Boot troubles

[kocur]

I Installed the Armbian system who is dedicated for my OPI version: http://www.armbian.com/orange-pi-pc/ with instruction, formatted SD card with format size adjustment option ON. But when I want to boot it there is only still green light (steady all time). OPI not giving any boot information on screen.

This issue is not caused by SD card becasue I tried two (which one is recommended): Kingston 32GB (class 10) and Samsung EVO+ 32GB.

Has anyone had similar experience or have any idea how to solve this?

[arox]

Has anyone had similar experience

Only a lot of people !

 

Try another PSU (with short and thick cable).

[slinde]

You do not need to format the SD-card. Just write the image file to the SD-card with an appropriate software like Etcher or Win32diskimager in Windows or dd if you are using Linux.

 

When you write the image to the SD-card you over-write any formatting previously done.

[kocur]

Thank you for reply. I measured my official psu and it gives me 5.32v on output. I think it's enough for OPI. Also when I boot system from official OPI page its works well but without drivers (script.bin file). With script.bin it hanging on following log message: [    4.270097] [DISP] disp_device_attached_and_enable,line:159:attched ok, mgr0<-->device0, type=4, mode=31.

 

Of course I tested it with others psu:

- official orginal samsung 5.3---2.0A

- Xiaomi powerbank 5.1V---2A

 

Still not works.

[tarkin000]

When I booted my OPi Lite with Armbian, there was a delay before anything would print to the screen (hdmi).

As the instructions advise, it will boot once, take care of some configuration, and reboot.

The whole process for boot/reboot takes about three minutes with a fresh image.

Patience is the key.

Hope this helps.

[arox]

Patience is the key.

Hope this helps.

I saw by googling, that users with similar problem had found it may resume after 15 minutes ...

 

But :

- if you got no specific response from armbian gurus, they probably think it is yet another problem they answered hundreds of times in this forum (mainly PSU, SD card quality and SD card flashing). They are doing a great job, but a bit overwhelmed by hardware problems or software problems relevant to the debian mother distro.

- your boot process hang in kernel init somewhere in disp or sd setup. I got the same with another card because of power problem as the card needs suddenly much power. It is not just a problem of PSU, but also cables, contacts or internal card design, and as the problem is transient it is hard to prove. How did you get the log ? If you have a serial console, try to boot with nothing attached, always disconnect serial and ethernet after a boot hang, and check your barrel power connector.

[kocur]

I connected my OPI PC to UART and got following error:

U-Boot SPL 2016.09-armbian (Sep 15 2016 - 07:28:57)
DRAM: 1024 MiB
Trying to boot from MMC1
MMC: no card present
spl: mmc init failed with error: -123
SPL: failed to boot from all boot devices
### ERROR ### Please RESET the board ###

Maybe my OPI version is not compatibile with yours software? I've got Orange PI PC v.1.3

[wildcat_paris]

the standard USB 5V should be between 4.75 and 5.25V (probably 4.90 - 5.10V is safer). Outside the range (over or under) the power can lead to troubles.

but ok.

 

comparing with boot from

http://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/1897-problem-with-orange-pi-pc-not-started-after-reboot/

 

"MMC: no card present"

the card doesn't detect a SD/eMMC card so it cannot go any further.

 

please can you try an "old" image from

http://www.orangepi.org/downloadresources/

to know if there is not a problem with recent uboot 2016.09, the other fox is using Armbian with uboot 2016.05

[kocur]

I measured my psu and gives almost 5.3v on output and is stable during  boot.

 

Also tried before the "old" images and works well but without script.bin. When I copy script.bin to BOOT partition I have same issues as described in following page: http://www.orangepi.org/orangepibbsen/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=666

 

Now I am trying to compile armbian from sources with new commits after release and I let you know it will work. 

[nz1]

What did you use to write to the sdcard? dd?

I used dd on OSX and with no errors however my orangepipc wouldn't boot.

I tried etcher and it would consistently fail  during the writing process(ie even before the verification process).

 

I ended up using another sdcard with etcher and it worked fine and booted properly.

 

Note that my failed sdcard used to work in my orangepipc but somehow it failed somewhere. Maybe my fingers touched the contacts and fried it.. who knows.

Edited October 3, 2016 by goldfish_paris
note: reply @ Pi hour (3.14)

[nz1]

Yesterday I got a new orangepipc+ to replace my orangepipc.

