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Cubieboard 2 does not start after Armbian 5.35 in headless mode

znoxx

By znoxx
in Allwinner sunxi

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znoxx

znoxx

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Hi all! Kinda "mayday-mayday"

I recently upgraded Armbian to 5.35 and after reboot it gone. 

After long investigation i figured out, that it boots ONLY when HDMI cable connected to even standby tv.

This is my home server and it works nonstop in headless mode..

I am on kernel 4.13.16-sunxi, rootfs on sata SSD.

I guess something cannot be detected with uboot. How can I fix this ?

znoxx

znoxx

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Unfortunately, board is far from me and I visit this place no so often, as I want :(. Due to emergency went there today...

 

That's what I have now:

 

zno@armbox:~$ dpkg -l | grep u-boot
ii  linux-u-boot-cubieboard2-next      5.35                                 armhf        Uboot loader 2017.09
ii  u-boot-tools                       2014.10+dfsg1-5                      armhf        companion tools for Das U-Boot bootloader
 

 

Is there any option to force e.g. 720p mode for U-boot or downgrade/upgrade to some other version ? 

And by the way, when TV is standby mode - it detected like this:

 

zno@armbox:~$ dmesg | grep -i hdmi
[    0.000000] Kernel command line: console=ttyS0,115200 console=tty1 root=/dev/sda1 rootwait rootfstype=ext4 cgroup_enable=memory swapaccount=1 sunxi_ve_mem_reserve=0 sunxi_g2d_mem_reserve=0 sunxi_no_mali_mem_reserve sunxi_fb_mem_reserve=16 hdmi.audio=EDID:0 disp.screen0_output_mode=1920x1080p60 panic=10 consoleblank=0 enforcing=0 loglevel=7

 

Currently board is placed near TV and kinda working. But may be something else to try ? Assuming no log here in reasonable amount of time....

 

May be 5.36 will help ? Just upgraded different hardware to it remotely (OpiPC) and it booted... Same u-boot, but legacy kernel.

znoxx

znoxx

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Well, 5.36 did not helped.

I rolled back to 5.32 (as last known good for me and it was in my apt cache). It required to remove armbian-config package also...

Boot is back to normal, I have frozen kernel/uboot updates just in case (this will motivate me to invest into Odroid as a new home server).

As an assumption.. May be I had to go via whole 5.33->5.34->5.35->5.36 ? 

Whatever, issue is not investigated =(, but server is back to normal and this is not a hardware issue.

Igel

Igel

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Hi, same problem here. Cubieboard 2 with Armbian in headless mode as Nextcloud and VPN server with an external harddisk attached (but booting from SD card).
After an upgrade yesterday to 5.36, mine won't boot either.

After finding this thread, I inserted an HDMI cable into a TV in stand by and it boots again. Thanks, znoxx, for finding this out!

 

Here is the the full dmesg with HDMI cable and TV in stand-by:

https://igel.mooo.com/nextcloud/s/7auVF2IfVXECk4X

 

Obviously, I don't have one where it doesn't boot as I don't have means to access it. But happy to help if you tell me how to. I also have restricted access to the board, but should be able to provide additional info during CET evenings.

Igor

Igor

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I only have Cubieboard 1 and 3 (which is similar) and I was not able to reproduce this issue. I also installed the system on SSD ... no problems.

znoxx

znoxx

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  On 12/5/2017 at 11:12 AM, Igor said:

no problems.

Expand  

 

Same as on orangepi pc with same uboot and armbian version.... Still boots without any issues.

That's weird. I will try to install from scratch on "unsupported android stick" which actually close to cubie2, and see, what will happen, but not in reasonable amount of time, and without serial console access.

Anyway, thanks for paying attention for this and I'm feeling, that I am not alone :).

 

Oh, Igor, almost forgot it. I succeeded with rolling back since I had packages in apt-cache. What if I'm reinstalling from scratch and fail ? Where and how I can get 5.32 packages for example ?

Thanks in advance for answer. Hope it will be possible.

Toast

Toast

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Mine failed too on latest update so it might be a good thing to roll back that package. Gonna reinstall when i got time.

znoxx

znoxx

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Igor, can it be installed on 5.32 image ? And will it be possible to roll back to previous kernel (let's say one from 5.32)

If yes, I can try by the end of the week... May be someone can do earlier ?

 

jirkaj4

jirkaj4

Posted
Posted

Hi,
I try armbian with my cubieboard. And it is not working. I try latest desktop version. But latest server version, is working fine.

Desktop console output is here. 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Igel

Igel

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Igor, I will give the 4.14.y kernel a try tonight.
 

Just to make sure:

- Copy the files to the cubieboard

- dpkg -i for both files

- restart and hope for the best

Correct?

Igel

Igel

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I tested with the 4.14.3 kernel and device tree provided by Igor.
The issue still exists with exactly the same behavior: CB2 won't boot without HDMI cable and TV attached at boot time. If a cable/TV is attached, it will again boot just fine.

