WDaveO

You need to use mkimage to create a uInitrd file see my previous post for the full command.

It's hard to say but I'm not coming from a new image, rather I have a cubox-i that I've been using as a headless server for years and I've been able to upgrade kernels until 5.98 came out which bricked my box. It used to brick a lot before I switched to armbian actually but this was my first armbian bricking. I had no idea that there were updates to u-boot before I found this thread and I'm really not sure what else might make my install different from a fresh image. I've done a lot of configuration on top of the OS so I'm going to hold off on the update and see if a future version repairs things, maybe just never upgrade my kernel again or possibly eventually break down and start with a fresh image.

Thanks so much Igor, I was assuming it was an issue with u-boot as the ramdisk had come from the .deb (later I realized that the ramdisk form the .deb is fine it's just not in uInitrd format...) I made the changes you suggested and I can get the kernel to try to boot but now it hangs on "waiting for root device /dev/mmcblk0p1" . If I change rootwait to rootdelay I get: [ 4.363678] VFS: Cannot open root device "mmcblk0p1" or unknown-block(0,0): error -6 [ 4.371461] Please append a correct "root=" boot option; here are the available partitions: [ 4.379847] Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0) I tried adding break=mount to the bootargs but I wasn't able to get the kernel to drop to a shell to look at what devices exist. I've tried mmcblk0p1 ..1p1.. 0p2.. 1p2 and mmcblk01 none seem to work. The microsd card has one ext4 partition and used to mount as /dev/mmcblk0p1 I then decided rather than to roll back completely I'd just move back to the 5.90 kernel and see if the current u-boot setup works for it. I was able to boot the older kernel with no issues using my armbianEnv.txt boot.txt and boot.cmd (compiled into a boot.scr). I also noticed that when I turned the ramdisk on the 5.90 kernel stopped working. I reinstalled the 5.90 kernel using apt (I'd previously just copied a known working boot folder into place and the boot.scr was replaced with one that used a ramdisk and the system wouldn't boot. I eventually realised that I had no uInitrd at all and used `mkimage -A arm -T ramdisk -C none -n uInitrd -d /path/to/initrd.img /path/to/uInitrd` to make one. I was then able to boot into 5.90. I still couldn't boot into 5.98 but decided to try again and make sure I controlled all the variables. When I made the uInitrd I was able to boot into the kernel but it still wasn't finding the root file system. With the ramdisk in place however I was able to get to a shell and note that the naming had changed and the device was now mmcblk1p1. With that setting in armbianEnv.txt and the correctly created ramdisk I was able to fully boot into the updated kernel and actually use the system. When I was logged in however my openvpn connection didn't work for some reason and every few minutes the system would suddenly reboot... The red light under the optical audio port also never went off even when I was in a working shell. I didn't dare trying to reinstall using apt while booted into 5.98 because the reboots were too frequent to not interrupt apt and they weren't linux reboots the terminal would just jump to the boot loader suddenly. So long story short I wonder if I'm missing packages that are needed to automatically update the system and generate the uInitrd file when a kernel is updated or if this just isn't automated? additionally it seems to me that there are bugs in the 5.98 kernel for the cubox-i though I'm not really comfortable enough with u-boot to say if some or all of these issues are my fault. For my purposes my plan is to hold the kernel packages at 5.90 and try the next kernel release. If you (or anyone else,) has any ideas to try in order to better understand if there is an issue with 5.98 kernel please let me know and I'll do some more experimenting. though I'm heading out of town soon so I likely won't be able to get to it for a few weeks unless it's something I can try really quick.

I also have a cubox-i and haven't been able to get the newest .next kernel to run. I actually have an ancient version of u-boot and a uEnv.txt file no armbianEnv.txt or boot.txt and no boot.cmd or boot.scr. I went through the steps outlined here and was able to install an updated version of u-boot and the various config files (I duplicated the examples given by Aoz but altered them as I boot from sdhc. I ran through a lot of permutations I'll try to come back sometime soon with more specific details but a few things I noticed: I didn't have a .next file so for the longest time things were failing because the appropriate dtb couldn't be found. I changed boot.cmd and eventually put an empty .next file in my boot folder and the dtb file would be found. I would always get mmc no card found but files were being read off of the sdhc's ext4 partition. I would get to the part in boot.scr where the kernel should be loaded and end up with 5263872 bytes read in 376 ms (13.4 MiB/s) Wrong Ramdisk Image Format Ramdisk image is corrupt or invalid SCRIPT FAILED: continuing... I downloaded linux-image-next-cubox_5.98_armhf.deb and verified that vmlinuz-5.3.1-cubox from the deb matches what I have in /boot on the sdhc card I try to boot from. I tried both the default and .next u-boot versions as well as my ancient one and none worked. Out of curiosity is there any difference between the .next and default ones? Any ideas what's going on? More details from the boot attempt: U-Boot SPL 2018.01-armbian (Sep 27 2019 - 22:43:42) Trying to boot from MMC1 U-Boot 2018.01-armbian (Sep 27 2019 - 22:43:42 +0200) CPU: Freescale i.MX6Q rev1.5 996 MHz (running at 792 MHz) CPU: Extended Commercial temperature grade (-20C to 105C) at 30C Reset cause: POR Board: MX6 Cubox-i Watchdog enabled DRAM: 2 GiB MMC: FSL_SDHC: 0, FSL_SDHC: 1 No panel detected: default to HDMI Display: HDMI (1024x768) In: serial Out: serial Err: serial Net: FEC Hit any key to stop autoboot: 0 switch to partitions #0, OK mmc0 is current device Scanning mmc 0:1... Found U-Boot script /boot/boot.scr 1865 bytes read in 54 ms (33.2 KiB/s) ## Executing script at 12000000 0 bytes read in 105 ms (0 Bytes/s) 257 bytes read in 55 ms (3.9 KiB/s) 37518 bytes read in 3040 ms (11.7 KiB/s) ** File not found /boot/uInitrd ** ** Unrecognized filesystem type ** ** File not found uInitrd ** 5263872 bytes read in 376 ms (13.4 MiB/s) Wrong Ramdisk Image Format Ramdisk image is corrupt or invalid SCRIPT FAILED: continuing... MMC: no card present mmc_init: -123, time 44 starting USB... USB0: Port not available. USB1: USB EHCI 1.00 scanning bus 1 for devices... 1 USB Device(s) found scanning usb for storage devices... 0 Storage Device(s) found Device 0: device type unknown ... is now current device ** Bad device usb 0 ** ** Bad device usb 0 ** AHCI 0001.0300 32 slots 1 ports 3 Gbps 0x1 impl SATA mode flags: ncq stag pm led clo only pmp pio slum part No port device detected! Device 0: Model: Firm: Ser#: Type: Hard Disk Capacity: not available ... is now current device ** Bad device size - sata 0 ** BOOTP broadcast 1