Andre Ruiz

Nick, thanks, I'll take a look and report back.

I have just tried MiniArch and the installation on eMMC was successful, it boots normally. --- MiniMyth2 to eMMC installer v5.0 (c)Piotr Oniszczuk --- Ooo...you are running hechuang,x96-qallwinner,sun50i-h616 Allwinner detected...Good! SDcard device : mmcblk0 eMMC device : mmcblk2 UFS device : N/A System booted from : SD card (mmcblk0) Boot device has : p2 partitions Boot device usage : 1768MB [...] copying 1768MB to eMMC/UFS ... ==> copying from: mmcblk0 to: eMMC/UFS (mmcblk2) ... copying to eMMC/UFS done ... copying bootloader to eMMC/UFS ... But then again it uses a very recent version of u-boot: U-Boot 2025.04 (Aug 15 2025 - 18:43:21 +0200) Allwinner Technology CPU: Allwinner H616 (SUN50I) Model: hechuang,x96-q LPDDR3 v1.3 DRAM: 1 GiB Core: 59 devices, 20 uclasses, devicetree: separate WDT: Not starting watchdog@30090a0 MMC: mmc@4020000: 0, mmc@4021000: 3, mmc@4022000: 1 Loading Environment from FAT... Unable to read "uboot.env" from mmc1:1... In: serial@5000000 Out: serial@5000000 Err: serial@5000000 No USB device found Net: apply fix for AC300 ephy bb version bug ... using AC300 emac1 ephy default config ... eth0: ethernet@5030000 starting USB... No USB controllers found Hit any key to stop autoboot: 0 switch to partitions #0, OK mmc1(part 0) is current device Scanning mmc 1:1... Found /extlinux/extlinux.conf Retrieving file: /extlinux/extlinux.conf 1: MiniMyth2 Retrieving file: /Image append: root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rw rootwait earlycon console=ttyS0,115200n8 loglevel=6 consoleblank=0 fsck.mode=auto fsck.repair=yes Retrieving file: /dtbs/allwinner/sun50i-h313-x96-q-lpddr3.dtb Moving Image from 0x40080000 to 0x40200000, end=0x42190000 ## Flattened Device Tree blob at 4fa00000 Booting using the fdt blob at 0x4fa00000 Working FDT set to 4fa00000 Loading Device Tree to 0000000049ff5000, end 0000000049fff691 ... OK Working FDT set to 49ff5000 Starting kernel ... Which makes me believe that the only thing missing here is some fix on u-boot side.

Just a few more details on the system booted from eMMC: ubuntu@x96q:~$ df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on tmpfs 98M 2,5M 95M 3% /run /dev/mmcblk2p1 7,0G 1,2G 5,5G 19% / tmpfs 486M 0 486M 0% /dev/shm tmpfs 5,0M 0 5,0M 0% /run/lock tmpfs 486M 0 486M 0% /tmp /dev/zram1 47M 344K 43M 1% /var/log tmpfs 98M 4,0K 98M 1% /run/user/1000 ubuntu@x96q:~$ lsblk NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS mmcblk2 179:32 0 7,3G 0 disk └─mmcblk2p1 179:33 0 7,2G 0 part /var/log.hdd / mmcblk2boot0 179:64 0 4M 1 disk mmcblk2boot1 179:96 0 4M 1 disk zram0 251:0 0 485,5M 0 disk [SWAP] zram1 251:1 0 50M 0 disk /var/log zram2 251:2 0 0B 0 disk

