Rock64 not booting after "apt upgrade"

[va88]

Hey guys, I installed Armbian some months ago in my Rock64 and I had never updated the packages.

 

Yesterday I decided to do an apt update + apt upgrade to update one of the applications I use.

 

I noticed that meanwhile apt updated Armbian itself, and began to ask for a reboot.

 

A few hours later I rebooted the board.

 

At first I couldn't connect due to connection refusal, so I went plugged a keyboard and hdmi on the board to see what was happening.

 

It looks like while doing this I unplugged the power source suddenly, and now the board won't boot the system in this OS. No image or response in the USB keyboard.

 

I thought it could be SD corruption, but I'm able to open the SD card in my Desktop and see its contents.

 

Since I had a lot of tweaking in the old system, is there a way to copy some parts of a new image and paste in the SD, so I can boot it again?

 

Or maybe reflash the SD with the latest armbian, then pasting some folders over it (maybe home and /var/lib at least)?

 

Thanks for the advices.

 

[Igor]

I did a test by upgrading oldest (1 year old Bionic server) image that we have and upgrade went without a problem. If you broke the system somehow, you have to fix it or ... perhaps its better to start with a clean build and copy over your data and settings.

[va88]

Just now, Igor said:

I did a test by upgrading oldest (1 year old Bionic server) image that we have and upgrade went without a problem. If you broke the system somehow, you have to fix it or ... perhaps its better to start with a clean build and copy over your data and settings.

 

Yeah, since at first it was just refusing connections, it probably needed a simple UFW fix. 

 

But now it just won't boot, so I guess I'll have to begin from scratch...

[plizt]

I have the same problem. 4G Version with emmc module here.
=> Board does not boot up anymore since Kernel Update last friday. (I was on Stretch initially)

Even with a newly flashed sd card and without emmc module. (managed to boot into armbian buster 5.91 once but after rebooting it, it failed again and stayed that way- tried the latest 3 images in the meanwhile ) Kernel is 4.4182

 

with armbian on an sd card i am getting:
failed to start armbian zram config - failed to start journal service - Failed to flush Journal to Persitent Storagerockchip64 #6 and at some point the boot sequence stops with something like: work_pending+0x10/0x14 or I am getting consistent timeouts from "waiting for device" 

 

with the original emmc card it gives me:

...

BUG: spinlock bad magic on CPU#2

goes to:

secondary_start_kernel +0x190/0xbc

0x2cxa188

repeats and stops there

 

also since the beginning I sometimes get: "fixing recursive fault. Reboot is needed!" - without reboot improving anything of course..

 

I am afraid that at this point of failure notices and kernel panics I have no idea how to proceed anymore.

[jschwart]

I recently had a similar issue with my Tinkerboard. I was still using the legacy 4.4 kernel. To solve it:

1, I booted another SD card with TinkerOS

2. Plugged in the SD with Armbian using a USB SD-card adapter

3. mounted /dev/sda1 the partition with Armbian

4. bind mounted /dev /run /proc and /sys on the Armbian filesystem

5. chrooted into Armbian

6. ran armbian-config

7. first switched to the 5.2 kernel, but that didn't boot either, then did above again, switched to 4.19 and Armbian was booting again!!

[plizt]

jschwart thanks, that you try to help!

my problem still is, that I tried at least 3 different images now on an sd-card and on my emmc module and with non of these the board would boot to a usable state.

I have no problem at all wiping all the data and start new but i highly doubt that tinkerOS would run on the rock64?

[plizt]

update: found images now that are actually booting the board.

still the latest 3 armbian images are not working for my rock64 4G neither on SD nor on emmc.

I would exclude the sd (tried 2) and the power adapter as source of the problem at the moment.

So right now sadly I can just stay away from armbian images as the simply will not boot.

[Igor]

22 hours ago, plizt said:

latest 3 armbian images

Which hw revision is your board? There are at least three and some does not boot without updating boot loader.

 

Those two versions boots with this image https://dl.armbian.com/rock64/archive/Armbian_5.91_Rock64_Debian_buster_default_4.4.184.7z

 

I would question HW maker why they are making so many versions in 1st place?

[WrongWorld]

On 10/7/2019 at 3:35 PM, Igor said:

I would question HW maker why they are making so many versions in 1st place?

As much as I like the Rock64 board, I couldn't agree more with you. It is a really nifty board, so much better in many aspects compared to the Pi, yet so badly supported by Pine.

 

This board (REV. 2 in my case) has still the big problem of not being able to boot from the SSD when it's hooked on the USB3 port, not even with the recent U-Boot version provided by ayufan, for which I had some hope.

 

Back on subject, I have no problem with REV. 2 and the latest 4.4.192 kernel. I have even finally solved the problem with the missing DTV-USB driver, more on this on the relevant thread.

[plizt]

On 10/7/2019 at 3:35 PM, Igor said:

Which hw revision is your board? There are at least three and some does not boot without updating boot loader.

 

Those two versions boots with this image https://dl.armbian.com/rock64/archive/Armbian_5.91_Rock64_Debian_buster_default_4.4.184.7z

 

 

 

Hello Igor!

 

Thank you for your answer! Sorry, that I am responding so late - I have not got a notification... and just wanted to check up on the topic a last time..

As I saw you answered I took out the sd card and reflashed it with the image you were linking to. I tried to flash it 3 times but did not get it up and running:

The first try I use win32diskimager and had an usb wifi dongle and usb keyboard receiver connected to the board via an unpowered hub. It took about 3 minutes before I was getting constant errors - I removed the hub, restarted, tried with the wifi dongle directly - failed again.
Flashed the same way, removed the dongle and failed again. (Not documented here) Reflashed the image again with etcher, started without anythingn than an hdmi and the power cable hooked up - failed again (try2).

So lastly I wanted to make sure that the ayufan image still works - reflashed - system came up in about 30 seconds.

 

As I was afraid that it would go that way I thought I make some pictures throughout the process.. sorry that they are not the best. If you have any further ideas what the problem could be, I still can try it out this or next week before I move the board back to the housing destination if everything keeps running stable with the ayufan image on the emmc module.