problems with booting from SD-card (initramfs)

[Last Man]

Hi Guys,

It seems that I can't boot latest Armbian image from SD-card  - system always boots into "inintramfs". See the screenshot.
SD-card is 100% working (all sectors tested). The image - 25.11.1_noble_6.12.58_gnome_desktop (downloaded from front page of OrangePi5). Checksum is OK.

Please note - I've already tested 3 different prorgams for images:  USB-imager, Rufus, Win32diskimager. Nothing helped))).
I also re-wrote MTD flash (not sata) by "armbian-install" and got nothing (!)

 

I use my main Armbian-server installed on nvme, but I would prefer to run SD-images as well... Unfortunately, as I see, this became very difficult task lately(((.

 

P.S. I don't want to erase mtd0 and boot from SD as I will probably lose my perfectly working boot from nvme if SD-boot fails again. Not sure what to do...
 

Any ideas? Thanks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited 14 minutes ago by Last Man

[Werner]

picture seems broken/corrupted

[eselarm]

1 hour ago, Last Man said:

I don't want to erase mtd0 and boot from SD as I will probably lose my perfectly working boot from nvme if SD-boot fails again.

But that means you have 2 bootloaders and also 2 bootscripts. That will cause confusion, is it no surprise you end up in initramfs. I do not know which one has priority for the OPI5, maybe it is variable, depending on something in hardware on the board.

On my ROCK3A, I can place an optional jumper that disables mtd0/SPI, so only option is U-Boot from SD-card.

 

You can interrupt U-Boot if you connect serial console cable and then manually load the OS from SD-card or NVME, but it is a lot of commands and you need to know or study what those do.

 

If you want to run a new OS from SD-card, you need to change (all) boot.* + armbianEnv.txt files, such that there is only 1 set (from SD-card or from NVME). Also only 1 U-Boot is best, else it will stay confusing. So wipe the U-Boot on SD-card. Then place the correct UUID in armbianEnv.txt (the UUID from rootfs on SD-card).

 

Alternatively, you can use extlinux.conf boot method, you need to create that yourself, I use it on some SBC's so I can test new kernels etc (select at  power-on in U-Boot via serial console cable).

Or you flash EDK2-UEFI in mtd0/SPI and radically change all to EFI en grub bootmanager. Needs all manual own actions, not an Armbian thing.