Valk

Well got some feedback from SolidRun regarding the emmc issues. Apparently there's a firmware issue currently with the 4GB emmc (8GB is fine) which they're working to get a resolution. Hopefully when my next batch of boards with the 8GB emmc come the issue will be sorted. Really thanks for your help, while not an Armbian issue a lot of useful changes / fixes got done for the clearfog Oh and the resize code works fine now.

Yeah I had improvements with the latest version in that the issue with the emmc throwing heeps of write errors seems to be fixed. Down side is now if I reboot the system it will no longer restart. I'm using the SolidRun image because I'm trying to get technical support from them. Unfortunately the official image gives me emmc write issues. The only one which works perfect is the 3.X kernel but that's both out of date and lacking kernel support for my 3G modem. By stable I only meant working reliably with the clearfog. Anyway hopefully the next batch of clearfogs arrive soon so I can test if it's these last 2 boards I have are faulty or there's an issue.

-- Deleted -- Thought SolidRun's image was faulty but I think I might have broken it so restoring their system image. On a side note I used the 3.10.104 (4.9.5 wouldn't boot) armbian kernel image to get the dtb and vmlinuz files to boot and they managed to boot fine (haven't reset the device). I'm thinking there's a software issue during boot.

Ok well that's annoying... Talking with Solidrun they insisted I try their compiled version of debian to help with resolving the issues. I haven't got back to them yet but I can't fault the solidrun image. I'm at the situation now where I'm using the solidrun u-boot and trying to boot the system via tftp: setenv serverip 192.168.1.240 setenv ipaddr 192.168.1.1 setenv fdt_high 0x07a12000 ( or setenv fdt_high 0xffffffff ) setenv bootargs "selinux=0 cgroup_disable=memory scandelay root=/dev/sda1 rw rootfstype=ext4 console=ttyS0,115200 loglevel=7 rootwait" tftp ${fdtaddr} 4.9/armada-388-clearfog.dtb tftp ${loadaddr} 4.9/vmlinuz-4.9.4-mvebu bootz ${loadaddr} - ${fdtaddr} The system will stall at Starting kernel .... after I can hit the hardware reboot and let the emmc boot (solidrun official image) and it loads fine. https://images.solid-build.xyz/A38X/sr-a38x-debian-jessie-20161101-testing.img.xz https://images.solid-build.xyz/A38X/u-boot.mmc Considering the system is using the solidrun u-boot that crosses it off the list (not that there's really any difference between the armbian one except it has a few nice tweaks) So that leaves the an issue with the dtb file or vmlinuz image. Just went through the dts between the solidrun repo: https://github.com/SolidRun/linux-stable/tree/linux-4.4.y-clearfog/arch/arm/boot/dts and I can't see any meaningful changes. Leaves the last part the image it boots and that's a much bigger needle to solve. Do you experience any issues booting the system if it has been running for say 30 minutes? Going to try the 4.9.5 branch which I just compiled then try specifying the solidrun repo https://github.com/SolidRun/linux-stable/tree/linux-4.4.y-clearfog and see how they go. Really want to get it going with the current kernel stable so the system can be easily kept up to date in the future.

Ok a little difficult. Do you know how I can repair the partition enough to get the file off it? root@clearfogpro:~# ls root@clearfogpro:~# ls /media/ root@clearfogpro:~# mkdir /media/emmc root@clearfogpro:~# mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /media/emmc/ [ 243.366150] UDF-fs: warning (device mmcblk0p1): udf_fill_super: No partition found (2) [ 243.377055] F2FS-fs (mmcblk0p1): Magic Mismatch, valid(0xf2f52010) - read(0x1102d4b) [ 243.384864] F2FS-fs (mmcblk0p1): Can't find valid F2FS filesystem in 1th superblock [ 243.394112] F2FS-fs (mmcblk0p1): Magic Mismatch, valid(0xf2f52010) - read(0x6b636170) [ 243.401972] F2FS-fs (mmcblk0p1): Can't find valid F2FS filesystem in 2th superblock [ 243.409723] F2FS-fs (mmcblk0p1): Magic Mismatch, valid(0xf2f52010) - read(0x1102d4b) [ 243.417513] F2FS-fs (mmcblk0p1): Can't find valid F2FS filesystem in 1th superblock [ 243.425211] F2FS-fs (mmcblk0p1): Magic Mismatch, valid(0xf2f52010) - read(0x6b636170) [ 243.433095] F2FS-fs (mmcblk0p1): Can't find valid F2FS filesystem in 2th superblock mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/mmcblk0p1, missing codepage or helper program, or other error In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so.

