eMMC boot failure in X96Q H313 LPDDR3 v1.3 on Armbian 26.02 official image

[Andre Ruiz]

Hello!

 

I noticed that x96q lpddr v1.3 is now an official (or something close to that) release, as it appears on the main page when searching. I used to use @sicxnull fork but now I have the impression that his changes were incorporated and he is the official maintainer of this device. I installed the Armbian 26.02 in an SD card and tested it in my X96Q lpddr v1.3 device and it works great!

 

The problem is when I installed it to the internal eMMC, it will not boot anymore. I have the serial cable attached and I can see that very very early in the boot process u-boot cannot read from flash and the boot hangs.

 

I know this has been discussed to some extent in another thread but I wanted to start fresh on this one since now we're talking about the Armbian official release and not the fork anymore. My intent with this thread is focus exclusively on fixing eMMC on the official release.

 

My tests:

 

Test 1

 

Download latest release, from here, more specifically this one. Direct link to the image here (name: Armbian_community_26.2.0-trunk.858_X96q_resolute_current_6.18.27_xfce_desktop.img.xz). Write to SD card using balena etcher, boot in my x96q device. It works well, boots through the initialization process, create user account, etc. The, run armbian-install and install it to internal eMMC. Remove SD card. Reboot. It will not boot, with the following error:

 

Trying to boot from MMC2
MMC Device 1 not found
spl: could not find mmc device 1. error: -19
SPL: failed to boot from all boot devices
### ERROR ### Please RESET the board ###

 

Booting from SD card again, re-running the installer and forcing to update the eMMC bootloader does not help.

 

Test 2

 

I swapped only u-boot for the one from miniarch/minimyth2 project, compiled for the same hardware.

 

Miniarch project can be found here. An image that works on this hardware (in my specific device) can be found here, more specifically this one. This image works well, and it also works well when installed to eMMC. The reason I don't use it is that I prefer Ubuntu over Arch, which I can get with Armbian instead.

 

Download that image, and extract the file u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin from the first partition of that image. I used unxz + losetup + loopback mount the image's first partition in linux, but it may be easier for you to just write that image to an SD card, then copy the file from it. It is in the first partition in the path /bootloader/u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin. Copy it to a usb stick and plug it into the x96q device or scp it directly.

 

Now, boot the x96q with the SD card, go through all initial setup. Run armbian-install, and install it to eMMC. Finish the installer (quit).

 

Copy the file you extracted from miniarch to the booted system in x96q (using the usb stick or scp'ing it directly). Overwrite the file with the same name at /usr/lib/linux-u-boot-current-x96q/u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin with the new one.

 

Run the armbian-install command again, this time chose to update the bootloader in the eMMC.

 

Mount the eMMC temporarily at /mnt and edit the /mnt/boot/armbianEnv.txt file, add this line: 

 

fdtfile=allwinner/sun50i-h313-x96q-lpddr3.dtb

This is because the hardcoded path for the DTD file in miniarch is different from the one from armbian, so you need to override it. It can also be done in realtime on the u-boot boot prompt if you have serial cable attached.

 

Reboot, remove the SD card and let it boot from the eMMC. It should work, now you have a working Armbian on the eMMC.

 

This will get undone if the bootloader is updated again with the original one (and is not meant as a permanent fix).

 

Thoughts

 

Miniarch uses 2025.04 u-boot while Armbian x96q board is using 2024.01 but I'm not sure this is really relevant. My guess is that the difference is in some of the patches they apply and not in the improvements of this new version of u-boot itself. But I could be wrong.

 

You can find the list of patches that miniarch applies over to stock u-boot here. Many of those patches do not exist in Armbian. I wonder if it is any of those that is making the difference.

 

Question to @sicxnull: do you have a good idea of what is going on and have any direction for further testing? I wanted to ask before I start applying the extra patches one by one, that would take quite some time.

 

Thanks!

 

 

 

Edited 53 minutes ago by Andre Ruiz