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 Wednesday 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 Wednesday 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 🤣🤣

[Igor]

13 hours ago, justanothernoob said:

but Balena Etcher would fail at the end of the validation process.

Etcher is broken on big images. It is out of our power to fix that. Use USB imager or something else.

[justanothernoob]

hey @Igor I tried USBImager but it's not playing nicely -

• 1st it wasn't letting me select the image. Then I realised that for some reason the "Downloads" link in the app's search wasn't working correctly and wasn't showing me all of the files that I knew were there. If I manually navigate to c:\users\xxx\Downloads then the files show up
• 2nd it wouldn't let me select my external 256GB micro SD card (via USB key with an SD adaptor) - the card just wasn't available as an option in the drop-down list. This may have been because my antivirus had locked the card while it completed it's scan?
• 3rd it looks like the "GO" button is hidden behind the other fields and I just can't select it. I've tried with both mouse and just tabbing but no joy   See screenshot below (obviously, the red box is me highlighting what I think is hidden)

 

 

You mention that BalenaEtcher can't handle large images but if too big a size is an issue (that's what she said!) then I wonder if maybe the 256GB micro SD card might also be a limitation?

 

Deep breaths. Count to 10. It's all good learning   Admittedly, 20 years ago I probably wouldn't have been so patient 🤣🤣

 

Really appreciate all of the advice being shared here. That's what "Community" is about 👍👍

 

Edited 8 hours ago by justanothernoob

[Igor]

Well, I can't tell why USB imager doesn't work nicely. I use it ... sometimes media is not recognized and restarting it usually helps and that is the only problem I experienced with it. For other issues check https://gitlab.com/bztsrc/usbimager/-/issues

 

There is some note that might be relevant:
 

Quote

https://bztsrc.gitlab.io/usbimager/

NOTE: forever returning problem: the GTK version works, but the X11 version only shows boxes (or nothing) instead of text. This isn't an USBImager issue, rather X11 fontconfig problem.

 

Solutions:

 

Install your distro's xfonts-unifont package to fix (FYI, any other X11 font containing UNICODE glyphs would do).

If there were no such package in your distro, then download unifont-*.pcf.gz from here, copy it under /usr/share/fonts/misc (or into any other directory listed by fc-list) and execute the fc-cache -vf command to update the font cache. After this USBImager should be able to find and use this font on its own.

Download one of the uf versions of USBImager. These are bigger binaries because they include Unifont, but in return they don't need X11 fontconfig (nor any X11 font) at all.

Another alternative tools is RPi Imager. 

 

1 hour ago, justanothernoob said:

You mention that BalenaEtcher can't handle large images

Issues are known and those were my personal experiences while trying to understand why it doesn't work anymore. This was about a year ago, bug was filed at Balena and it seems they didn't fix it yet. Since nothing happened for months, we simply start recommending other tools. Which might not be perfect either - according to troubles you are experiencing.

 

1 hour ago, justanothernoob said:

Admittedly, 20 years ago I probably wouldn't have been so patient

In custom hardware world patience is a requirement - in all directions. Maintainers / developers with users, users with maintainers / developers, maintainers / developers with hardware, users with hardware, maintainers / developers with software, users with software ...   

[justanothernoob]

Preach  You're 100% right - people do what they can - and we (I think that I think for most people) just appreciate what others can do that we can't  

For now I have what seems to be a CLI build ... I'm a Windows guy so learning about Linux. I did try dabbling 27 years ago ... but what was new then hasn't been cemented into my mind. Although interesting to see that KDE and GNOME are still a thing!   But the  principles make sense and much of the OS architecture is actually very similar... although the command line can be very different!

 

For now I'm just trying to get OMV running so fingers crossed.

 

[prahal]

21 hours ago, justanothernoob said:

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 have no experience installing to NVME yet, but I guess you have to write the image to an SD card then move the install with armbian-config to the NVME.

Also I don't know if Radxa u-boot is OK for Armbian images. You might be booting from Radxa U-boot on emmc to Armbian Linux kernel. I hope if an Armbian install SD card is inserted, its u-boot takes precedence over the EMMc one, but I am not confident it does for an NVME install.

I cannot test a RoobiOS setup until mid September to confirm if that is the issue.

 

You should provide the serial console output so I can investigate.

[justanothernoob]

@prahal ok - so I've only been using the micro SD card to try boot and load an image from. So far, from what I understand, RoobiOS seems to be installed on the onboard emmc at a lower-priority boot option (i.e. if there's no boot OS on the NVMe, microSD or SATA III drive then boot from the onboard emmc).

 

If I understand correctly, you're suggesting I load an empty / non-bootable micro SD card and then from the RoobiOS menu select one of your builds, chose to install to the micro SD and then transfer the bootable image to NVMe after? (Not that I know how to transfer the OS from micro SD to NVMe ... yet ... but, as I say ... more learning  ) . If this is correct then happy to try that.

[prahal]

 

2 minutes ago, justanothernoob said:

@prahal ok - so I've only been using the micro SD card to try boot and load an image from. So far, from what I understand, RoobiOS seems to be installed on the onboard emmc at a lower-priority boot option (i.e. if there's no boot OS on the NVMe, microSD or SATA III drive then boot from the onboard emmc).

 

If I understand correctly, you're suggesting I load an empty / non-bootable micro SD card and then from the RoobiOS menu select one of your builds, chose to install to the micro SD and then transfer the bootable image to NVMe after? (Not that I know how to transfer the OS from micro SD to NVMe ... yet ... but, as I say ... more learning  ) . If this is correct then happy to try that.

 

Well no. I meant what you did. Install on an SD card and boot.

The thing is the RoobiOS menu, as far as I understand, is the EMMC Radaxa OS U-boot.

My EMMC was shipped empty, and I have no Roobi Menu.

U-Boot is the first thing to load, so if you get a Roobi menu you are not booting from SD card u-boot.