calinb

I posted here with several other relevant posts preceding it: https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=17084&pid=112226#pid112226

I too encounter the error on my Pinebook Pro when attempting to run Armbian / on eMMC (/boot files on SD card). The machine locks after this screen: https://www.dropbox.com/s/4x7u5si8ifmw9en/Armbian_UUID_Does_Not_Exist.jpg?dl=0 Also, even though Armbian will boot off an SD card exclusively, it will not boot when eMMC is disabled (via hardware switch on the PBP). This indicates that the U-boot on the SD card image does not work. After flashing PCM720's U-boot files to the SD card, the SD card WILL boot with my eMMC memory disabled but still encounters the above initramfs error (can't find UUID). When run from the SD card (/boot and / files on SD card), Armbian works with both my eMMC and NVMe memory so memory support is obviously in the kernel.

My strategy to boot from SD with / on the eMMC didn't work. All I get is a spinning Armbian pinwheel. All the other distros I've run on the PBP use a separate boot partition and a different file structure than Armbian. A reply to one post that I found here on the forums requesting information about armbianENV.txt documentation seems to imply that the entire system must be rebuilt and there's no documentation (it's too simple to benefit form it ) I really like Armbian but we should not have to run / off of an SD card.

NVMe cannot be booted. (It cannot contain u-boot or tow-boot or ANY boot code.) It's not in the boot path. See the Pine64 wiki at https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pinebook_Pro#Using_as_OS_root_drive The SoC does not include the NVMe boot code, so the NVMe is not in the SoC's boot order. However, using the U-Boot update script from the mrfixit2001 Debian or Arglebargle's modified script, and the modified u-boot images provided by forum user pcm720, you can now add support to boot from an NVMe drive. and quoted from https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pinebook_Pro#Boot_devices Please note that PCIe, the interface used for NVMe SSD on the Pinebook Pro, is not bootable on the RK3399 and therefore is not a part of the boot hierarchy. It is possible to run the desired OS from NVMe by pointing extlinux on the eMMC to rootfs on the SSD. This requires uboot, the Kernel image, DTB, and extlinux.conf in a /boot partition on the eMMC. Also, wherever you put this boot code, the target kernel and /boot files must support it too and the subsequent boot priority that it provides is at the whim and discretion of its author! So, if you want to ditch both eMMC and SD memory as part of the boot chain and boot a system on NVMe (/ and boot), you must use SPI. Sadly, it might not work for all operating systems due to bugs or lack of kernel support: https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pinebook_Pro#Using_the_SPI_flash_device Here is some information on using the SPI flash device: You need the kernel built with SPI flash device support, which will supply a device similar to: code>/dev/mtd0 Unfortunately, at this time, Armbian seems to have problems when the Armbian system resides on media other than the SD card! I don't know if the problem occurs when Armbian relies on a non-Armbian u-boot (eMMC u-boot) and/or even if the Armbian supplied u-boot doesn't work when it and the Armbian system are flashed to eMMC. I also don't know if Armbian would work with u-boot or tow-boot or something else flashed to the SPI NOR memory. My guess is it's a poor wager! I think I might try to copy the Armbian / system (copy files--not an image) from my Armbian SD card to my eMMC (or maybe try using my NVMe SSD too, which has been proven to be accessible when booting Armbian from the SD card). The Armbian /boot files don't look anything like the /boot files I've seen in other distros. I have "armbianENV.txt": verbosity=1 bootlogo=true extraargs=systemd.unified_cgroup_hierarchy=0 overlay_prefix=rockchip fdtfile=rockchip/rk3399-pinebook-pro.dtb rootdev=UUID=f57dd6bf-3737-40f9-95b0-376895bc2055 rootfstype=ext4 usbstoragequirks=0x2537:0x1066:u,0x2537:0x1068:u I wonder if it (the Armbian SD card /boot code) would load and run the system from eMMC or NVMe, if I simply change the rootdev=UUID entry to match the desired target. (and also change the fstab entry in the target). Again, I don't know how this file works. What does "usbstoragequirks" do? That's a scary label! The Slackware PBP aarch64 distro only supports booting a system on NVMe from an SD card. (Slackware devs don't even officially support eMMC, which they freely admit they don't trust as reliable hardware, because it's cheap NAND memory.) This usage model would be fine with me with my Armbian system! Once booted, the SD card can be unmounted and removed.