I reused my working sdcard from the orangepipc and used etcher.io to write the new orangepipc+ os. However etcher gave errors when writing to this card, even though it had previously been working. I tried again, this time with the sdcard writer attached to a cheap usb hub. The writing process was much slower, at 1MB/s, however this time etcher finished successfully. I used this card to boot the orangepipc+ and used the sata nand script to write the os to the emmc card, without any problems.

I also as an experiment tried to write the same img to my broken sdcard using the attached usb hub, and this also worked, and etcher gave the same crc32 values with both sdcards.

My thoughts

a) Use etcher

Sdcards are very unreliable, however they can sometimes fix themselves, just like old HDD drives could sometimes decide to come back to life.

c) dd on OSX does not always return errors when writing to sdcards.

d) Use emmc single board computers when possible.

e) Eagerly wait for an install/boot process that does not rely on sdcards, perhaps using fel and usb cables. Or possibly Orange will release boards with small nand chips so that a small boot linux can be used which enables ftp/http installs.

[wildcat_paris]

Sdcards are very unreliable, however they can sometimes fix themselves, just like old HDD drives could sometimes decide to come back to life.

The writing process was much slower, at 1MB/s, however this time etcher finished successfully.

 

@nz1

Armbian crew advises to buy legitimate Samsung EVO sdcard as reliable (32GB / 8 USD at gearbest)

 

your story shows the card (or writer) is very low quality  but still working when writing @ 1MB/s (which is lesser than "class 2")

[nz1]

My latest card that I ordered comes from the recommended list. It hasn't arrived yet so I haven't used it yet. I got it from Aliexpress because the aliexpress postage is free and I didn't bother with Amazon as I assumed that the postage was going to add to the cost and I didn't want to pay 1/2 to 2/3rds the cost of the actual computer just to buy the sdcard.

The emmc option is only $5 extra and I know its compatible and fast, so I'm thinking, why even bother with sdcards if you don't have to.

Some of the slowness is probably because the chipset controllers use different logic and are slightly incompatible so when they negotiate speeds they have to use lower speeds.

I decided to use a usb hub because I thought it would slow the write down and give the sdcard controller more time to do housekeeping behind the scenes. I think thats why both cards are now working, because the card controller had more time to shuffle bits around while dealing with the fire hose of data being sent to it from the pc. Well thats my theory/guess. Is good that the crc32 values are spot on.

[Igor]

There are lots of fake SD cards on the market, so it's advisable to do some checking before filing an issue. https://www.google.com/search?q=fake+sd+cards

 

Since few people are reporting boot troubles this current problem could be a software / boot loader problem. At the moment I can't confirm or deny.

[tkaiser]

e) Eagerly wait for an install/boot process that does not rely on sdcards, perhaps using fel and usb cables. Or possibly Orange will release boards with small nand chips so that a small boot linux can be used which enables ftp/http installs.

 

It's already there: https://github.com/zador-blood-stained/fel-mass-storage

 

The problem is to get some eMMC equipped devices into FEL mode. For example your Orange Pi PC + does not have a FEL button so you need either short some contacts (forgot which) or use a special SD card image to enter FEL mode.

 

It seems on more recent (and yet only announced) Xunlong boards there is a small SPI flash chip. We'll have to see whether this comes pre-populated with recent u-boot version that could boot from network.

[slinde]

e) Eagerly wait for an install/boot process that does not rely on sdcards, perhaps using fel and usb cables. Or possibly Orange will release boards with small nand chips so that a small boot linux can be used which enables ftp/http installs.

Well, I am totally happy with installing from SD-cards. I have done several dozens of installations, starting out with Raspberry Pi and lately gone into Orange Pi PC/Beelink X2 with Armbian. I have rarely ever had any problems with SD-card installation.

 

To me it seems more awkward bringing out special cables instead of just flashing an SD-card and away you go. If your hardware is in order and you use quality SD-cards (Samsung) you will very seldom have any troubles with using SD-cards.

[tkaiser]

To me it seems more awkward bringing out special cables instead of just flashing an SD-card and away you go.

 

Agreed, but 'special cables' are only needed for 2 sunxi devices currently: Pine64(+) and Beelink X2 since on both devices the OTG port is not exposed as Mini or Micro USB receptacle but 'Standard Type A' instead. Then you need something like this (I hope, my cables did not arrive yet).