Hi everyone, first post here. Sorry but after reading a lot I'm still not sure if the issue of installing into the eMMC was resolved or not. This is my experience. I generated an image with "./compile.sh build BOARD=x96q BRANCH=current BUILD_DESKTOP=no BUILD_MINIMAL=yes EXPERT=yes KERNEL_CONFIGURE=no KERNEL_GIT=shallow RELEASE=noble" which works on SD. I ran "armbian-install" and installed to eMMC. When rebooting without the SD card, on the serial console I get: U-Boot SPL 2024.01-armbian-2024.01-S866c-P63e9-H8869-Vad24-Bb703-R448a (Sep 10 2025 - 13:04:13 +0000) DRAM base address is defined as 0x40000000 DRAM has 15 b/raw, 10 b/col, 4 B/width, 1 #rank and 8 #bank DRAM top address must be less than 0x40000000 DRAM: 1024 MiB Trying to boot from MMC2 MMC Device 1 not found spl: could not find mmc device 1. error: -19 SPL: failed to boot from all boot devices ### ERROR ### Please RESET the board ### Lookin online for this specific issue, I found this issue in github: ( https://github.com/apritzel/u-boot/issues/7 ). Seems like there is indeed a bug with u-boot and this particular hardware which was addressed by that patch. When booting with the SD card and pressing "space" to interrupt the boot and get a prompt, I can run a few commands. Running "mmc info" after selecting "mmc dev 2" shows that the eMMC is there, seems healthy and accessible. If I run those "mmc read $kernel_addr_r 10 XXX" commands suggested in the bug report, I can read up to max 4 units, after 5 I start getting the ERROR, which confirms the bug. I then saved that patch ( https://lore.kernel.org/linux-sunxi/20250309061241.62170-1-jernej.skrabec@gmail.com/ ) into a file in armbian-build/userpatches/u-boot/u-boot-sunxi/fix-emmc-h313.patch and rebuilt my image. The patch was applied successfully (I confirmed in the logs). I flashed the new image to SD card and booted. Right at the first boot, I pressed space and tried those same "read" commands in u-boot as above, now I don't get errors anymore, which is good. Before the patch: => mmc dev 2 switch to partitions #0, OK mmc2(part 0) is current device => mmc read $kernel_addr_r 10 1 MMC read: dev # 2, block # 16, count 1 ... 1 blocks read: OK => mmc read $kernel_addr_r 10 2 MMC read: dev # 2, block # 16, count 2 ... 2 blocks read: OK => mmc read $kernel_addr_r 10 3 MMC read: dev # 2, block # 16, count 3 ... 3 blocks read: OK => mmc read $kernel_addr_r 10 4 MMC read: dev # 2, block # 16, count 4 ... 4 blocks read: OK => mmc read $kernel_addr_r 10 5 MMC read: dev # 2, block # 16, count 5 ... 5 blocks read: OK => mmc read $kernel_addr_r 10 6 MMC read: dev # 2, block # 16, count 6 ... 0 blocks read: ERROR After the patch: => mmc dev 2 switch to partitions #0, OK mmc2(part 0) is current device => mmc read $kernel_addr_r 10 10 MMC read: dev # 2, block # 16, count 16 ... 16 blocks read: OK I booted the full system, installed to eMMC, rebooted, but still the same error as above (SPL: failed to boot from all boot devices). I'm not sure why. My last test: I booted u-boot from the SD card, stopped at the prompt, switched to emmc and proceeded the boot. It worked, I have a system booted from eMMC. U-Boot 2024.01-armbian-2024.01-S866c-P63e9-H8869-Vad24-Bb703-R448a (Sep 10 2025 - 13:04:13 +0000) Allwinner Technology CPU: Allwinner H616 (SUN50I) Model: hechuang,x96q LPDDR3 DRAM: 1 GiB Core: 55 devices, 20 uclasses, devicetree: separate WDT: Not starting watchdog@30090a0 MMC: mmc@4020000: 0, mmc@4021000: 1, mmc@4022000: 2 Loading Environment from FAT... Unable to use mmc 0:1... In: serial@5000000 Out: serial@5000000 Err: serial@5000000 No USB device found Net: eth0: ethernet@5030000 starting USB... No working controllers found Autoboot in 1 seconds, press <Space> to stop => mmc dev 2 switch to partitions #0, OK mmc2(part 0) is current device => mmc info Device: mmc@4022000 Manufacturer ID: 90 OEM: 4a Name: H8G4t� Bus Speed: 52000000 Mode: MMC High Speed (52MHz) Rd Block Len: 512 MMC version 5.0 High Capacity: Yes Capacity: 7.3 GiB Bus Width: 8-bit Erase Group Size: 512 KiB HC WP Group Size: 4 MiB User Capacity: 7.3 GiB WRREL Boot Capacity: 4 MiB ENH RPMB Capacity: 4 MiB ENH Boot area 0 is not write protected Boot area 1 is not write protected => setenv devnum 2 => run distro_bootcmd switch to partitions #0, OK mmc2(part 0) is current device Scanning mmc 2:1... Found U-Boot script /boot/boot.scr 4641 bytes read in 2 ms (2.2 MiB/s) ## Executing script at 4fc00000 U-boot loaded from SD Boot script loaded from mmc 205 bytes read in 1 ms (200.2 KiB/s) Load fdt: /boot/dtb/allwinner/sun50i-h313-x96q-lpddr3.dtb 42411 bytes read in 4 ms (10.1 MiB/s) Working FDT set to 4fa00000 4203 bytes read in 3 ms (1.3 MiB/s) Applying kernel provided DT fixup script (sun50i-h616-fixup.scr) ## Executing script at 45000000 11874272 bytes read in 378 ms (30 MiB/s) 38217736 bytes read in 1213 ms (30 MiB/s) Moving Image from 0x40080000 to 0x40200000, end=42760000 ## Loading init Ramdisk from Legacy Image at 4ff00000 ... Image Name: uInitrd Image Type: AArch64 Linux RAMDisk Image (gzip compressed) Data Size: 11874208 Bytes = 11.3 MiB Load Address: 00000000 Entry Point: 00000000 Verifying Checksum ... OK ## Flattened Device Tree blob at 4fa00000 Booting using the fdt blob at 0x4fa00000 Working FDT set to 4fa00000 Loading Ramdisk to 494ad000, end 49ffffa0 ... OK Loading Device Tree to 000000004943a000, end 00000000494acfff ... OK Working FDT set to 4943a000 Starting kernel ... The installation seems mostly ok since I can boot u-boot from SD and then switch to booting on the eMMC side and it works. The question now is why u-boot still fails to load from the eMMC.