Orange Pi 5B - EMMC not visible in Armbian

[Frank Kettenbeil]

Hello,

just yesterday I got my new Orange Pi 5B. Unfortunately I'm facing the issue, that I cannot see any EMMC on Armbian.
The Debian image that is delivered by Orange Pi itself is giving me access to the EMMC - so it's there with 256GB physically.

lsblk shows only the SD card and zram drives. gparted is not starting up after installation at all. This is valid for all official downloadable versions like Jammy, Bullseye, Bookworm...
Is there any driver available I would have to activate to use the EMMC device with the Armbian images?
I'd really like better to run the board without SD card.
Any idea?

Edited April 20, 2023 by Frank Kettenbeil

[royk]

Do you have the following line in armbianEnv.txt?

fdtfile=rockchip/rk3588s-orangepi-5b.dts 

[Efe Çetin]

- Download one of rolling release images.

- Change fdtfile in armbianEnv.txt with rk3588s-orangepi-5b

 

 

Note: It's not exists on stable images.

[akal]

Can we use dd command to write armbian stable release to eMMC after that?

[toplinuxsir]

@akal Yes, I can use dd command wirte armbian stable release ,but It can not boot into desktop instead of drop to initcramfs shell.

[Efe Çetin]

Did you try to use armbian-install? I installed nanopi r6s using it and it worked.

 

- Sdhci and wireless nodes will be included into opi5 devicetree in the future. There won't need to use opi5b devicetree. You can test https://github.com/armbian/linux-rockchip/pull/17

[onzelin]

I've got the same issue on an orangepi 5b and am not able to get the emmc to be seen. here's what I've done:

 

- I downloaded and flashed Armbian_23.5.0-trunk.140_Orangepi5_lunar_legacy_5.10.110_xfce_desktop.img.xz from the rolling releases page

- could boot into armbian over the SD. Emmc can't be seen.

- I edited the ftdfile line in /boot/armbianEnv.txt with this

ftdfile=rockchip/rk3588s-orangepi-5b.dts

- I ran sync to make sure the file was saved

- restarted the opi (neither shutdown or reboot work so I unplug/replug the opi)

- I get a black screen, the monitor goes on pause, no input, and that's it, the image isn't starting anymore.

 

 

I also tried with this line as ftdfile, as suggested there:

ftdfile=rockchip/rk3588s-orangepi-5b.dtb

To the same effect.

 

I also had the same issue with a custom built image.

Can someone point to what I'm doing wrong?

Edited May 5, 2023 by onzelin
forgot to mention a step I took

[Efe Çetin]

It's interesting. Sdhci node is already enabled on devive trees. https://github.com/armbian/linux-rockchip/blob/rockchip-5.10/arch/arm64/boot/dts/rockchip/rk3588s-orangepi.dtsi#L461

[onzelin]

Yeah. So far the only image that`s been able to detect the emmc is the debian image from OrangePI (I dd'ed their image to the emmc and even though the pi could restart into that image, the boot process froze early on and I could not login/use the board).

I'd rather use armbian but at this point I can't: I need to access the emmc storage for my projects.
Is there anything I can do to further help debug this?

[onzelin]

Last update, I got it to work, so here are a few pointers for the next one reading this. The issue is that I edited armbianEnv.txt correctly, but somehow the dtb file was missing (most likely due to being merged with the one in use, despite this work being WIP and not working for the emmc/wifi). I read a little about dts/dtb, this is a good resource, but TLDR dts stands for device tree source and dtb for device tree blob. The former compiles into the latter, and armbianEnv.txt wants the blob, not the source (could compile on demand? who am I to judge). The dts for the 5b is somewhere out there to be compiled into the dtb, but since I knew I had the orangePI debian working, I searched for the dtb there first, and found it. I copied is over to a freshly compiled image, pointed the boot record to it, and was able to make it all work. Here are a few commands.

 

I first mounted `Orangepi5_1.1.4_debian_bullseye_desktop_kde-plasma_linux5.10.110.img` on my own machine (not the pi):
 

fdisk -l /media/data/projects/2023/orangepi/images/Orangepi5_1.1.4_debian_bullseye_desktop_kde-plasma_linux5.10.110.img
# 512B block size * partition 1 located at 61440=31457280
sudo mount -o loop,offset=31457280 /media/data/projects/2023/orangepi/images/Orangepi5_1.1.4_debian_bullseye_desktop_kde-plasma_linux5.10.110.img /media/cdrom
cp /media/cdrom/dtb-5.10.110-rockchip-rk3588/rockchip/rk3588s-orangepi-5b.dtb /tmp/

Now we have extracted the file.