 

Apart from that it seems switching to u-boot 2016.09 while fixing the eMMC issues we had on some boards introduced real SD card troubles elsewhere. We have more than one report that SPL is not able to load u-boot from SD card, in such situations flashing directly to eMMC could help (but we need to get this u-boot problem fixed anyway).

[nz1]

If someone has an emmc sbc then i think it would be faster to install directly onto the emmc chip from a pc, rather than doing it twice, once onto the sdcard and then onto the emmc chip.

I think the total bill of materials will also be less for the emmc sbc as you don't need to buy an expensive(including postage) sdcard to store the os. My understanding is the emmc sbc will probably be faster than any sdcard as emmc chips have better random io and they are designed to work with computers, unlike an sdcard.

If the the board does not have a fel button then using an inexpensive sdcard to store the fel boot logic seems ok. Etcher.io will verify the write so that should be enough. One could get by with just one fel boot sdcard if all your sbc cards had emmc chips. It would perform a role similar to a boot cdrom.

Some of my thoughts...

[tkaiser]

If someone has an emmc sbc then i think it would be faster to install directly onto the emmc chip from a pc, rather than doing it twice, once onto the sdcard and then onto the emmc chip.

 

Of course, the interesting question is only: How to achieve that? Currently we would need to provide 2 OS images since device nodes for SD card and eMMC on sunxi boards are different (on other SBC like ODROIDs everything is different again). And device node is used at two different locations (boot.cmd boot script and /etc/fstab) and I doubt we could utilize UUIDs at this stage.

 

And then users are different, there are some who want to stay with Android (or any pre-installed OS) in eMMC. So there is no single 'solution' for multiple problems.

 

BTW: the flashing tool that starts Etcher automatically is already reality (at least on Linux and OS X -- no idea about Windows): http://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/2033-question-h3-unified-imaging/?p=16946

[Dani_RM]

IBut when I want to boot it there is only still green light (steady all time). OPI not giving any boot information on screen.

 

 

I've just got an orange pi plus 2e that I bought at aliexpress (+ Case + Power Supply).

I did not manage to boot the sd card in order to install any of the orange pi plus 2e OSes available for download at http://www.orangepi.org/downloadresources/. I've chosen armbian, considered the most reliable (Armbian_5.20_Orangepiplus2e_Debian_jessie_3.4.112_desktop.7z). Following armbian websites advices, I bought the SD cards supposed to work with it (Sandisk extreme pro SDSDQXP-016G-X4 but did not check if it is fake), and repeated many times the steps here, and/or here, it still does not work.

This makes the orange pi unusable, since there is a pre-installed Android, but it seems totally crippled as a describe below.

Let me try to detail the whole story.

When I switch on the product (previously connected to a monitor via a dvi-dvi cable, a Keyboard, and plugged to my router via Ethernet), I see a screen with an image "Allwinner H3 quad-core", then it starts up an Android OS (pre-installed on the emmc I suppose).

When booting from the pre-installed Android on the emmc, first the orange pi red led lights up, then the green one, then the red led keeps lit up when the system is up. The orange led of the Ethernet port keeps lit up, and the green one seems to light up when there is some traffic.

Then a screen appears with [facebook], [gmail], [netflix], , [+] and some other icons. There's a menu bar at the bottom of the screen, with the following buttons: [Home], [Kodi], [Local], [Apps], [settings] and [WEB].

The only thing I could do with this pre-installed OS is change the language settings from Chinese to English, and set-up the wireless/Ethernet. I could not add a user account or install any app.

When Ethernet or wireless are active their corresponding network icon with a green V appears on the top right corner of the screen, suggesting I have access to the network or Internet. But when I click on the [web] button of the menu bar at the bottom of the screen, nothing happens, it just takes me back to the Home screen over and over again. The same for the [Kodi] button.

I also tried to clock on every icon of the [Home] screen, nothing happens.

In the Apps screen, the FileManager and the “stability test†worked (I have not the hardware to test the camera or the sound record apps). The stability test displays correctly a little 3D movie, informing the framerate. The MiracastReceiver hangs forever. When I click on the System update icon, it takes me to a window with two buttons, [Online Update] and [Local update]. When I click on [Online Update] it says “Your system is up to date†(“current versionHomlet 4.4.2-Qin2-v1.0releaseâ€).

