Troubleshooting Boot Issues on Libre Computer AML-S905X-CC

Start Boot
43

So I can’t boot from a USB stick unless I have a boot loader in eMMC or SD card , right ?

44

Depends on the board. eMMC and SD are usually faster than USB 2.0 anyway and our images don’t have the issues Raspberry Pi does with destroying MicroSD cards.

USB 2.0 - 40MB/s optimal
MicroSD - 90MB/s optimal
eMMC - 180MB/s optimal

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46

Hello,
I have a strange issue with the Le Potato board. I flashed Armbian with Cinnamon desktop on a uSD card and booted it. The board light up correctly, the kernel and services load correctly, and I am greeted with the Cinnamon login screen. I put my user and password and after I press ENTER the monitor enters sleep mode. I do not get to see the desktop.
I have not tried the CLI version of Armbian (tonight I will), or the Debian versions.
As for power, I am using a Raspberry Pi 4 approved brick capable of providing 2.4A and 5V.
Not sure what is the issue and I think no one here has had this issue. Can you please help me see what could be the issue?
The board was bought from Aliexpress, if that helps.

Thank you.

EDIT:
I have tested the Debian 12 image with Gnome and it works just fine! So Armbian image is the issue. Will not use it since I have Debian 12 built for Le Potato :+1:.

47

Armbian is a community project. The images can vary in quality depending on the time it was downloaded and since there’s no CI by the Armbian team yet, it may have issues.

1 Like
48

That really misses the point. That suggestion means some form of access to a somewhat working system already.

Booting uSD first means inserting a known-working uSD and starting from there. Simple access to a recovery process: insert uSD and boot.

Booting eMMC first means connecting UART to access uboot and interrupt - assuming that there isn’t some corruption within uboot on the eMMC. Complex access to a recovery process: assumes connectivity to UART and fully-functioning uboot.

It seems that the eMMC → uSD fallback it hard coded, then alternatively, is there a uboot that can be written onto eMMC which prioritizes USB/uSD booting such that it would attempt to load any uboot/EFI from uSD if present before using eMMC as a fallback? At least this would ensure easy recovery and dual-booting in the future.

49

u-boot can already do this, Attempting to dual boot - #3 by angus

50

That’s not quite the same. From what I understand of that thread, it is:

  1. boot eMMC Grub
  2. if select ‘uSD boot’ then boot uSD

Not the same as:

  1. attempt uSD boot first
  2. if fail, attempt eMMC boot

The ‘solution’ in the other thread is more of a workaround as it requires user interaction during the boot process.

Or am I misunderstanding the Attempting to dual boot - #5 by librecomputer recommendation to add boot_targets=usb mmc1 mmc0 in boot.ini file ? Does mmc1 refer to uSD and mmc0 refer to eMMC?

51

echo "boot_targets=usb mmc1 mmc0" > /boot/efi/boot.ini

This works! Well, it ALWAYS boots from eMMC, so adding this line to (/dev/mmcblk0p0)/boot.ini makes it try booting USB first, then uSD. So to answer my own questions:

  • yes, this works on Raspbian11 by creating the boot.ini file in the first (FAT) partition
  • yes, mmcblk0 refers to eMMC and mmcblk1 refers to the uSD

This boot.ini above should be the default in every image, at the very least for lepotato.