Ian Goodacre

Thanks Werner. I have found some of the log message text in the u-boot source code. As you suggest, it seems to be stuck in u-boot and not getting to a Linux kernel at all. I'm guessing BOOTP is a fallback in case it can't find an image to load on any storage. 'scanning usb for storage devices... 0 Storage Device(s) found' doesn't look good. It should be booting from the SD card. It did, before I messed with the device tree. I think u-boot cannot find any image to load so it presents a prompt ('=> ') and waits for a command to tell it what to load. I will have to capture the whole log and see what other clues I can find. At the moment, I only have a bit of cut-and-paste of the end of it. I guess I broke the device tree so it can't find the image to load on the SD card. I really need to learn how to inspect the device tree generated by armbian/build when the system doesn't boot. I guess it's in the image somewhere. I'm hobbled by my ignorance but learn a little each day 😉

I have a NanoPi R2S Plus. If I boot the FriendlyElec Debian image both network ports work: LAN and WAN. If I boot the Armbian NanoPi R2S image, it boots OK and the LAN port works but the WAN port does not work. I believe the WAN port does not work because the NanoPi R2S has an RTL8211E chip but the NanoPi R2S Plus has an RTL8211F chip. I found some notes about problems with network on other boards that had the same change of chip (e.g. radxa RockpiE) and the device tree changes required to accommodate the new chip. So I tried to patch armbian/build to make the same changes for the NanoPi R2S Plus. I am not familiar with armbian/build or device trees. None the less, I seem to have made some progress. My latest image attempts to bring up the WAN port. It gets an IP address from dhcp server. But then it tries to get various files by TFTP and fails. It has no server IP and I have no TFTP server running. Part of the console logs: Now I am lost. I don't understand why it is trying to load files by TFTPGET. Maybe I have something wrong in the device tree so it is loading an incorrect device driver. There is the line 'Device 0: unknown device'. The first file it attempts to retrieve appears to have the MAC address of the LAN port in the filename. It continues trying to load various files then fails and presents a prompt: '=> ' Can anyone give me pointers to where to look / what to read to understand what is going on? Is that a u-boot prompt? Any pointers would be much appreciated and, again, this is all new to me - I am blundering about in my ignorance.

I logged in to the Armbian forums today, for the first time in a long time. I got a message that I had to confirm my email. I didn't capture a screenshot and the screen is now gone. I promptly received an email, subject: We've Missed You! Your Account is Active Again. This had some details of my recent access and: "If this was you, please ignore this email. Otherwise, you should secure your account immediately." There was a button: Review Activity & Secure Account. I clicked that button. A page opened with the message: Oops! The page you are trying to access is not available to guests, but may be available if you sign in. I went back to the page that I got when I tried to login, telling me a confirmation email had been sent. At the bottom was a link to resend the confirmation email. I clicked that and this time I promptly got an email with subject: Please confirm your email address change. It had a button: Confirm this address. I clicked it and was then logged in. So, I got in, but it was a bit roundabout. When I first logged in and got the page indicating I need to confirm my email, it seems the email confirmation email wasn't sent. The welcome back email advising of recent activity was fine, except that the button in it went to a non-existent page. The button URL, slightly redacted, was: https://forum.armbian.com/index.php?app=core&module=system&controller=redirect&url=https://forum.armbian.com/settings/devices/&key=**********&email=1&type=loginAfterInactivity. The Resend confirmation email link on the initial page after login worked fine. So, a couple of minor problems with the forum authentication. I looked through the forums and none looked appropriate to an issue with the forums themselves, so I have posted here. Apologies if it is off topic for the off topic forum 😉 Please let me know if there is a better way to get this to the attention of those managing the forums. On the other hand, it is only a minor issue and there are probably more important / valuable things to do, so no worries if this stays as-is. Regards, Ian