vimcoder

Found a solution. You must use Cobieboard-2 config, not Cubietruck config. Some pins configuration affects the Etnerhet. Crazy stuff!

Installed Armbian to SD-card-1. Booted Cubietruck from it: works great. Made some changes in system and wanted that changes to another SD card, so I copied entire root ( / ) filesystem from SD-card-1 to my-armbian.tar.gz. There is better ways of doing this: dd or another make-image-software or better remember my changes related to original Armbian and made that changes in new system. But lets consider my stupid way:) Got new SD card: SD-card-2. Created partition table with 1 partition. Made ext4fs on that 1 partition. Unpacked my the filesystem to the partition. Used gparted and set flag BOOT. SD-card-2 didnt booted. I realized that i need U-Boot on it. So used this manual to make my SD card bootable: https://linux-sunxi.org/Bootable_SD_card#Bootloader : Git-cloned the U-Boot. cross-compiled it for default Cubieboard config. dd if=u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin of=/dev/mmcblk-blabla bs=1024 seek=8 to SD-card-2, changed UUID in the /boot/armbianEnv.txt for UUID of newly created ext4 on step (3). Now the SD-card-2 system booted OK! I see it boots by the way LED lamps blinking. Also it resets ethernet interface (it goes down then goes up) and it starts BOOTP/DHCP negotiation. BUT! The weird thing happened. Ethernet works single-directional: Cubietruck do not see any packets coming to it, but everyone else see the packets coming from it. The is no thernet switches between cubieboard and the DHCP-server (my laptop), just one good ethernet cable that worked great with SD-card-1. For example, when SD-card-2 tries to get IP address using DHCP, the DHCP-server see DHCPDISCOVER and respond with DHCPOFFER, but this process has no continuation: DHCP server does not see DHCPREQUEST and following DHCPACK from the Cubieboard. The interesting thing is: when i boot this Cubieboard with the "Original" SD-card-1, everything works great. Also, when i boot some proprietary linux from NAND flash soldered to Cubieboard (i dont know what that linux does, but it talks BOOTP/DHCP after boot) the DHCP-process goes perfect too. So, i've got strange single-directional ethernet connection with my u-booted SD card and have no idea what is happening there:) Please help me understand that.

Used this manual to make my SD card bootable: https://linux-sunxi.org/Bootable_SD_card#Bootloader Git-cloned the U-Boot and cross-compiled it for default Cubieboard config. dd u-boot to my new SD card with the root filesystem copied by .tgz from working SD card, changed UUID in the /boot/armbianEnv.txt system booted OK BUT! The weird thing happened. Ethernet networks works single-directional: cubietruck do not see any packets coming to it, but everyone else see the packets coming from it. For example, when Cubietruck tries to get IP address using DHCP, the DHCP-server see DHCPDISCOVER and respond with DHCPOFFER, but this process has no continuation: DHCP server does not see DHCPREQUEST, DHCPACK from the Cubieboard. The interesting thing is: when i boot this Cubieboard with the "Original" SD card, everything works great. Also, when i boot some proprietary linux from NAND flash soldered to Cubieboard (i dont know what that linux does, but it talks BOOTP/DHCP after boot) the DHCP-process goes perfect too. So, i've got strange single-directional ethernet connection with my u-booted SD card!

I have a working Armbian SD card and I used it for some time made some changes in the system (disabled some services, installed some libraries and made new services etc...). I use this SD card with Cubieboard-3 (Cubietruck). And I have a backup of the entire root filesystem from that SD card. Now I've got second Cubieboard-3 device and I need a second SD card to boot the second device into the same OS with actual changes. The good approach would be to backup only CHANGES in some manner that would allow me to install fresh armbian to new SD card and them roll my changes to it. But instead, i started a stupid approach of doing this: just copied the entire filesystem to backup and to a second SD card. Then I inserted the SD card to my Ubuntu laptop, ran Gparted and made the partition bootable. This had no happy end: device didnt booted from the new SD card. As I understand, i must flash U-Boot into it somehow. Maybe reading this https://linux-sunxi.org/U-Boot would help me, but I have no idea is it the good path to go (clone U-Boot, install cross-compiler, compule U-Boot, flash the U-Boot). Is there any easier way? Maybe pre-compiled U-Boot for the cortex-a7 and some instructions for flashing it? All this seems interesting, because i always wanted to dive into some low-level linux stuff, but the time waste too much for now.