[Booting ROCK Pi 4(A/B/C) with mainline u-boot in SPI, NVMe and Armbian v20.11.x]

On 11/30/2020 at 3:53 AM, piter75 said:

 

With Armbian v20.11 one can write mainline u-boot image to board's SPI and enjoy booting nvme drives without any mmc devices.

Prerequisities: ROCK Pi 4(A/B/C) v1.4 or 1.3 with SPI soldered in (v1.3 comes without SPI flash from the factory).

 

1. If you already have Radxa's u-boot written to SPI you need to short pins 23 and 25 for Armbian to boot
2. Boot fresh image of Armbian v20.11.x for ROCK Pi 4(A/B/C)
3. Add the following lines to /boot/armbianEnv.txt
   • overlays=spi-jedec-nor
   • param_spinor_spi_bus=1
4. Reboot
5. If you shorted 23-25 pins in 1.) then:
   • disconnect them after the ROCK Pi 4 fully boot's 
   • enable spi-nor by executing (as root):
     echo spi1.0 > /sys/bus/spi/drivers/spi-nor/bind
   • verify that the SPI mtd interface is enabled by running
     ls /dev/mtdblock0
   • if the last command does not list any file then something went wrong between 3.) and 5.)
6. Run nand-sata-install
   • choose option: "Boot from SPI - system on SATA, USB or NVMe"
   • choose NVMe partition, eg. /dev/nvme0n1p1
   • accept erasing of the choosen partition with "Yes"
   • choose fs type (tested with ext4)
   • wait a few minutes for rootfs transfer to chosen partition
   • choose writing SPI bootloader with "Yes"
   • confirm that you want to flash it with "Yes"
   • wait ~60 seconds for writing
   • choose Exit
7. Reboot
8. Enjoy Armbian booting with SPI / NVMe

 

Why bother with mainline u-boot?

It is known to boot some NVMe drives that legacy u-boot from Radxa has issues with, eg. SAMSUNG 970 EVO Plus and SAMSUNG PM981.

This does not mean that all NVMe drives are supported, YMMV.

 

Which NVMe drives are known to be working?

Corsair MP510 240GB/480GB/960GB

Gigabyte SSD M.2 2280 PCIe x2 Model:GP-GSM2NE8128GNTD

HP SSD EX900 M.2 NVMe 120GB. Model: 2YY42AA#ABB
Intel SSD 660p Model:SSDPEKNW512GB
Kingston A1000 SSD 240GB (PHISON PS5008-E8-10)

Kingston A2000 M.2 2280 PCIe NVMe

PNY 250GB XLR8 CS3030 M.2 NVMe SSD PCIe Gen3 x4

Sabrent Rocket 256GB NVMe PCIe M.2 2280

Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD 250GB M.2 2280, PCIe 3.0 x4, NVMe, 3500/2300 MB/s

Samsung PM981 256GB

XPG SX6000 Lite 128GB (ASX6000LNP-128GT-C)

 

 

 

Two questions:

1. In addition to the above NVME SSDs, how do I know whether other NVME SSD, say ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 256GB, can  be used ?

2. Does the above steps still work for Armbian v21.08 ?

Thanks

[[Invalid] - How to let armbian work with NexDock 360 keyboard?]

I understand that this problem is not related to armbian.

I tries asking NexDock but they don't know how to make it.

So, I just wonder anybody knows how to let armbian on Rock PI4B work with NexDock 360's keyboard ?
I know when using Raspberry PI, I can add a line 

dtoverlay=dwc2,dr_mode=host

to /boot/config.txt. But when using armbian, there is no config.txt in /boot.

Thanks.

[armbian can not boot in Rock Pi4 v1.4]

Hi,

I just bought a Rock Pi4B v1.4 recently. 

I tried to boot it with https://dl.armbian.com/rockpi-4b/Debian_buster_default_desktop.7z and  https://dl.armbian.com/rockpi-4b/Ubuntu_bionic_default_desktop.7z

However it was all in vain.

I also had tried SDCard and emmc but none of them worked.

 

Any suggestion?

Thanks