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Banana-Pi and Armbian boot problem


Beun de Haas

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Hi, i'am desperate with my banana-p1 M1. It is (still) running nicely with an old 'Lemaker' Lubuntu version. But its an old linux version and the are 'iceweasel' issues in combination with https. So, it's a good time to use a (much) newer version of linux.

I've tried several versions/downloads of Armbian: debian, ubuntu. I've tried different (tested with F3write/read) SD cards. Used several methods to 'write' the SD-card(s), like 'dd' or the etcher-tool.... ALL results have the same problem. (i've got an picture of the screen, but i can't upload it to this forum???) In sort, it say's:

U-boot 2020.10-armbian ..... Allwinner Tech...

CPU: Allwinner A20 (SUN7I)

I2C:  ready

DRAM:  1 GiB

MMC: mmc@1c0f000: 0

Loading Environment from FAT.... MMC: no card present

HDMI connected: Setting up a 1920x1080......

IN:  serial

Out:  vga

Err: vga

Net: eth0: ethernet@1c50000

MMC: no card present

starting USB....

....

....

missing environment variable: bootfile

 

 

There is a card present (tried serveral types/size/manufactories) and i removed the SD card > the screen stays 'black'. So the banana-pi is seeing the SD-card. The hardware is OK, b'cause i have tried the 'old' SD card with the 'lubuntu' version and that is working nicely...

 

latest attempt was with image: Armbian_21.02.1_Bananapi_bionic_current_5.10.12.img.xy

 

So what is going wrong? Can somebody give me some tricks?

Thanks in advance

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Just now, Beun de Haas said:

Can somebody give me some tricks?


There is some trouble with video driver in latest build for A20 boards. Use one or two versions back from the archive and wait until fix is not announched in https://docs.armbian.com/Release_Changelog/ 

 

Remember to freeze kernel update in armbian-config -> system until then.

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Thanks.... i've tried several versions and none of them will boot correctly. (and with several SD cards from different manufaries) Tried debian and ubuntu versions. 20.11, 5.75, 5.65, 5.59, 4.14.... With a lot of 'tweaking' in the u-boot part, i've got one version (4.14.65) starting (in a combo SD-card and USB-stick!!), but without an graphical desktop.

 

Is there someone in the world, who has a working version of armbian, running op a banana-pi (M1) and if yes, please tell me the version you use. preferably a desktop version.

 

Thanks in advance

 

b.t.w. is it possible to start/run armbian 'diskless' (in my early days, we had some sun-workstations. some of them had no HDD and where 'booting' from a tftp/nfs server). I see some 'hints' in the u-boot documentation and i've noticed, when connected to the network, it ask's an IP address and tries to contact a tftpserver. Is there an, sort of, how-to manual?

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21 hours ago, Beun de Haas said:

i've tried several versions and none of them will boot correctly.

 

Then you have some other problem like 1st most common, powering. If you power your board as officially designed, make sure to read how this method is totally broken by design. That creates weird issues, similar to those you are experiencing and sadly also results in us wasting precious time on issues that doesn't actually exists. There could be hardware (quality) issues, but here there is nothing we can do. Software support has limits - it can't run (half) broken hardware.

 

21 hours ago, Beun de Haas said:

Is there someone in the world, who has a working version of armbian, running op a banana-pi (M1) and if yes, please tell me the version you use. preferably a desktop version.

 

We have automated testing facility which shows no troubles. I also manually tested latest build on this exact board, BPi M1. No troubles except one common bug, which is found in 32bit Ubuntu desktop support. Current workaround is to use Debian based builds.

 

21 hours ago, Beun de Haas said:

is it possible to start/run armbian 'diskless'


Not sure for this particular board - if network drivers are present in the u-boot ... but still you have to load that boot loader from somewhere so it can't be totally diskless. We mitigate this problem very simple since the day 1 - https://docs.armbian.com/User-Guide_Getting-Started/#how-to-install-to-emmc-nand-sata-usb by installing things to USB / SATA and leave only a few files on SD card. Not ideal, but much better. Also we do a lot of fine tuning, which means SD cards are not dying like on Raspberry Pi.

 

21 hours ago, Beun de Haas said:

Is there an, sort of, how-to manual?

 

No, but you could probably find hints on this forum. It's the same / similar for all Allwinner boards. It's "just" reworking boot script.

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Good day to all. Today I tried different versions of Buster for Banana PRO. I was only able to run 5.8.6 and below. All versions above 5.8 refused to start. Most likely the error crept into 5.9 and wanders from version to version. Visually, the error looks like u-boot is not transferring control to the kernel correctly.

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Mine BPI will not work with armbian. (But still working with an old lubuntu version). I've managed to boot the kernel, via USB or tftpboot (even with an NFS mouted rootfs) and now it's hangs after a couple of "running /scripts/local-block..... done" messages. Maybe i've an old HW version of the board or something like that.

 

I give up !

 

Thanks for your time an tips

 

 

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We provide older Armbian versions with the same old kernel so you don't need to use some suspicious things from the internet https://armbian.systemonachip.net/archive/bananapi/archive/ (oldest one are at least several years more recent and contain less bugs then "Lubuntu")

 

We would need some experienced person to look closely on a hardware that hangs. I have several A20 boards and none behaves this way. HW difference could be in memory chip speed, while SoCs are usually the same. We already mitigate this https://github.com/armbian/build/blob/master/patch/u-boot/u-boot-sunxi/adjust-default-dram-clockspeeds.patch but going lower than this is strange.

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On 3/10/2021 at 2:06 PM, Denion said:

Good day to all. Today I tried different versions of Buster for Banana PRO. I was only able to run 5.8.6 and below. All versions above 5.8 refused to start. Most likely the error crept into 5.9 and wanders from version to version. Visually, the error looks like u-boot is not transferring control to the kernel correctly.

Thank you for pointing this out.

 

I had no luck with latest kernel (5.10.60) buster and bullseye images on BananiPi, however I had no issues at all with bullseye_current_5.8.16.

It's a bit of a pity that this bug has been bubbling away for so long...

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vor 19 Stunden schrieb olos:

Thank you for pointing this out.

 

I had no luck with latest kernel (5.10.60) buster and bullseye images on BananiPi, however I had no issues at all with bullseye_current_5.8.16.

It's a bit of a pity that this bug has been bubbling away for so long...

 

Which hardware version are you using?

 

At least for the BananaPI PRO I can say I don't see a Problem. My BananaPI PRO with a fresh "Armbian_21.08.3_Bananapipro_buster_current_5.10.60.img.xz" boots up and works just fine:

 

 ____  ____  _   ____
| __ )|  _ \(_) |  _ \ _ __ ___
|  _ \| |_) | | | |_) | '__/ _ \
| |_) |  __/| | |  __/| | | (_) |
|____/|_|   |_| |_|   |_|  \___/

Welcome to Armbian 21.08.3 Buster with Linux 5.10.60-sunxi

System load:   24%              Up time:       4 min
Memory usage:  7% of 967M       IP:            192.168.x.x
CPU temp:      33°C             Usage of /:    17% of 7.1G
RX today:      n/a

[ 0 security updates available, 1 updates total: apt upgrade ]
Last check: 2021-12-09 17:45

[ General system configuration (beta): armbian-config ]

pi@bananapipro:~$ uname -a
Linux bananapipro 5.10.60-sunxi #21.08.2 SMP Tue Sep 14 16:28:44 UTC 2021 armv7l GNU/Linux
pi@bananapipro:~$

 

 

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