Desktop images with Armbian Linux v6.12 (Variant Cinnamon)

[Robert Pace]

Desktop images with Armbian Linux v6.12 variant Cinnamon with mesa/vpu support fails to boot from SD card.

The message displayed on screen is "Begin: Running /scripts/init-premount ... (initramfs) _"

SPI was erased, and the minimal install have no issues booting from a sd card.

 

The SBC is an Orange Pi 5 Plus with 16gb ram

[eselarm]

This ending up in initramfs with recent build I recognize, although I had this on a Radxa ROCK 3A and root cause is still unknown but I can't reproduce the problem with newer kernel, newer U-Boot, other power supply, other SD-card. So I am still curious what the reason was.

As this is 6.12, so mainline (kernel and uboot) and I would like to experience Cinnamon after a decade of not using/booting it, I did some thinking and downloaded the OPi5+ image you refer to and unpacked it onto a RPi4 free SD-card slot. Some string grep in the image shows:

 

U-Boot SPL 2024.10-rc3-armbian-2024.10-rc3-Sd11a-Pa706-H80a2-Vd733-Bda0a-R448a-dirty (Nov 30 2024 - 09:30:48 +0000)

 

Then mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 and I see there is a /core file, it seems a crash of the image generator tooling. anyway, I patched a vendor uboot for the Rock3a in the /dev/mmcblk0, set verbose=7 and set dtb not OPi5+ but for my RK3A, then unmount and put into my Rock3a and I could surf the web with FireFox ESR, even though Rock3A is RK3568 and the kernel version string contains 3588. (I have my SPI-flash disabled, so same as yours erased)

 

Then patched a mainline uboot from my normal Rock3a roottree (Noble, beta updated) onto the SD-card:

U-Boot SPL 2024.10-armbian-2024.10-Sf919-P35d0-Hba75-Vea36-Bdacf-R448a (Dec 09 2024 - 13:26:39 +0000)

Rebooted and still all OK.

 

The minimal 6.12 based image contains the same   2024.10-rc3-armbian-2024.10-rc3-Sd11a-Pa706-H80a2-Vd733-Bda0a-R448a-dirty  U-boot, so it might be a power or SD-card issue, I don't know.

 

Now maybe related to it, I have seen 1 or 2 times an I/O error with my Rock3a a few days ago, I have not really logged it as there are more important things to figure out first, but It might be a TRIM issue, a temporary busy stall or so. Anyway, I use/convert to Btrfs sooner or later as only then I can detect longterm (corruption) issues.

 

[Robert Pace]

A test of Desktop images with Armbian Linux v6.12 https://dl.armbian.com/orangepi5-plus/Noble_current_kde-neon-kisak worked perfectly with sdcard. Which lends credence to the bookworm image having an issue, and not kernel 6.12 related issue. I have tested a variety of sd cards with the bookworm image, all failing at the initramfs stage.

[royk]

You could check the UUID with blkid

 

/dev/mmcblk0p1: UUID="b23e98d0-700e-4a09-88b6-95675ee524f5" 

 

Then check if this is the same in /boot/armbianEnv.txt and /etc/fstab