Armbian Buster doesn't boot on Cubox-!

[Ferdinand]

Just tried to load Armbian Buster on a Cubox-i.

Couldn't see it in the network, so tried HDMI. I saw an Armbian logo and a line: uboot 2018-1...

 

Booting the Solid-Run Debian image, works fine.

 

What should I do to get Armbian working?

Board: Cubox-i, Hummingboard / Gate & Edge

[Igor]

1 hour ago, Ferdinand said:

Booting the Solid-Run Debian image, works fine.

We avoid to use outdated proprietary kernels especially in case of imx6 where opensource routines are fully operational. Armbian works fine on test devices we have. More than this we can't do. The only support we ever have to provide Armbian for your hardware was a few free boards. You can't provide professional grade services you would like to have with so little.

 

1 hour ago, Ferdinand said:

What should I do to get Armbian working?

By doing research and investigation? Sources are accessible - it's your time or our time. 
 

1 hour ago, Ferdinand said:

Couldn't see it in the network, so tried HDMI. I saw an Armbian logo and a line: uboot 2018-1...

 

- did you try any previous build from the archive? That would narrow the scope down. (link is in the bottom of the download page for this board).

- some hw variants are not working and there is nothing little we can do about. Perhaps u-boot recognizes your HW wrong and choose wrong DT. You can try setting it manually ... check uboot script.

[usual user]

1 hour ago, Igor said:

some hw variants are not working and there is nothing little we can do about

It is a hardware flaw due to a missing pull resistor and a software quirk.

A fix is discussed here but as long as noone with an affected device confirms it, probably nothing will happen.

[Ferdinand]

On 1/2/2021 at 10:51 AM, Ferdinand said:

Just tried to load Armbian Buster on a Cubox-i.

Couldn't see it in the network, so tried HDMI. I saw an Armbian logo and a line: uboot 2018-1...

 

Booting the Solid-Run Debian image, works fine.

 

What should I do to get Armbian working?

Board: Cubox-i, Hummingboard / Gate & Edge

 

As I can only post one message a day and it's also not possible to edit one of my earlier posts, I choose to follow up here as this is the topic were I initially posted the issue with my cubox-i.

 

I followed the workaround/switch to distro boot/ extlinux boot option as described in: Cubox I1-300-D: initial Armbian flash screen, then "no signal"

 

Initially with the exact same image, the standard Armbian Ubuntu image Armbian_20.02.7_Cubox-i_bionic_current_5.4.28_desktop.7z, then:

- Created the extlinux directory in the boot directory of the SD-card;

- Added the extlinux.conf file from the topic

This worked.

 

Then I took the latest Armbian Bullseye image and took the same approach though with a changed PARTUUID as root partition identifier.

This also worked.

 

Latstly, I upgraded to the latest version:

 

 

So now I am a happy camper!

 

I think a write-up on the cubox-i documentation page can be helpfull for others.

 

As said, I would like to help solve the software rootcause of this issue. Which probably is:

Broken ethernet on SolidRun cubox-i (infradead.org)

 

I am not sure how to test and thus help. Please let me know what I can do!

 

[Igor]

4 hours ago, Ferdinand said:

As I can only post one message a day and it's also not possible to edit one of my earlier posts

That limit was manually adjusted - otherwise its automatically in one week. A must have anti-spam and doers pressure protection.

 

4 hours ago, Ferdinand said:

I think a write-up on the cubox-i documentation page can be helpfull for others.

This whole project started because we want to script tons of small issues and a modern but also perhaps already a bit complicated build system was born. It still a central point of this project. There is a place for such things ... since most of the people doesn't look documentation or search forum in case of troubles. 

 

We are preparing major build system upgrade to make such tweaks even in a better way, but currently its adding few lines of code here:
https://github.com/armbian/build/blob/master/config/sources/families/imx6.conf#L52-L57

[Ferdinand]

16 hours ago, Igor said:

There is a place for such things ... since most of the people doesn't look documentation or search forum in case of troubles.

 

Wouldn't it be good to mention this bug/ issue on:

Freescale i.MX6 - Armbian Documentation

And maybe link to a write-up on how to boot using distro boot?

 

How can I help with testing & analyzing this issue further?

[Igor]

4 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

Wouldn't it be good to mention this bug/ issue on:

Freescale i.MX6 - Armbian Documentation

It can't hurt.

 

4 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

How can I help with testing & analyzing this issue further?

Its a bit longer way and includes https://docs.armbian.com/Developer-Guide_Build-Preparation/ Ideal is to implement fix there and you don't need to mention this anywhere since it will work out of the box at next release. This is regular MO around here. Making documentation sometimes represent more work than fixing the actual problem. Of course not for you since you have to get familiar with a build system a bit, .. but I already give you directions where to implement this fix in the process of making an image. You need to create a file or copy some predefined file like we do it for some other config files ...