I just recalled that my PBP was as dead as dead can be when I first received it, despite having a fully charged battery. I had to hold the power button down for at least 15 seconds before releasing it and then giving it another normal press to get it to boot. It has done this to me several times--most often after I attempt to use suspend mode, which sadly doesn't work reliably or well enough to use. Sometimes I get a fully dead machine (well not fully dead once I discovered the very long power key press recovery trick) after a normal shutdown too, but that is rare.

I might find time to work on this. I'm loving my latest SD install of Armbian Jammy KDE Fusion and I'd like to copy it from my SD card to on my PBP NVMe drive (or at least my eMMC). I've done this sort of thing with my PBP in the past and even had Manjaro running with / and /boot on my NVMe drive. I also wrote a crude dual boot script to toggle the boot between systems on NVMe and eMMC. I installed PCM720's Uboot code but stopped short of risking its install to SPI. I've always had strange boot problems from time to time with my PBP though. When I had Manjaro installed to NVMe (/boot and /), I had two occasions when a Manjaro apt-get upgrade killed the boot with the system entirely on NVMe. Luckily I had backups. I think both boot failures happened when a kernel update was included in the upgrade. Stritt (Manjaro forum mod) and I never got to the bottom of it though. Once I recovered the system by building a new kernel package from source and installing it to the broken system. Then it worked from NVMe again so I came to the conclusion that it wasn't actually a kernel change that caused it but, rather, something else associated with it. Here's the PCM720 thread and one of my posts. PCM720 provides links to his code earlier in the thread. It's difficult to find his most recent code so I'll try to find it and provide a link here. https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=8439&page=13 I don't post on the Pine64 forum anymore though. Pine64 forum mod, Arwen, was far too aggressive in the censorship of posts right after COVID broke. Geesh--II was a DivX forum mod for years back when it was a nearly unique and very popular forum (as was doom9 :)) and, I never needed to censored anyone--especially for a general off-hand comment that wasn't even directly associated with an event like COVID.

Yes, Aps launch from the terminal but the menu selections fail to launch the root password authentication box, as is usual on other distros so aps requiring root do not launch.

That's great news. Thanks!

It's Focal so XFCE--specifically the current Armbian Focal xfce mainline based kernel 5.10.y for ("no official support") Pinebook Pro. I can probably learn how correct it by studying the differences between the launcher on my Arbian systems vs. my MX-Linux (x86-64) program launcher on another computer. That will probably take more time than it's worth vs. just launching the root aps from the cli though. MX-Linux uses the Whisker menu so maybe a solution lies in trying to install the Whisker menu in Armbian. Thanks

I just upgraded my Pinebook Pro touchpad firmware. Wow! It's especially helpful with Armbian, which lacks the extensive synclient controls of other distros that can partially mitigate the former touchpad lag and hysteresis. Even with synclient, it's a huge improvement! https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=14531

I'm running Armbian Focal on my Pinebook Pro. With other distros, I'm accustomed to being able to run utilities requiring root privileges like gparted and Synaptic from the Application menu. With Armbian, however, nothing happens after I click on the application. There is no popup window to authenticate with a root password and the application does not launch. The aps work fine when run from a terminal using sudo, but how can I correct this problem with the Application menu? Thanks!

Thank you and also thank you for some of the performance data you presented in your review. It is very interesting information. Application >> Settings >> Mouse and Touchpad was a good start, but the xinput cli command and creating an /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/90-libinput.conf allowed me to access features like "Middle Emulation Enabled" and "Disable While Typing Enabled." I'm getting closer to the settings I prefer.