 

armbianmonitor -u output with HDMI attached:

http://sprunge.us/fTOX

 

Contents of armbianEnv.txt 

verbosity=7
console=both
disp_mode=1920x1080p60
rootdev=UUID=16d0ef66-77a0-4af0-8b91-96dbe7c237dd
rootfstype=ext4

 

I am really wild guessing here, but could this have been introduced by the recent HDMI CEC commit to the 4.14 kernel? I'm not fully clear if this actually happened for A20 boards. On http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort the status matrix says so, the individual section for the 4.14 doesn't mention it for A20 specifically. But obviously, there is a lot going on around HDMI for those boards, also for 4.15.

 

My personal workaround for the time being:

Boot with HDMI/TV attached. There seems to be no issue if you remove the HDMI cable after the boot sequence.

Igel

Igel

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Success!
With u-boot from 5.31, the CB2 boots without any HDMI/TV attached.

I am running the 4.14.3 kernel which you provided earlier.

 

Anything I can provide to solve the (to me) mystery?

 

Thanks, Igor!
And not just for this solution, but for Armbian in general!

  • Igor pinned this topic
znoxx

znoxx

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Is my understanding correct: I can unfreeze kernel update, upgrade, then roll back u-boot then to one suggested by Igor ?

Igor

Igor

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You can also give me some time and all you need to do will be to update and upgrade. A small bugfix release is planned ASAP and this can be fixed on the way. I'll repack u-boot with 2017.07 since I couldn't find the cause of the problem in current one.

znoxx

znoxx

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Posted
  On 12/7/2017 at 6:18 AM, Igor said:

I'll repack u-boot with 2017.07 since I couldn't find the cause of the problem in current one.

Expand  

Igor, thanks!

No rush at all, my goal is to follow "usual update", not to try something special, since my cubie is acting like a server in, well, production mode.

Please take your time :). Currently it's working and the last thing I want - visiting the location where it placed and connecting HDMI in case of failure :)

Thanks in advance for your efforts.

garydickson20

garydickson20

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I've just encountered a similar problem on a pcduino3nano headless server: boot from SD with system on SSD. After upgrade to 5.36, it won't boot without HDMI console attached, but runs OK if HDMI is unplugged after boot. 

TornadoZX

TornadoZX

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I have absolutely the same issue after upgrade to 5.36 on my PCDuino3Nano (A20 CPU), doesn't boot without HDMI in headless mode. Will try the method with rolling back u-boot and reply later. I'm using legacy kernels btw.

GrimKriegor

GrimKriegor

Posted
Posted (edited)

Can confirm, same issue seems to be present on the Lime 2.

Updated tonight to the latest version, with Linux 4.13.16-sunxi and was unable to get it to boot without HDMI attached.

Currently working around the issue with a HDMI dummy display I had lying around.

Thanks for taking your time looking at this.

EDIT:

Can also confirm that downgrading to the u-boot from 5.31 fixes the issue here.

Edited by GrimKriegor
tkaiser

tkaiser

Posted
Posted

This thread came to my attention only today :(

 

So how can we prevent this? This is not the first time an Armbian update bricked server installations due to insufficient testing. How can we prevent this ever happening again?

Igor

Igor

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1. Freezing u-boot source separately (per board) to the particular version and keep old patches?

2. Moving older/rear boards more radically out to deprecated section with frozen only u-boot and kernel deb package?

3. Improve testing protocols?

pollux_master

pollux_master

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Same happened here, for a moment I thought I lost my precious board :(.

 

I downgraded the u-boot package as Igor suggested and it came back to life :D.

 

Just to mention: ARMBIAN 5.36 user-built Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS 4.13.16-sunxi.

 

Another curious thing: the SSH MOTD keeps saying that I have 16 upgrades available, but apt tells me I just have 1 (the u-boot package).

 

Thanks!

Igor

Igor

Posted
Posted
  On 12/16/2017 at 5:07 PM, pollux_master said:

 

Another curious thing: the SSH MOTD keeps saying that I have 16 upgrades available, but apt tells me I just have 1 (the u-boot package).

Expand  


Already fixed (execute chmod -x /etc/cron.d/armbian-updates; service cron restart) but we need to push out a new update when possible. 

paul alting

paul alting

Posted
Posted

I struck this problem today, after doing upgrade to my headless CB2 server, which has been working away faultlessly for many many months.

After upgrade it did not appear to boot normally, I could not even SSH into it to find out what was going on, so I came to the forum to see if this was an isolated case or if others had experienced the same.

At present CB2 SCADA HTTP server is now down and I am trying to figure how to get it back alive without a major rebuild.

Igor, I do appreciate the countless hours of effort you have put in, Armbian has been a pleasure and a gift to use, thankyou :)

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