[TUTO] SAFE FLASH method to avoiding sdcard block issues and compressed data are corrupted when flashing emmc

[SoSie]

Hello All,

 

To all striking with sdcard issues , I have a good news today!

 

NORMAL AND FIGHTING WAY

Normally you put your sdcard on a adapter on a big computer you have flashed with a working and booting sbc to be able to flash the emmc
and then you copy the .img.xz you have downloaded on it , put the card in the sbc and boot on it
to have access to the dd command from there.

Unfortunately the result will depend on your sdcard quality, I experienced many bad block so I get bored. Yesterday have a flash,

 

LET'S TAKE THE BUNNY HIGHWAY!

 

I found a way faster and safer to do it to circonvent the sdcard: tempfs!

On the desktop computer, a linux machine,  I download the images for the sbc

wget https://imola.armbian.com/archive/bananapim5/archive/Armbian_22.08.7_Bananapim5_jammy_edge_5.19.16_cinnamon_desktop.img.xz
wget https://imola.armbian.com/archive/bananapim5/archive/Armbian_22.08.7_Bananapim5_jammy_edge_5.19.16_cinnamon_desktop.img.xz.sha

 

I retrieved the size
 

du -h Armbian_22.08.7_Bananapim5_jammy_edge_5.19.16_cinnamon_desktop.img.xz
1,3G	Armbian_22.08.7_Bananapim5_jammy_edge_5.19.16_cinnamon_desktop.img.xz

 

I issued with the USER=pi created during the first boot install on the sbc, for me HOST=bananapim5 a ssh session, ip maye change
depending on your setting in armbian_first_run.txt if you have set a static ip. Mine is 192.168.0.8

 

sosie@rainbow:~$ ssh pi@192.168.0.8

I tried the ubuntu tutorial to create tmpfs at a size a little bigger than the image .img.xz I want to flash

 

#create the target directory for tempfs
sudo mkdir /media/virtuelram

#let only user access to their own temp files with the sticky bit
sudo chmod 1777 /media/virtuelram

#mount to have size M or g for gigas vitual drive
sudo mount -t tmpfs -o size=1.5g tmpfs /media/virtuelram

Exit to transfer the img.xz files by sftp IN THE BUNNY HIGHWAY ^o^
 

exit
sosie@rainbow:~$ sftp pi@192.168.0.8
cd /media/virtualram
mget Arm*.xz.* 
exit

 

Now you are hundred percent to pass the exam (without cheating), the proof :

 

sosie@rainbow:~$ ssh pi@192.168.0.8
cd /media/virtualram
sha256sum -c Armbian_22.08.7_Bananapim5_jammy_edge_5.19.16_cinnamon_desktop.img.xz.sha 
Armbian_22.08.7_Bananapim5_jammy_edge_5.19.16_cinnamon_desktop.img.xz: Success

 

The  flash size is around 16go, we see can locate the EMMC, it's mmcblk1 , real size is 14.6Go

USER@HOST:/media/virtuelram$ lsblk

NAME         MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
mmcblk0      179:0    0 59,5G  0 disk  <== SDCARD 64Go
└─mmcblk0p1  179:1    0 58,9G  0 part /
mmcblk1      179:32   0 14,6G  0 disk   <== EMMC
└─mmcblk1p1  179:33   0 14,6G  0 part 
mmcblk1boot0 179:64   0    4M  1 disk 
mmcblk1boot1 179:96   0    4M  1 disk 

 

Now the fun part:

sudo apt install xzcat pv dd
sudo xzcat Armbian_22.08.7_Bananapim5_jammy_edge_5.19.16_cinnamon_desktop.img.xz | pv | dd of=/dev/mmcblk1 bs=10M status=noxfer

 

[SoSie]

Now, who want to be the Lord of the Flash and automatize this with a nice menu - why not in armbian-config which is a nice tool -  to select the img.xz in live...this would simplify the task.?

[SoSie]

Note that for the last line we can use also bpi-copy like:

bpi-copy xxx.img.xz /dev/mmcblk1