installing Armbian Bookworm on Radxa Rock 5 ITX with NVMe m.2 SSD

[justanothernoob]

hi there,

 

I'm a complete Linux noob so please forgive my ignorance. But I do have 25+ years experience in IT so am relatively conversant with basic principles - so please be patient   I did try to search for any previous threads but couldn't find any.

 

I'm trying to setup a RADXA Rock 5 ITX with OpenMediaVault for my NAS.

I have a 2TB NVMe m.2 SSD that I'll use for the OS.

For the NAS storage I'm using 4x Western Digital 16TB SATA III drives.

 

I downloaded the Armbian 25.2.2 bootable image from https://www.armbian.com/radxa-rock-5-itx/ and used Balena Etcher (the legit version from Balena-io) to make my bootable microSD card.

When I boot, I receive an error message of "failed to mount /dev/mount/mmcblk0p1 as root file system"

I'm guessing this is because there is no emmc on this board other than what's provided for RooibOS flash?

 

Do I just need to reconfigure the Armbian Bookworm setup script to use / look for the NVMe m.2 SSD instead of the emmc? If so, is there a way to do that on a Windows PC? If not, I may just have to go with the standard RooibOS install using Armbian Noble just to get a Linux system up and running, then edit the Armbian setup script, reflash the Rock 5 ITX and start again?

 

Or is there something else I'm missing?

 

Thanks in advance for your help.

[laibsch]

7 hours ago, justanothernoob said:

I'm guessing this is because there is no emmc on this board other than what's provided for RooibOS flash?

 

Do I just need to reconfigure the Armbian Bookworm setup script to use / look for the NVMe m.2 SSD instead of the emmc? If so, is there a way to do that on a Windows PC? If not, I may just have to go with the standard RooibOS install using Armbian Noble just to get a Linux system up and running, then edit the Armbian setup script, reflash the Rock 5 ITX and start again?

 

Apologies, but what is RooibOS?  I'm sure it's got nothing to do with tea ;-)

[justanothernoob]

DOH! Typo ... RoobiOS

[laibsch]

aww, too bad.  I kinda like the tea distribution. ;-)

 

regardless, I still can't find a reference as to what it really is.

[prahal]

@laibsch, this is the Radxa Custom Debian OS that is shipped on the emmc.

 

@justanothernoobCould be I did not have this issue because my board was delivered with an empty emmc (no RoobiOS installed). Though i doubt it.

Do you have the serial console full output?

 

Also is it a typo or is the error really about
`/dev/mount/mmcblk0p1` not `/dev/mmcblk0p1`. Mind `/dev/mmcblk0p1` is the emmc partition while you should be booting from the SD card. I tet installed

 

Note also that 25.2.2 linux (current) images area lacking most devices support, while vendor 25.2 has an issue with PCIe SATA detection. THe vendor PCIe detection is fixed in latest 25.08 vendor. But that does not explain your current issue...

Can you try https://fi.mirror.armbian.de/incoming/prahal/rock-5-itx/archive/ vendor images dated after 16th of August (the ones before did not have the fix for PCIe SATA detection)?

Like https://fi.mirror.armbian.de/incoming/prahal/rock-5-itx/archive/Armbian_25.8.1_Rock-5-itx_noble_vendor_6.1.115_xfce_desktop.img.xz

 

[justanothernoob]

@prahal - I tried burning a number of those images to SD card but none worked. With RoobiOS I see that all of the blue lights below the SATA ports (i.e. on the underside of the board) light up as blue for a couple of seconds, then they turn off and then they flash twice ... the screen comes on and after a couple of error messages the Installation GUI starts.

 

With the images from the links you provided, I don't get the blue lights (although I do get a yellow network link light) or any output to screen.

 

However ... in RoobiOS I'm given the option of various images to install ... including the option for "custom" - I've selected that and entered

https://fi.mirror.armbian.de/incoming/prahal/rock-5-itx/archive/Armbian_25.8.1_Rock-5-itx_bookworm_current_6.12.41_minimal.img.xz

 

This gives a circle (of death?!) and "Loading ..." in RoobiOS but I see there's flashing green light on the ethernet port - which suggests that there's activity so maybe it's just a slow download?

 

Edited yesterday at 10:57 AM by justanothernoob

[justanothernoob]

After about 45 minutes of no change from the blue circle of death I pulled the power cable out and rebooted. This time I selected the Armbian Noble build - that seemed to complete successfully - although I wasn't monitoring the whole process but when I came back it must have completed the install and rebooted. Unfortunately it was only giving a blank screen. I tried several reboots and would get the initial blue lights come on and then nothing further. Eventually I had to remove the NVMe and reformat it as a clean EXT drive and reinsert. Now I'm back to being able to boot back into the RoobiOS installation GUI. I think that next I'll try just selecting the RADXA OS and then install Open Media Vault on top of that.

[prahal]

@justanothernoob the images with "current"  instead of "vendor" in the name have very limited hardware support (no HDMI, no sound, etc). You should peek the "vendor" images. Mind I noted to use the images dated 16th of August or post as otherwise your pcie sata connected drives won't work most of the time.

So you should try bookworm_vendor or noble_vendor with xfce,cinnamon,gnome,kde-neon if you want a graphical interface and minimal for serial console/ssh only.

You will only get black screen from HDMI with "current" images, that is expected (the HDMI support is not in the linux kernel, only in linux-rockchip kernel, ie vendor as of yet).

ie the image you told using https://fi.mirror.armbian.de/incoming/prahal/rock-5-itx/archive/Armbian_25.8.1_Rock-5-itx_bookworm_current_6.12.41_minimal.img.xz is such a linux kernel without HDMI support for rock-5-itx.

 

https://fi.mirror.armbian.de/incoming/prahal/rock-5-itx/archive/Armbian_25.8.1_Rock-5-itx_bookworm_vendor_6.1.115_xfce_desktop.img.xz

has HDMI support.

 

you should be able to install form serial console with both vendor and current images.

 

Mind I still need to read about installing RoobiOS on my emmc as sadly my board was shipped with an empty EMMC. So I cannot yet guide you through RoobiOS boot selection.

Edited yesterday at 12:42 PM by prahal

[justanothernoob]

@prahal thank you so much for explaining that.

 

I tried downloading the https://fi.mirror.armbian.de/incoming/prahal/rock-5-itx/archive/Armbian_25.8.1_Rock-5-itx_bookworm_vendor_6.1.115_xfce_desktop.img.xz but Balena Etcher would fail at the end of the validation process.

 

However ... from RoobiOS I can enter that path and it successfully downloads the image and appears to write it successfully to the NVMe drive and then reboots but only gives a single flash of blue SATA III lights and no display.

 

I erased the NVMe partition and tried the Armbian_25.8.1_Rock-5-itx_noble_vendor_6.1.115_minimal.img.xz image with the same result.

 

Same with Armbian_25.8.1_Rock-5-itx_bookworm_vendor_6.1.115_minimal.img.xz - no joy.

 

Eventually I just went with the RADXA OS. It installs KDE Plasma so I've booted to command line and removed KDE and associated packages. Hopefully that effectively gives me a CLI image.

Now to work through the error messages in the bootup and remove any unnecessary steps... after I manage to set the default font-size to something that doesn't have me squinting like Mr Magoo 🤣🤣