[Odroid XU4 - Ubuntu Xenial doesn't run on eMMC]

@Igor Yes, kernel 4.x and welcome

[Odroid XU4 - Ubuntu Xenial doesn't run on eMMC]

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This is exactly the reason why you have to boot Armbian from SD and copy newer u-boot (with enabled ext4 support) to the eMMC.

Are you sure that you booted from the SD? What was the u-boot build date?

@zador.blood.stained If I didn't boot from SD I wouldn't be able to write to eMMC as @justsomeguy1983 pointed out.

My u-boot version was:

U-Boot 2012.07-00035-g0209be0 (Oct 06 2015 - 18:21:02) for Exynos5422

 

What I noticed was that when I booted from eMMC up to the point where u-boot failed to continue boot process the prompt was Exynos5422# and copy_uboot_sd2emmc was present but when I interrupted boot process it was Odroid XU3# copy_uboot_sd2emmc was not present.

 

To avoid all this unnecessary u-boot-prompt stuff it would be great to know how to write u-boot to eMMC (given that the controller exports those magical mmcblk0boot* partitions).

[Odroid XU4 - Ubuntu Xenial doesn't run on eMMC]

On my eMMC that I ordered maybe one or two years ago I had this version of u-boot:

U-Boot 2012.07-00035-g0209be0 (Oct 06 2015 - 18:21:02) for Exynos5422

I tried to get u-boot from SD to eMMC the same way as @justsomeguy1983 but for some reason there is no copy_uboot_sd2emmc and also command movi was unknown (and probably still is) unknown to u-boot.

Running the following commands finally read u-boot from SD and wrote to eMMC:

ODROID-XU3 # mmc dev 0
ODROID-XU3 # mmc read 0x50000000 0x1 0xa3e
ODROID-XU3 # mmc dev 1 1
ODROID-XU3 # mmc write 0x50000000 0x0 0xa3e
ODROID-XU3 # mmc dev 1 0

(source: https://wiki.tizen.org/wiki/Quick_guide_for_odroidxu4#booting_with_eMMC)

 

The only problem I had was not that there was no FAT partition in Armbian 5.27 but that ext4load was unknown to u-boot. Should have been ext2load. Actually, I was able to boot Armbian 5.27 from eMMC using serial console and these commands:

setenv load_addr "0x44000000"; setenv kerneladdr "0x40800000"; setenv initrdaddr "0x42000000"; setenv ftdaddr "0x44000000"; setenv rootdev "/dev/mmcblk0p1"; setenv rootfstype "ext4"; setenv console "both"; setenv mmcbootdev "0"; setenv mmcbootpart "1"

ext2load mmc ${mmcbootdev}:${mmcbootpart} ${load_addr} /boot/armbianEnv.txt; env import -t ${load_addr} ${filesize}

setenv consoleargs "console=tty1"; setenv consoleargs "${consoleargs} console=ttySAC2,115200n8"

setenv bootargs "${consoleargs} root=${rootdev} rootfstype=${rootfstype} rootwait panic=10 consoleblank=0 loglevel=${verbosity} ${extraargs}"
ext2load mmc ${mmcbootdev}:${mmcbootpart} ${kerneladdr} /boot/zImage; ext2load mmc ${mmcbootdev}:${mmcbootpart} ${initrdaddr} /boot/uInitrd; ext2load mmc ${mmcbootdev}:${mmcbootpart} ${ftdaddr} /boot/dtb/exynos5422-odroidxu4.dtb

bootz ${kerneladdr} ${initrdaddr} ${ftdaddr}

Basically this is a simplified boot.cmd from Armbian 5.27 replacing commands "load" with "ext2load".

 

Armbian is my favourite flavour for SBCs. I say this with 15+ years experience in Linux. Thank you.