Then boot up `Armbian_23.5.0-trunk.140_Orangepi5_lunar_legacy_5.10.110_xfce_desktop.img` on the pi and and scp the blob there:

scp /tmp/rk3588s-orangepi-5b.dtb root@192.168.1.14:/boot/dbt/rockchip/

 

then edit `/boot/armbianEnv/txt` to have this line:

ftdfile=rockchip/rk3588s-orangepi-5b.dtb

reboot, you should see the emmc. On to install this system to it.

Installed gparted, deleted everything from the emmc and formatted it to ext4.
Then run `nand-sata-install` and chose the option `boot+system on emmc`, let it finish, quick `sync;poweroff`, then unplug the power cord, remove the sd card, plug the cord it back, it boots 😎

Edited May 6, 2023 by onzelin
code formatting and typos

[arided]

I use win10 to copy the "rockchip/rk3588s-orangepi-5b.dts" which copy from orange pi official image to F:\[/boot]\dtb\rockchip\ and F:\dtb-5.10.110-rockchip-rk3588\rockchip two directories. After .dts copied, I modified armbianEnv.txt with royk sir's comment.

[snowlite]

Thanks to onzelin post on using "ftdfile=rockchip/rk3588s-orangepi-5b.dtb"  in /boot/armbianEnv.txt, I manage to get my orangepi 5b to see the EMMC and wifi working.

 

My only problem is bluetooth does not work. 

 

"hciconfig -a" or "hcitool dev" does not show any BT device attached.  Does anyone have any idea why? Thanks.

[Kai-Made]

I was pointed to this as a fix for the 5b's wifi not working.
What I have tried worked on debian but is not working on armbian.  And I prefer to use Armbian because I find it superior in every other way.

The thing I tried that made it work in debian but not armbian is to copy the dtbo file for the ap6275p wifi module into the overlays directory in boot.  Then add a line in the armbianenv.txt file that reads "overlays=wifi-ap6275p".  I see how that file removes the prefix on the file name.  Original filename was rk3588-wifi-ap6275p.dtbo and it was located in boot directory of the debian install I tried.  I copied it to boot/rockchip/overlays and renamed it to rockchip-rk3588-wifi-ap6275p.dtbo then added the overlays line to the env.txt.  After reboot nothing happens.  BUT this exact procedure made it work on Debian.

So now here I am wondering what to do.  Was pointed here.  Will further modification from the procedures discussed here help me?  Because I am lost at this point.

[Dara Ó hEidhin]

For anyone else here's what worked for me.

1. Download latest armbian image from here
https://www.armbian.com/orangepi-5/
2. Follow the instructions at the youtube video below to install the image to EMMC. Ensure you use the armbian image. This image won't load as mentioned above

3. Burn the same image to sdcard and install sdcard in pi 5b. I used Rufus on Win11 (https://rufus.ie/en/)
4. Boot up. SD card boots as default
5. Edit the armbianEnv.txt file in the /boot folder and replace the line:

fdtfile=rockchip/rk3588s-orangepi-5.dts 
with
fdtfile=rockchip/rk3588s-orangepi-5b.dts
6. reboot
7. NB! unmount the current /boot folder using the following command in terminal

sudo umount /boot

This unmounts the current boot partition stored in the sdcard

8. use terminal to open gparted

sudo gparted

9. Select the EMMC drive from the top right dropdown
10. Right-click on boot partition and mount on /boot. This mounts the boot partition of the emmc drive
11. edit txt file as per 5. above
12. shutdown and remove sdcard
13. reboot

14. using terminal run the command below to setup pi. Bluetooth/Wifi were working perfectly

sudo armbian-config

 15. Still working on GPIO access ..... 😶‍🌫️. If anyone has any tips to get this working through Python please let me know.
 

 

 

 

Edited August 28, 2023 by Dara Ó hEidhin

[perelax]

I used a different method:

1. Built Armbian myself.

2. Changed /config/boards/orangepi5.conf line 11 to read:

BOOT_FDT_FILE="rockchip/rk3588s-orangepi-5b.dtb"

 

This gives me wifi configuration during first boot, and "install to emmc" during first run.

Don't forget to fix empty space on SD Card and extend partition.  Not sure if it mattered, but I do that every flash.

 

Perelax