terminal screen, with a warning about "knowing what you are doing and the potential consequences”. I didn't pay too much attention as I figured doing the update through the GUI would keep me out of any serious trouble, so I didn't make any detailed notes. Anyways, it hung on the terminal screen for 15-20 minutes doing nothing, so I pressed <enter> to see if it needed the " OK" to proceed. Nothing happened for a long time again. So, I thought the only other option (which was probably a bad decision!)  was to force it to reboot using the power button.

After it shut down, I powered it on again. The screen just went black (no visuals at all), with the power light blinking on and off every few seconds.

I then started to hunt through the forum messages for solutions.

I tried letting it sit for a long time in case the boot was just really slow after the update, but no luck. I can force it off with the power button. I have cycled it on and off quite a few times, but nothing has changed.

Eventually, I loaded Manjaro-ARM-kde-plasma-pbpro-23.02.IMG onto an SD card. The PBP booted up from the card and seems to function fine. I have removed and reinserted the card and rebooted and it all seems good.

So, my question is, can I somehow safely load Manjaro onto the eMMC (I think that's how it works?) instead of running off the SD card all the time? Or did I mess something up on the eMMC that needs work?

I think the fellow forum members can tell by now that I'm pretty green at this and bought the PBP to learn on. Unfortunately the learning started without even getting to use it once before I made it go kaput. However, it is a bit sketchy that the update function can end up with the process going sideways.


Thanks for any thoughts. I just want to see if it is OK to try installing Manjaro on the PineBook.

[KC9UDX]

This is very common. And don't worry, the worst thing you can wreck is the SPI ROM, and even that's recoverable.

So long as you can still boot from micro-sd, you should be able to download an appropriate image (there should be a good link in the wiki) of Manjaru for eMMC. Flashing it to the eMMC should be pretty trivial, using dd.

You might want to evaluate if Manjaru really is for you. It does seem to be the most functional, but it also seems the most likely to fail catastrophically. I run NetBSD. But there are a large number of choices. You can find opinions on different operating systems here in the forums.

[wdt]

I have had failed updates, manjaro repository seems to "stall"
I got the black screen too, I forget how I recovered, I think I had a vt and used pamac
(setfont -d to get readable)
So for updates, ALWAYS set the --go to sleep-- to 2 hrs when plugged in (and set back later)
I don't know your level of skill, so this below may not apply
I would check sd and emmc have same number of partitions (fdisk -l)
update, upgrade the sd, save emmc extlinux.conf and fstab
(likely the emmc partitions are mountable, might need a fsck tho),
dd the sd partitions (as partitions) to emmc, restore extlinux.conf and fstab,
make sure they are "right" (blkid), fsck the emmc partitions
and maybe expand2fs (or gparted)
check with blkid hat there are not label and uuid clashes
You already know the uboot (on emmc) is OK, since it manages to boot the sd
----
BTW, you can check status of upgrade, switch to another desktop (patience)
start term, htop OR top, oddly they tell different things

[Franko]

This is very common.  And don't worry, the worst thing you can wreck is the SPI ROM, and even that's recoverable.

So long as you can still boot from micro-sd, you should be able to download an appropriate image (there should be a good link in the wiki) of Manjaru for eMMC.  Flashing it to the eMMC should be pretty trivial, using dd.

You might want to evaluate if Manjaru really is for you.  It does seem to be the most functional, but it also seems the most likely to fail catastrophically.  I run NetBSD.  But there are a large number of choices.  You can find opinions on different operating systems here in the forums.

Thanks for the info. Yeah, its kind of annoying Manjaro seems a bit unstable, from what I have read on here. Personally I just want something solid for now. I'll look into the "dd" method to install an OS. Thanks!

[Franko]

Thanks wdt for your reply. Unfortunately most of what you typed looks like you fell asleep on the keyboard. I have quite a bit of learning before any of that will make sense to me. This is just a hobby, trying to support something outside of Apple and Google. My current job has nothing to do with any IT (I literally boil water for a living) so I plan to just poke around in the meantime. Any thoughts on a solid, stable OS? I run Mint Cinnamon on my Purism laptop.

[KC9UDX]

Most of wdt's post applies to trying to fix the Manjaru installation; the one that's on your eMMC, which currently does not work. I think you're better off installing a new image rather than trying to fix that one.

Solid and stable are two reasons why I use NetBSD. As far as Linuces, Debian would be my choice. But I'm not sure what the current state of Debian for the Pinebook Pro is.

[hacknix]

I found out the hard way, that on a recent update, KMS is required in mkinitcpio.conf when before it wasn't. So, if after update (and before reboot) you check this file and KMS isn't in the list of modules, you need to add it or you will have no video output and hence a black screen.