Meestor_X

I’ve done some searching, but haven’t found a clear answer. i have a rockpi-s with a built in eMMC that has a bootable armbian image. When i insert a micro-SD card into the RP, and the card has a bootable image, it happily boots off of the card. Remove the card, and it boots off the eMMC. Perfect. Now, how do I duplicate this same functionality with a usb key? no key or sd = boot from eMMC SD inserted = boot from SD USB inserted = boot from USB I’ve been able to get the RP to boot from the usb using armbian-install to set it up, but then if I remove the USB, it no longer boots from the eMMC.

Well, it's all a bit of a mystery. Learning as much I can, but I sure wish there were more experts here that could offer some help!

Is there a way I can use this in the same way that armbian-install works? I want to automate the copying a complete image from an SD card to the eMMC, exactly the way armbian-install does, but via commandline so I can automate it. Using your tool, I tried creating an image file and then dd-ing it to the eMMC, but it wouldn't boot. I assume there's some fstab stuff that would need to be done when sending the image to another disk?

Ok, I see the problem, but not the solution. In main() there is this code to find which mmcblk# device is the eMMC and which is the SD card. # find real mmcblk device numbered 0, 1, 2 for eMMC, SD for ret in $(find /dev -name 'mmcblk[0-2]' -and -type b) do if [ -b ${ret}boot0 ];then emmc_dev=$ret else sd_dev=$ret fi done The issue is that there's no "boot0" file at either device. I've no idea how to ACTUALLY determine which is which, except I know in my case the eMMC is ALWAYS mmcblk0 and the SD card is ALWAYS mmcblk1. I expect that's not always true, but for my purposes, I can do: emmc_dev='/dev/mmcblk0' sd_dev='/dev/mmcblk1' and the names populate correctly in the menu. Again, not a solution by any means, I've done some scouring on the 'net to see if there's any good way to determine the block name of the SD and eMMC, but I can't find anything.

Again, my only way of checking to see if the overlays loaded is to look at /proc/device-tree. I ASSUME any loaded overlay will show up there?

@MaxT that sounds like it's working as intended. The `overlays=` line in /boot/armbianEnv.txt should NOT have the prefix on each overlay name, and the actual overlay files do have that prefix name. e.g. here's my /boot/armbianEnv.txt cat /boot/armbianEnv.txt verbosity=1 bootlogo=false console=serial overlay_prefix=rk3308 fdtfile=rockchip/rk3308-rock-pi-s.dtb extraargs=cma=16M rootdev=UUID=036c1484-611d-470e-b2ef-775fe550149b rootfstype=ext4 overlays=s0-ext-antenna bs bs@1.3ghz sdio@10mhz extraargs=net.ifnames=0 usbstoragequirks=0x2537:0x1066:u,0x2537:0x1068:u The files in /boot/dtb/rockchip/overlay are called: ls -l /boot/dtb/rockchip/overlay/rk3308-* -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 459 Nov 18 03:47 /boot/dtb/rockchip/overlay/rk3308-b@1.3ghz.dtbo -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 459 Nov 18 03:47 /boot/dtb/rockchip/overlay/rk3308-bs@1.3ghz.dtbo -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 688 Nov 18 03:47 /boot/dtb/rockchip/overlay/rk3308-bs.dtbo -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 223 Nov 18 03:47 /boot/dtb/rockchip/overlay/rk3308-emmc.dtbo -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1204 Nov 18 03:47 /boot/dtb/rockchip/overlay/rk3308-s0-ext-antenna.dtbo -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 226 Nov 18 03:47 /boot/dtb/rockchip/overlay/rk3308-sdio@10mhz.dtbo -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 226 Nov 18 03:47 /boot/dtb/rockchip/overlay/rk3308-sdio@4mhz.dtbo The overlay files have the prefix as part of their names (rk3308 in this case), so it should "just work", but sadly it does not.

I am in the same boat, and while dd would work, I think some tricks may be needed if the SD card is 64gb and the eMMC is only 4. (Even though the SD card is full of space). You'd have to figure out how to only copy the "used" portion of the SD card. armbian-install does a trick where it compresses the SD image (which removes all the blank space) and then expands it to the eMMC. Quite slick! Would it be possible to allow command-line parameters to armbian-install? If I were able to automate the process without all the menus, then I could do what I and the OP want - install the OS on the SD card, boot the SBC with that card and have it "automagically" clone the SD card to the eMMC. Would make it possible to do updates to the eMMC completely headless without ssh or a monitor/terminal. Very important for self-contained builds. I would be happy to have a try at updating armbian-install to support command line parameters, but I'll probably need a little direction as some of the menu options aren't clear to me. (I know what works for me, but not sure what the other options are for)...

Interesting that you were able to get the overlay to work on Noble. Cannot get any overlay to work on bookworm 24.11.1...

Update to say that I was able to update the RockPi-S to the latest armbian, and was able to copy the image to the eMMC and it boots properly, using armbian-install. armbian-install's menus are still broken, but it seems to still do the imaging properly. So, let's call this one closed for now.

