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Official/Supported Nanopi M4 images are not booting


norse

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Hi -

 

My brand new nanopi M4 (2gb) will boot the friendly elec nanopi images just fine, it'll boot to a usable text console with the armbian rockpi minimal image, but none of the supported images (or any unsupported ones) from the armbian nanopi m4 download page will boot or generate video. Same sd card, sufficient power, flashed with etcher just to make sure.  

 

What's the best way to root cause/fix this?

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Hard to tell without any more debug information. Do you have a USB TTL adapter to get on a serial console? If not pick one up. Dirt cheap and very useful when handling with SBCs.

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6 hours ago, norse said:

My brand new nanopi M4 (2gb) will boot the friendly elec nanopi images just fine, it'll boot to a usable text console with the armbian rockpi minimal image, but none of the supported images (or any unsupported ones) from the armbian nanopi m4 download page will boot or generate video. 

What's the best way to root cause/fix this?

Maybe there is a small difference between:

- NanoPI M4

- NanoPi M4V2

and

-NanoPi M4B

 

They seem to share the same CPU and the option for 2GB or 4GB (NPI M4V2)
BUT I think the problem is the RAM/Memory-driver bause they will come with different types of RAM where another driver is needed:

 

NanoPi M4:

Dual-Channel 4GB LPDDR3-1866,

Dual-Channel 2GB DDR3-1866


NanoPi M4V2:
Dual-Channel 4GB LPDDR4

 

NanoPI M4B:
Dual-Channel 2GB DDR3

 

The rockpi image seem to have the same memory-type like your NanoPi M4.

 

And :) you have used the images from 
https://www.armbian.com/nanopi-m4/

and NOT from

https://www.armbian.com/nanopi-m4-v2/

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Sigh, this remains aggravating. I verified with the Friendly Elec distribution that the dtb it boots fine with is the v01  NanoPi M4 one.  The only Armbian NanoPi M4 image that got anywhere was the current 5/13 focal nightly, but it reboots once systemd tries to mount the local file system. 

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  • Igor locked and unlocked this topic

To close this out and warn future newbies: I'm a complete noodle and should have heeded the FAQ warnings. T'was the power supply (or lack thereof), your honour.

 

Long story: 

 

After setting up to build my own images and testing with the minimal versions of bionic / focal x legacy / current for both nanopim4 and rock pi, confirming my discovery that the rock pi images booted for bionic/legacy but all nanopi images failed.

 

I captured the failure with video and determined that booting the kernel tanked the board reliably.

 

Couldn't make heads or tails of the issue because the rockpi and friendlyelec images worked so well.

 

While reading up on how to get the dtb and bootloader from the friendlyelec image into my custom built armbian nanopi image I hit upon a thread that explained in passing that the default images for the nanopi had higher default core frequencies than the slower friendlyelec distribution and a lightbulb went off.

 

Went to find my 45W usbc charger and attached it... and bionic/legacy nanopi booted just fine. I installed the desktop on SD card and am super happy with how feature rich armbian is. Literally all board features worked OOB.

 

Huge thank you to the community that made this possible :)

 

Also, surprisingly, apt update + upgrade didn't kill the joy.

 

Would have owned up to this earlier, but there's a pretty severe limit on being allowed to post only once a day?

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2 hours ago, norse said:

Went to find my 45W usbc charger and attached it... and bionic/legacy nanopi booted just fine. I installed the desktop on SD card and am super happy with how feature rich armbian is. Literally all board features worked OOB.

 

Nice catch. I forget that with USB-C not sufficient powering problem didn't go away completely. 


Moving the topic to the "SD card and PSU issues" sub forum, where it belongs.

 

2 hours ago, norse said:

Would have owned up to this earlier, but there's a pretty severe limit on being allowed to post only once a day?

 

I am sure this limit is helping in saving precious resources. Ratio between people that seek support and people that provide (100% on their expense) is equally severe. Actually much more severe. Get a subscription and limit is gone at once.

 

2 hours ago, norse said:

Huge thank you to the community that made this possible


People around Armbian adds around 30-50 h every day on top of general community contribution to make this possible.

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