Le Potato - writing armbian to eMMC

[Tido]

6 hours ago, WZ9V said:

I was hoping someone would say

on page 2 of this thread here I pretty much explain how I did it with Balbes armbian. I was a smooth ride.

[WZ9V]

I went back and looked through page 2, not sure I’m daring enough to try all that stuff I don’t understand yet.  It seems the next update will have a working utility so I’ll use the SD for now and work on porting the utilities to port the hub management so I can do a proper shutdown in the Pi-Top.

[c0rnelius]

Has the eMMC issues been worked out on this board yet? Can I install to SDCARD and then push it to eMMC using arbian-config or is 'page 2' still the only option? Thanx!

[lanefu]

On 2/7/2019 at 5:59 PM, Cornelius said:

Has the eMMC issues been worked out on this board yet? Can I install to SDCARD and then push it to eMMC using arbian-config or is 'page 2' still the only option? Thanx!

So i just went through this experience last night, and banged my head against the wall constantly because I'm too stubborn to follow directions.

 

the stupid preinstall android on the emmc is really annoying.. i wish theyd ship it bank

What I should have done... the bables way

1. make a 1 gig Fat32 sd or usb card... copy the 2 magic files he has for "multiboot"... apply them as an android update

2. boot from one of bables armbian builds

3. profit?

what i did:

1.  made a partial mess of the emmc by typing commands in u-boot... but not enough to clean off u-boot

2. installed the bables multiboot

3. booted from babbles armbian

4. DD'd the emmc from babbles armbian

5. booted a regualr frelshly build armbian SD and then ran in the install script.

[TonyMac32]

1 hour ago, lanefu said:

the stupid preinstall android on the emmc is really annoying.. i wish theyd ship it bank

Agreed.  I'd forgotten that, for standard Armbian nand-sata-install works, but you have to boot Armbian first to get that far.  I wasn't able to brick it on purpose using the USB burning tool because it's built not to allow it. (Of all the things for them to do right...)

[Da Xue]

Neil finished u-boot UMS support for us. So, soon you will be able to flash the eMMC by exposing it as a mass storage device to your PC.

[comeon]

Hello Da Xue, so, is it now possible to do that?

[bosch_tracer]

I don't know if any of this helps - I just picked up a Le Potato this week and installed Armbian Hirsute on a 32gig Libre eMMC - I went through all the nightmares I've googled/read including the uboot button/USB cable/USB Burner software/Parse error stuff etc.

 

I did the following to get Armbian Hirsute headless installed on eMMC (the last bit may or may not save someone some time):

 

Downloaded the Libre Computers-suppled Ubuntu Bionic Headless image for aarch64: http://share.loverpi.com/board/libre-computer-project/libre-computer-board-aml-s905x-cc/image/ubuntu/libre-computer-aml-s905x-cc-ubuntu-bionic-headless-mali-4.19.55%2B-2019-06-24.zip

Burned the image to SD, booted, ran the steps in the eMMC Flash guide provided by Libre: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1gP-8njKQg6WE3p9HOU55m39NyLyq6IBa0Ukww5N15IU/mobilepresent?slide=id.p

 

It dawned on me after doing the above, booting Libre-Ubuntu from eMMC, re-starting from SD and then trying to dd the Armbian image to the eMMC,  trying to wipe the eMMC, doing a cursory review of installing uboot manually on the eMMC, etc.  - If I just get the details from the lc_redetect_emmc (utility provided by Libre to move from SD to eMMC after installing/booting from their image on SD), flash and boot Armbian via SD, insert the eMMC after boot up, and re-scan/detect the newly inserted eMMC - I avoid the Android boot/eMMC boot priority and, in theory,  would be able to use armbian-config to transfer the files to eMMC after boot up.

 

This is the last bit that might save time/help:

 

lc_redetect_emmc looks at /opt/libre-computer/model/aml-s905x-cc/dtb/device.map for device node and device driver. node = d0074000.mmc and driver = meson-gx-mmc (this device.map file is available if you follow the steps at the top and burn the libre-provided ubuntu bionic image and boot it form SD - you don't need it to do the steps below. I also do not know if the Libre utilities are available separately - didn't bother looking)

 

Once booted into Armbian - attach the eMMC, (avoid short circuits) run:  "echo -n d0074000.mmc > /sys/bus/platform/drivers/meson-gx-mmc/unbind && echo -n d0074000.mmc > /sys/bus/platform/drivers/meson-gx-mmc/bind"

 

The eMMC is detected (at least it was for me and it wasn't listed before I did the above) should be seen when running "lsblk -dno NAME,SIZE" (you should now see /dev/mmcblk1 in the list). Use armbian-config to install/boot from the eMMC.