ah sorry after the first reboot, one moment

Ok got the log file: http://sprunge.us/CjIS

While I get it ready as a quick side note. Now when the system boots the leds for Ethernet ports on the switch stay on all the time.

as for spi I get nothing from dmesg and have no mtd devices in /dev

Hmm well usb boot works wonderfully. Got a feeling my problems might be to do with the resize script I can: - boot to USB - dd the system image over - boot the emmc system and do login sequence if I immediately reboot the system (as the system recommends) it fails to boot from emmc with: Trying to boot from MMC Failed to mount ext2 filesystem... ** Unrecognized filesystem type ** Failed to mount ext2 filesystem... ** Unrecognized filesystem type **

I was actually looking at the pcb schematic to find the SPI port. Unfortunately if I have to pull apart the heatsink then I'm better off via uart (which is fine). Still "run usbboot" nice touch Thanks for doing that so quick. Hopefully I can get to the bottom of the emmc issues soon. Thanks for all the help.

Yes booting the system properly meant that setting the emmc_fix flag on worked as expected. And yes I didn't need to touch the boot partition in the end. As for the SPI flash you've got me thinking. There's a dip switch for it just need to check where the pins are on the PCB. Hope that's an option because it'll make things much easier. Unfortunately I'm having even more troubles. After installing the system I do an update and install a few packages + hardware (wifi, hostapd, and a few others). I use a script I've had for a while to do the install but unfortunately when it reboots the system it fails to read from the emmc (this .scr file). Hopefully solid-run get back to me with a few details as to what's going on. I've even tried slowing the CPU to 800Mhz with no luck.

Ok well installed via dd root@clearfogpro~# dd if=Armbian_5.24_Clearfogpro_Debian_jessie_next_4.9.4.img 2478080+0 records in 2478080+0 records out 1268776960 bytes (1.3 GB) copied, 1[ 299.354823] mmcblk0: p1 89.472 s, 6.7 MB/s root@clearfogpro:~# sync root@clearfogpro:~# echo 0 > /sys/block/mmcblk0boot0/force_ro root@clearfogpro:~# ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.30 root@clearfogpro:~# ifconfig eth0 netmask 255.255.255.0 root@clearfogpro:~# scp yocto@192.168.0.250:/home/yocto/4.9/u-boot.mmc ./ yocto@192.168.0.250's password: u-boot.mmc 100% 935KB 934.6KB/s 00:00 root@clearfogpro:~# dd if=u-boot.mmc of=/dev/mmcblk0boot0 1869+1 records in 1869+1 records out 957048 bytes (957 kB) copied, 0.143723 s, 6.7 MB/s root@clearfogpro:~# echo 1 > /sys/block/mmcblk0boot0/force_ro root@clearfogpro:~# sync root@clearfogpro:~# mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /media/emmc/ [ 355.858748] EXT4-fs (mmcblk0p1): mounted filesystem with writeback data mode. Opts: (null) root@clearfogpro:~# umount /media/emmc root@clearfogpro:~# poweroff P.S. Forgot to write bs=4M to speed it up Wrote u-boot again because I didn't want to have to restore from uart if it was corrupted. Had it stall again at Starting Kernel ... but I turned it off and let it cool down. Fired it up again and it started working. Not sure what's happening there, need to give solidrun an e-mail.

Yep the customize_image.sh script set emmc_fix=on fine. Be awesome if you could only needing to plugin a usb stick would be a nice setup, that said I'm also grateful that I've been forced to learn how it works instead of trusting magic scripts . Ideally when I get this ready for production I still would prefer to install via Ethernet but USB is still a big improvement

Ok yeah it's probably already patched. I actually was building a clean image to try from scratch and to see if there's any remaining modifications. Currently I'm using rsync because I'm booting from the usb device. fdisk /dev/mmcblk0 d n p 1 16385 <enter> w mkfs.ext4 /dev/mmcblk0p1 ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.30 ifconfig eth0 netmask 255.255.255.0 scp yocto@192.168.0.250:/home/yocto/4.9/u-boot.mmc ./ echo 0 > /sys/block/mmcblk0boot0/force_ro dd if=u-boot.mmc of=/dev/mmcblk0boot0 echo 1 > /sys/block/mmcblk0boot0/force_ro rm u-boot.mmc mkdir /media/emmc mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /media/emmc rsync -aAXv --exclude={"/dev/*","/proc/*","/sys/*","/tmp/*","/run/*","/mnt/*","/media/*","/lost+found"} / /media/emmc/ cp /boot/boot.scr /media/emmc/ umount /media/emmc sync poweroff I do need to find a good way to automate the whole process once I have it working, but that's another day. Hmm I might copy the image to the usb stick and give dd a go