My understanding is that it might take an RS232 logger to see what happens when the device is booting. I bought an RS232 to USB adapter and if I can figure out how to use it to watch the boot process maybe that will lead to an answer. I was hoping that one of the experts here had done this already, but I know how busy everyone is!

It's been a few weeks, I've been unable to figure out why overlays don't load in armbian. I've tried everything I can think of, scoured the internet with no answers... Anyone figured anything out yet? I can't be the only one having this problem??

Copy that, @Igor. Just learning my way around here. Hopefully my donation will help a little! I appreciate you and your team. Armbian is a great gift to the SBC community.

@Igor I got armbianmonitor working and sent the link it created in a PM to you.

Thank you, I will give that a try.

Is anyone be able to say whether or not overlays are working in the latest Armbian (with or without armbian-config, I can edit /boot/armbianEnv.txt directly)?

I get the following result when trying to run armbianmonitor -u. Is it broken or am I doing something wrong? Armbian 24.8.3 Bookworm CLI on a Rock-Pi S # armbianmonitor -u Collecting info and sending to paste.armbian.com, wait... /usr/bin/armbianmonitor: line 976: iostat: command not found <!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>Error</title> </head> <body> <pre>Cannot POST /log</pre> </body> </html> Please post the URL in the forum where you've been asked for.

Thank you for that detailed explanation. I am using Armbian on tiny headless devices that are not made to be user-configurable. Just need to get things working again with the newer OS. Hopefully I'll have some more time soon to start from scratch with the latest OS, and see if armbian-install is working now.

Huh! And my feeling is that the ability test out new functionality without messing with a working system (the working system being on the eMMC) is to try things out on the µSD first. Also, SUPER easy to copy a working µSD build to the eMMC with Armbian-install. Thanks anyway, I'll keep digging - using a serial monitor will be my last resort if I can't find another answer.

Thank you for your reply, @eselarm. Any chance you could ELI5 what you just said? I didn't glean what specifically I would need to do to resolve the issue from what you wrote.

Ok, I'm not sure that it's working? # armbianmonitor -u Collecting info and sending to paste.armbian.com, wait... /usr/bin/armbianmonitor: line 976: iostat: command not found <!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>Error</title> </head> <body> <pre>Cannot POST /log</pre> </body> </html> Please post the URL in the forum where you've been asked for. Yes, it's recognized and working as expected. The system runs off of the eMMC when there's no bootable image on the µSD card or no card inserted. To do a fresh install of Armbian would take quite a while, I had tried a couple of days ago, but Armbian-install wasn't working so I went back to 24.8.3. However, I tried apt update/upgrade and ran into a new problem...

# ls -l /dev/mmcblk* brw-rw---- 1 root disk 179, 0 Dec 12 00:46 /dev/mmcblk0 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 179, 1 Dec 12 00:46 /dev/mmcblk0p1 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 179, 32 Dec 12 00:46 /dev/mmcblk1 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 179, 33 Dec 12 00:46 /dev/mmcblk1p1

Right you are! Is this the preferred method to send logs?

running 24.8.3, and Armbian-install's screen looks like this: Current root: UUID=117b851b-2be0-4bb7-8572-7edce1ef7375 SD card (/dev/mmcblk1) 1 Boot from SD - system on SATA, USB or NVMe 2 Boot from - system on 3 Boot from - system on SATA, USB or NVMe 5 Install/Update the bootloader on SD card (/dev/mmcblk1) I have a µSD card inserted and a 4gb eMMC, but it looks like the names of these devices are missing?

Currently running 24.8.3 and have copied it to the eMMC, working fine on both the µSD image and eMMC. (On the Rock-Pi-S, if you have a bootable image on the µSD card, it boots from that. If not, it boots from the eMMC.) Today, running from the µSD, I did an apt update and apt upgrade, and it updated a few packages (here's the list): # apt list --upgradeable Listing... Done armbian-config/unknown 25.2.0-trunk.154.1212.080011 all [upgradable from: 24.11.1] armbian-firmware/bookworm,bookworm 24.11.2 all [upgradable from: 24.11.1] base-files/bookworm 24.11.2-12.4+deb12u8-bookworm arm64 [upgradable from: 24.11.1-12.4+deb12u8-bookworm] linux-dtb-current-rockchip64/bookworm 24.11.1 arm64 [upgradable from: 24.11.1] linux-image-current-rockchip64/bookworm 24.11.1 arm64 [upgradable from: 24.11.1] tzdata/stable-updates 2024b-0+deb12u1 all [upgradable from: 2024a-0+deb12u1] Now, it no longer boots from the µSD card. So I assume it's done something catastrophic to the image on that card?

Thank you @brentr ! So you're saying that Armbian 24.8.3 (or later) does not need this additional line in /etc/udev/rules,d/05-fixMACaddress.rules anymore for the interface to have a unique and fixed (unchanging) MAC address? Is there any issue in leaving the extra line in there?