Thank you for the review NicoD! I received my PBP about two or three months ago. Shortly after I received it, the LCD backlight failed so I booted Armbian Focal from an SD card and backed-up and wiped my eMMC before returning my PBP for repair. (They did have to replace the display.) Armbian and my Pinephone dock (with Ethernet) saved the day, because very few distros have SSH enabled by default. I did not know at the time that, unlike my Pinephone, I could have simply unplugged the eMMC memory before returning it for warranty repair. Duh! I too prefer the XFCE4 desktop. I find it to be amusing that the Manjaro KDE Fusion that ships with the PBP and Pinephone has the slogan, "Enjoy the Simplicity." I agree with most of your opinions about the PBP and I have similar opinions and experiences with my PBP. I purchased the NVME adapter and also the PBP dock form the Pine Store and I installed a 1TB WD Blue SN550 SSD--primarily for storage capacity rather than performance. It is unfortunately that, even with a larger USB3-PD power supply, the battery still discharges slowly while in use. However, my NVME/SSD battery runtime is better than I expected, based on other reports. The NVMe, APST (Autonomous Power State Transitions) feature seems to work well on my SN550 so I do not set static power states and I just rely on APST to know what's good for me. When I make power inquiries using the NVME cli tool, it seems to make good decisions. I am booting Manjaro from eMMC but then it mounts /root from the NVME SSD. I have not yet risked soft-bricking my PBP by flashing my SIP to boot directly from the Manjaro boot partition on my NVME SSD, but I left the boot partition on my NVME SSD after installation to try SIP booting someday. I currently boot Armbian from SD card. The one area where Manjaro is working better than Armbian for me is the touch pad. Unlike you, I am not happy with the touch pad dynamics and feel, in general. Using Manjaro, there are many settings accessible via synclient and, with tweaks, I can live with the touchpad on Manjaro. However, I have not been able to get synclient working on Armbian Focal and the available libinput settings are very limited. Some of them don't appear to function correctly either and I've found it necessary to use props ID numbers rather than the text strings for setting properties with the xinput utility too. There is more information here, for anyone who is interested in tweaking touchpad settings: https://www.ubuntuvibes.com/2017/04/how-to-configure-touchpad-in-ubuntu.html https://linuxhint.com/change_mouse_touchpad_settings_xinput_linux/ (Without UBlock Origin, the ads will drive you nuts on this site! :(). My current settings (and the list of very limited settings available on Armbian Focal): sudo xinput list-props 11 Device 'HAILUCK CO.,LTD USB KEYBOARD Touchpad': Device Enabled (129): 1 Coordinate Transformation Matrix (130): 1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000 libinput Tapping Enabled (282): 0 libinput Tapping Enabled Default (283): 0 libinput Tapping Drag Enabled (284): 1 libinput Tapping Drag Enabled Default (285): 1 libinput Tapping Drag Lock Enabled (286): 0 libinput Tapping Drag Lock Enabled Default (287): 0 libinput Tapping Button Mapping Enabled (288): 1, 0 libinput Tapping Button Mapping Default (289): 1, 0 libinput Natural Scrolling Enabled (264): 0 libinput Natural Scrolling Enabled Default (265): 0 libinput Disable While Typing Enabled (290): 1 libinput Disable While Typing Enabled Default (291): 1 libinput Scroll Methods Available (266): 1, 1, 0 libinput Scroll Method Enabled (267): 1, 0, 0 libinput Scroll Method Enabled Default (268): 1, 0, 0 libinput Click Methods Available (292): 1, 1 libinput Click Method Enabled (293): 1, 0 libinput Click Method Enabled Default (294): 1, 0 libinput Middle Emulation Enabled (271): 1 libinput Middle Emulation Enabled Default (272): 0 libinput Accel Speed (273): 0.200000 libinput Accel Speed Default (274): 0.000000 libinput Left Handed Enabled (278): 0 libinput Left Handed Enabled Default (279): 0 libinput Send Events Modes Available (249): 1, 1 libinput Send Events Mode Enabled (250): 0, 0 libinput Send Events Mode Enabled Default (251): 0, 0 Device Node (252): "/dev/input/event4" Device Product ID (253): 9610, 30 libinput Drag Lock Buttons (280): <no items> libinput Horizontal Scroll Enabled (281): 1 Tapping Enabled (502): "PRIMARY" (1)

Thanks Igor, guidol. Installing slick-greeter worked for me too.

After lightdm fails on my Pinebook Pro, I simply logon to the terminal and startx but I will try slick-greeter. I could not find the "enable Desktop" from armbian-config -> System-settings, which I assume is an Applications menu hierarchy. Thanks!