TX5 Pro - S905X - Boots fine from SD but cannot get it to boot from eMMC

[Aaron Roberts]

Hi folks,

Very new to this community, very new to flashing Android boxes.. But I wanted to give this a shot and make use of an old TX5 Pro that I had in a drawer.

Pleased to say, boots from the SD card fine, managed to get logged in and set up... all is working, WiFi, Bluetooth etc...  However, I am just not able to get this to boot from the eMMC. I got to the point where I bricked it and had to re-flash Android onto it.. just to find myself in the same loop.

I'll provide as much info as I can here, but let me know if you need something more specific. I'm no expert here, so here goes.

Booting from the SD starts like this:

When booted, all is working totally fine. However, removing the SD results in the following, where it will stay for eternity util rebooting and inserting SD:

ChatGPT led me to screw this up entirely, despite getting this far based on it's instructions, so I'm turning to you for help. I really need to have this booting from the internal storage and not from an SD card.

 

Here's the copy attempt:

root@aml-s9xx-box:~# ./install-aml.sh
Start script create MBR and filesystem
/dev/mmcblk1
Start backup u-boot default
4+0 records in
4+0 records out
4194304 bytes (4.2 MB, 4.0 MiB) copied, 0.149809 s, 28.0 MB/s
Start create MBR and partittion
Start restore u-boot
442+0 records in
442+0 records out
442 bytes copied, 0.0044687 s, 98.9 kB/s
8191+0 records in
8191+0 records out
4193792 bytes (4.2 MB, 4.0 MiB) copied, 0.524224 s, 8.0 MB/s
Done
Start copy system for eMMC.
Formatting BOOT partition...mkfs.fat 4.2 (2021-01-31)
done.
mount: (hint) your fstab has been modified, but systemd still uses
       the old version; use 'systemctl daemon-reload' to reload.
Copying BOOT...done.
Edit init config...done.
sed: can't read /ddbr/install/boot.ini: No such file or directory
done.
Formatting ROOT partition...
/dev/mmcblk1p2 contains a ext4 file system labelled 'ROOT_EMMC'
	last mounted on /ddbr/install on Fri May 23 19:51:02 2025
e2fsck 1.47.0 (5-Feb-2023)
ROOT_EMMC: clean, 11/855120 files, 80315/3419392 blocks
done.
Copying ROOTFS.
mount: (hint) your fstab has been modified, but systemd still uses
       the old version; use 'systemctl daemon-reload' to reload.
Copy BIN
Create DEV
Copy ETC
Copy HOME
Copy LIB
Copy LIB64
tar: lib64: Cannot stat: No such file or directory
tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors
Create MEDIA
Create MNT
Copy OPT
Create PROC
Copy ROOT
Create RUN
Copy SBIN
Copy SELINUX
Copy SRV
Create SYS
Create TMP
Copy USR
Copy VAR
Copy fstab
rm: cannot remove '/ddbr/install/usr/bin/ddbr': No such file or directory
*******************************************
Complete copy OS to eMMC 
*******************************************

 

 

Here's some info about the setup, again, let me know if you need something extra:

 

    _             _    _                                         _ _        
   /_\  _ _ _ __ | |__(_)__ _ _ _    __ ___ _ __  _ __ _  _ _ _ (_) |_ _  _ 
  / _ \| '_| '  \| '_ \ / _` | ' \  / _/ _ \ '  \| '  \ || | ' \| |  _| || |
 /_/ \_\_| |_|_|_|_.__/_\__,_|_||_|_\__\___/_|_|_|_|_|_\_,_|_||_|_|\__|\_, |
                                 |___|                                 |__/ 
 v25.5 rolling for aml-s9xx-box running Armbian Linux 6.12.28-current-meson64

 Packages:     Debian stable (bookworm)
 Updates:      Kernel upgrade enabled and 76 packages available for upgrade 
 Support:      for advanced users (rolling release)
 IPv4:         (LAN) 10.0.1.102 (WAN) X.XXX.XXX.XXX 

 Performance:  

 Load:         32%           	Up time:       1 min	
 Memory usage: 21% of 1.87G  	
 CPU temp:     54°C           	 Usage of /:   20% of 29G    	
 RX today:     64 MiB        	
 Commands: 

 Configuration : armbian-config
 Upgrade       : armbian-upgrade
 Monitoring    : htop

System and Boot Logs: https://paste.armbian.com/fiqikiliju 

 

PRETTY_NAME="Armbian_community 25.5.0-trunk.538 bookworm"
NAME="Debian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="12"
VERSION="12 (bookworm)"
VERSION_CODENAME=bookworm
ID=debian
HOME_URL="https://www.armbian.com"
SUPPORT_URL="https://forum.armbian.com"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://www.armbian.com/bugs"
ARMBIAN_PRETTY_NAME="Armbian_community 25.5.0-trunk.538 bookworm"

root=UUID=e969167d-e6a9-4203-896f-ced402105523 rootflags=data=writeback console=ttyAML0,115200n8 console=tty0 rw no_console_suspend consoleblank=0 fsck.fix=yes fsck.repair=yes net.ifnames=0 splash plymouth.ignore-serial-consoles

NAME         FSTYPE FSVER LABEL      UUID                                 FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
mmcblk0                                                                                  
├─mmcblk0p1  vfat   FAT32 armbi_boot 479F-151E                               414M    19% /boot
└─mmcblk0p2  ext4   1.0   armbi_root e969167d-e6a9-4203-896f-ced402105523   22.5G    19% /var/log.hdd
                                                                                         /
mmcblk1                                                                                  
├─mmcblk1p1  vfat   FAT16 BOOT_EMMC  75EA-4970                                           
└─mmcblk1p2  ext4   1.0   ROOT_EMMC  d0456959-1f46-4aad-b7f0-d784208d67a8                
mmcblk1boot0                                                                             
mmcblk1boot1                                                                             
zram0                                                                                    [SWAP]
zram1                                                                       40.2M     7% /var/log
zram2                                                                                    

label Armbian_community
  kernel /Image
  initrd /uInitrd
  fdt /dtb/amlogic/meson-gxl-s905x-p212.dtb
  append root=UUID=e969167d-e6a9-4203-896f-ced402105523 rootflags=data=writeback console=ttyAML0,115200n8 console=tty0 rw no_console_suspend consoleblank=0 fsck.fix=yes fsck.repair=yes net.ifnames=0 splash plymouth.ignore-serial-consoles

 

Any assistance would be greatly appreciate. 

Edited 23 hours ago by Aaron Roberts

[SteeMan]

From the boot log, the uboot can't recognize the internal emmc.  It appears that the u-boot you are using is one based on u-boot 20-07.  I would recommend rebuilding the u-boot-s905x-s912 based on a more current u-boot source.  The instructions for doing this are in the readme.txt file in build-u-boot folder.  If this helps, then report back here and I can look at including a newer build in the distribution going forward.

[Aaron Roberts]

I've just tried rebuilding (at least based on ChatGPT's instructions) and it made no difference. I can't get this to work art all. Looks like I managed to get U-Boot updated, but still won't boot without the SD Card.

Edited 23 hours ago by Aaron Roberts

[Aaron Roberts]

I've checked the storage media and it seems to be a NAND - https://files.pine64.org/doc/datasheet/pine64/FORESEE_eMMC_NCEMBSF9-xxG SPEC A0 20150730.pdf 

Not sure if this is of any use in figuring out why it cannot see the boot partitions.