Ok. But I could not add any app.

When I insert a sd card, it mounts correctly and shows up in the FileManager, which is also directly accessible via the [Local] menu bar button. I can browse and see its contents, even if I cannot read none of them because I lack the necessary app.

In short, this pre-installed OS does not allow to do anything useful with the Orange pi: I cannot browse the Internet, I cannot watch movies, I cannot add accounts, read  mail...

To use actually this hardware I must install a full-fledged OS.

So I downloaded the correct armbian image (Armbian_5.20_Orangepiplus2e_Debian_jessie_3.4.112_desktop.7z), checked its sum and signature, and installed it on an SD card exactly according to the instructions on armbian or orange pi site (I'm not a total newbie linux user, I have been using it for some 15 years). Trying with both the dd command and the Etcher package, I copied the verified image to the recommended sd card (SanDisk extreme Pro, I bought it on purpose), without error notifications, on two different machines (desktop and laptop) and different flavours of Linux (Mint and Debian).

I COULD NEVER BOOT THE ORANGE PI WITH THE SD CARD TO INSTALL A FULL OS AND USE IT NORMALLY. The green led lights up and keeps lit forever, but nothing happens. I tried this more than a dozen times, waiting for more than 15minutes, with both ultra, extreme pro sandisk and even with a simple sd card, trying to copy the image again and again.

And in the present state, the pre-installed OS is unusable. My orange pi is useless.

Someone could help? Thanks, Daniel.

[zador.blood.stained]

@Dani_RM

There were some u-boot related issues with older Armbian images related to boot device detection. If you have any Linux based host or another board, can you please

• download http://apt.armbian.com/pool/main/l/linux-u-boot-orangepiplus2e-default/linux-u-boot-orangepiplus2e_5.23_armhf.deb
• extract u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin from this package (using dpkg-deb -R or any archive manager that can open .deb files)
• update u-boot on SD card with Armbian image using dd: dd if=u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin of=/dev/sdX bs=1024 seek=8

where /dev/sdX is a device node representing your SD card in card reader

 

... or just wait for beta image release or new official release for this board

[Dani_RM]

Hi,

Thanks so much for your very fast answer. I followed the steps (I could extract u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin from the deb package with a simple file archiver) but it still didn't work. I also tried mounting the Armbian_5.20_Orangepiplus2e_Debian_jessie_3.4.112_desktop.img  image as rw and then replacing the original /usr/lib/linux-u-boot-orangepiplus2e_5.20_armhf/u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin (md5sum: d429bbf896fa5e8aec5eac1bb370687d) with yours (md5sum: 35809bfb3c969288eb53aaf94dcefea4), umounted and remounted it to check if the change was effective, then unplugged the orange pi 2e power supply, inserted the sd, plugged the power but got the same green led always on.

[martinayotte]

You will probably need to plug an USB-TTL Serial into debug serial port, capture the boot output log and post it here.

[Dani_RM]

Oh well, again, thanks for your quick answers and help. I really love debian, and I'm glad to see how active is this community. Even if i'm not a pure developer (my stuff is more computational linguistics), It is really encouraging for people who'd like to participate.

Still, I don't have a USB-TTL cable at hand. I saw some at aliexpress a while ago, costing some 5 boxes, and if I buy it today I'll have to wait more than a months to get it. I really feel frustrated.

The point is: if this board is not working with any of the OSes available at its vendor site, it should not be sold. This is a commercial matter, whatever the price I paid for, and it is orangepi's fault or at least responsibility, not community's.

I sent an e-mail to Steven, from orangepi's "consulting service", who already answered, asking for more information, so I gave the description above. I'll wait to see what he says, I'll let you know (I also noticed the "OrangeOS", i.e. the apparently crippled pre-installed android on the OrangePi Plus 2e, is registered on a "Steven"'s behalf.)
Anyway, glad to meet you, nice and skilled people to speak to. Daniel

[martinayotte]

USB-TTL dongle are usually around $0.99 on eBay or AliExpress.

This will really help to figure out the issue, which can be simple, but without any logs, you are walking blindly in the dark.

