Flashing OS to EMMC on Libre Renegade ROC-RK3328-CC?

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Are there any updated and more clear/concise guidelines on how exactly to flash an OS (Ubuntu 22.10 from Libre distro in this case) to the EMMC I just installed on my renegade? I have been trying to follow the instructions for the Le Potato as there are no specific instructions for the Renegade; to no avail. I have tried on Windows as well as Mac OS (and Linux/Ubuntu in a VM, my only board natively running linux is actually this renegade :confused: so I was only able to try linux through my VM) and have had no success. The EMMC would really make a pivotal performance difference on this board and I would really like to be able to take advantage of that. Thanks in advance!

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Just boot up the board on Linux, download the image, extract it, and dd the image to mmcblk0.

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Worked flawlessly and took no time at all! I am very pleased with the performance boost! Currently writing this from the Renegade running Ubuntu Lunar Lobster natively off of the EMMC; and loving it :slight_smile: Thank you for such a quick and helpful response!! That kind of customer service/support is really unheard of these days!

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We are releasing 2023.04 by next week. :smiley:

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Love that! I have had no issues so far, very stable performance for me :slight_smile:

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I’ve spent the day trying to flash a microSD and install in on my Renegade, with no success.

I downloaded and flashed some CI images (the Debian 12 one, and Ubuntu – both base and server ones) with the following command:

sudo dd of=/dev/disk4 status=progress bs=4M if=./ubuntu-22.04.2-preinstalled-server-arm64+roc-rk3328-cc.img

Same with other images. When I plug the microSD in the Renegade and turn it on, nothing happens. The green light does not show, but the red light is always on.

Am I missing something?

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Did you extract the image?

Always dd images with bs=1M

You are destroying your MicroSD card without it if your OS does not merge writes.

What the heck is disk4?

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As a newbie to Libre products, I bought a Renegade SBC a week ago and after some searching I finally managed to get the correct Ubuntu image from the Libre download site to flash onto a 16GB micro SD card using Win32 Diskimager.

As stated elsewhere,the red power LED come on immediately and once the firmware was up and running I get the heart beat green LED flash every half sec or so when idle. I’ve tried it on a 7 inch monitor and a 10ch monitor and both appear stable. The PSU is good for over 2 amps.

Having done that, I powered off and fitted a 32gb EMMC module underneath the SBC to hopefully speed up its boot time and run tme.

Using the Disks function on Ubuntu, it shows SD Card Reader BJTDAR and underneath, SD Card Reader SDABC 31GB unknown.

Volumes show 31GB free space and a device called /dev/mmcblk0, which I believe is the 32gb emmc module.

My question is how exactly do I load the Ubuntu image to the emmc memory.

As I’m unfamiliar with Linux, what commands are needed to extract an image in downloads and put it on the Emmc so Renergade will boot and run from there instead of the SD card.

Thanks,Mike

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You can dd it directly to the eMMC module as follows with the URL of the image from the distro server:

wget -O - URL | xz -dc | sudo dd of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M status=progress

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Thanks for that as it worked and boots much faster and runs much better than the SD card. Just a minor point the boot device defaults to the SD card until I removed it from the Renegade and I have to hit the CR key half way through the boot process as it appears to stall whether a SD card or the EMMC module.
but otherwise it works well.

As an aside, will this same procedure work on LePotato for Ubuntu ?

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It works on any official image (distro.libre.computer) on any of our boards. If you want to not have it boot from MicroSD card, wipe the boot sector using libretech-flash-tool.

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Thanks, I’ll try that.

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Hi! Thanks for helping. I’m back to trying to flash a microSD with Debian for my Libre Renegade, but still without success.

The image comes compressed as an XZ file, and I extracted it. Do you mean something else with “extract the image” that I’m missing?

Thanks for the bs=1M tip, I’ll sure use it whenever I flash my cards again. And /dev/disk4 was the address of my microSD when I plugged it (right now it’s /dev/disk5; I have another external HD plugged in my Mac, so it came as /dev/disk5` this time).

After extracting the XZ file, I ran:

sudo dd of=/dev/disk5 status=progress bs=1M if=./debian-12-base-arm64+roc-rk3328-cc.img

The process finishes with status zero echo $? # => 0, but when I plug the microSD to the Libre Renegade and turn it on, there’s no image at all. I also noticed that only the red light is kept on; the green one lights on when I plug the power but quickly goes off in a fraction of a second. I’m not sure what the behavior of these lights means.

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The green light means the system has started. It most likely does not like your monitor in u-boot. There’s a debug UART to see what is actually happening. Libre Computer Board Debug Serial UART Connection and Setup Guide

However, it should continue to load and boot into Linux eventually. What is the make and model monitor do you have attached?

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What is the make and model monitor do you have attached?

It’s a Samsung 28" UE590 UHD Monitor.

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I just realized the link I posted above is wrong – I’m not sure if it has changed since the day I posted this (~9 months ago) or I just mislinked it somehow, but here are a bunch of links for different specification pages of the monitor I’m using:

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The latest bootloaders should not crash. You should be able to use libretech-flash-tool to re-flash the bootloader on your existing image.