[Dani_RM]

Hi,

At last I found an image that works with my orangepi 2+E, some Raspbian image "made in orange pi". But it is a whezzy, not a jessie, as it is suggested by the "8" in the name of the decompressed file (Raspbian_For_OrangePi2_mini2_v0_8_0.img). The obvious difference, compared to all the other images I tried, is that this one has two partitions, a fat one and an ext4 one. There's a single file in the fat partition, named uImage (4.8Mb, md5: ab769dfcff09fcfa7aa74b4e73d6e061). I'm sure that you specialists with this clue you'll spot the problem.
Here are more details about the wheezy raspbian.

The hdmi works perfectly (both dvi-dvi and dvi-vga), the little board is quite fast. But: it only allows to login as root; only one/3 usb port works (ok, I used a usb hub); ethernet and wifi do not work; emmc is not supported; I couldn't make the sound work. I still could access Internet using an old usb wifi dongle (rtl8187), that worked flawlessly once configured with the provided tool "wpa_gui".

Then I could install some updated packages like Firefox-esr, which  runs perfecly, displays perfectly youtube videos.

Still: if you do a full apt-upgrade, it installs some raspberry pi stuff that apparently break the system (the system does not boot anymore). So, the board remains mainly unusable, with an old debian version that can' be fully updated (security problems...), unless I find a repo that does not install all the specific raspberry pi stuff in raspbian.

Bottom-line: it was not a hardware problem (even I still didn't make the ethernet and wireless board work) neither a sd-card problem (i tried the raspbian image with both ultra and extreme pro sandisk, both work perfectly).
I installed lshw and here's its output (the network 0 is the rtl dongle I added):
root@orangepi:~# lshw
orangepi                 
    description: Computer
    width: 32 bits
  *-core
       description: Motherboard
       physical id: 0
     *-memory
          description: System memory
          physical id: 0
          size: 2018MiB
     *-cpu
          physical id: 1
          bus info: cpu@0
          size: 1200MHz
          capacity: 1200MHz
          capabilities: cpufreq
  *-network:0
       description: Wireless interface
       physical id: 1
       bus info: usb@2:1.3
       logical name: wlan0
       serial: 00:06:4f:4c:c4:9c
       capabilities: ethernet physical wireless
       configuration: broadcast=yes driver=rtl8187 driverversion=3.4.39 firmware=N/A ip=192.168.0.17 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bg
  *-network:1
       description: Ethernet interface
       physical id: 2
       logical name: eth0
       serial: a2:63:82:0e:b8:1d
       size: 10Mbit/s
       capacity: 100Mbit/s
       capabilities: ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd autonegotiation
       configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=sunxi_geth driverversion=SUNXI Gbgit driver V1.1 duplex=half link=no multicast=yes port=MII speed=10Mbit/s

Still, I'd rather run a fully working and fully updatable armbian on my orangepi.

[Nilton Da Silva]

Amigos instalei o Armbian ele arranca atualiza e pede login e senha para continuar. Onde encontro este login e senha?

Please use English.

Translated by admin:

 

Friends installed Armbian it boots updates and prompts login and password to continue. Where can I find this login and password?

[Dani_RM]

Amigos instalei o Armbian ele arranca atualiza e pede login e senha para continuar. Onde encontro este login e senha?

Please use English.

 

Translated by admin:

 

Friends installed Armbian it boots updates and prompts login and password to continue. Where can I find this login and password?

 

Login as root on console or via SSH and use password [=senha] 1234. [ https://docs.armbian.com/User-Guide_Getting-Started/ ]

Nilton, could you tell me what is the model of your pi?

[Dani_RM]

USB-TTL dongle are usually around $0.99 on eBay or AliExpress.

This will really help to figure out the issue, which can be simple, but without any logs, you are walking blindly in the dark.

Hi Martin, could you please send me a link at aliexpress or amazon to a model of dongle known to work (I know there are a lot of different voltages.... already tried to debrick a tp-link router and gave up)

[martinayotte]

There are tons on AliExpress/eBay/Amazon. You should chose one that as jumper to become 3.3V compatible.

Be aware also that some are using fake FTD chips, so Windows driver will choke with those.

Workaround such fake chips, is to use one with CH340 or CH341 chips which are chinese chips such as :

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/High-Qualty-USB-to-TTL-Converter-CH340G-UART-Serial-Adapter-Module-STC-5V-3-3V-/272328993496