Installing an NVMe drive

MNT Pocket Reform
21

Hurray! :tada: Okay, so it boots and you can reach it over the network. That’s great because this means you don’t need a uart adapter to continue debugging this. You do not have display yet but you only need the terminal for diagnostics anyways, so lets go! :slight_smile:

I think three outputs would be of interest:

  • the reform-check output would be nice because the one you pasted above was from a working system. Maybe something funny shows up when you run it on a system where the display is not coming up.
  • dmesg output might contain interesting clues for Lucie to figure out what’s wrong
  • journalctl -b output might print interesting things too, so it doesn’t hurt

The output of these commands is long but you can run commands on the pocket remotely via ssh and redirect their standard output to a file on your classic reform. Like this:

$ ssh -t micha@192.168.17.109 sudo reform-check > reform-check.txt 2>&1
$ ssh -t micha@192.168.17.109 sudo dmesg > dmesg.txt 2>&1
$ ssh -t micha@192.168.17.109 sudo journalctl -b > journalctl.txt 2>&1

And then put the contents of reform-check.txt, dmesg.txt and journalctl.txt either here if they are not too long or into a pastebin.

Thank you!

22

The content is actually quite short. Port 22 appears to be blocked:

ssh: connect to host 192.168.17.109 port 22: Connection refused

That’s all that’s in reform-check.txt.

23

Hrm… then maybe you have the wrong IP or maybe the ssh service didn’t get enabled after all? Maybe you do need to look into serial output via uart…

24

/etc/init.d/ssh start solved the problem.

The contents of reform-check.txt:

Warning: Permanently added ‘192.168.17.109’ (ED25519) to the list of known hosts.
PTY allocation request failed on channel 0

The contents of dmesg.txt:

PTY allocation request failed on channel 0

The contents of journalctl.txt:

PTY allocation request failed on channel 0

But that’s surely not enough, is it?

25

How are you running that on the Pocket Reform without being able to access it?

You probably are also running systemd as your init system and not sysvinit. systemd dropped support for init.d scripts a while ago. With systemd you start units using systemctl:

sudo systemctl start ssh

When you ran “systemctl enable ssh” inside reform-rescue-shell that should’ve created the required symlinks such that ssh is automatically started on boot.

The sudo tool requires a pty and you tell ssh to do the required forwarding using the -t switch.

26

I don’t want to take up too much of your time, but let me describe again what I did and what happened.

This week, I received a Pocket-Reform with an i.MX8MPlus, but without NVM2, from Mouser.

For data security reasons, I want to use an encrypted NVMe drive. So I installed a 500GB Crucial P3, booted up, ran reform-setup-encrypted-disk on the console, answered all the questions, and rebooted after it finished.

However, the screen remained black. (I never updated the bootloader.) So I downloaded the latest image from mnt.re, wrote it to a micro-SD card, and booted from it. The boot process worked, and I ran the reform-setup-encrypted-disk script again. The result was the same: after rebooting without the micro-SD card, the screen remained dark.

So I booted from the micro-SD card again and entered “sudo reform-rescue-shell” on the console, followed by “systemctl enable ssh.” A ping from the network worked.

Meldung:

micha@mntremk:~$ ssh micha@192.168.17.109
ssh: connect to host 192.168.17.109 port 22: Connection refused

Even a file like the one with:

ssh -t micha@192.168.17.109 sudo reform-check > reform-check.txt 2>&1

is generated and contains useful content:

“ssh: connect to host 192.168.17.109 port 22: Connection refused”

That’s the current status. Thank you for your support so far!

What other options are left?

The UART adapter has been ordered. Let’s see if it helps us out.

Remove the NVMe and restore the system to its factory settings?

Order and install the V2 motherboard and Quasar 6490?

If we’ve run into a systemic problem, I’m happy to troubleshoot it. The Classic-Reform is running to our complete satisfaction, after all. So there’s no rush :slightly_smiling_face:.

27

Thank you, this confirms my understanding.

Maybe for some reason your Pocket starts enough such that it shows up on your network but whatever the failure is, it prevents the boot to go far enough for openssh-server to start. That’s very odd.

Okay, that is very likely to let us get to the bottom of this.

I can only think about two more things you could try:

  • inside reform-rescue-shell do a full upgrade of the system using sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade or
  • flash the most recent MNT Debian unstable system image (maybe the one you had was in a broken state) and start over using reform-setup-encrypted-disk
1 Like
28

Thank you very much for your help!

I tried both methods. Unfortunately, neither worked. When I remove the microSD card and boot up, the keyboard lights up, but the screen remains dark.

Even running the Setup Wizard without subsequently running `reform-setup-encrypted-disk` didn’t restore the Pocket to its factory settings. When booting, the keyboard lights up, but the screen stays dark. Nothing else happens.

29

The setup wizard doesn’t install anything on eMMC. It affects only the system on MicroSD. If you’re OK with reinstalling the system on eMMC (which will wipe the data on it), you can try reform-flash-rescue once logged in after the setup wizard on MicroSD.

Or do you mean the MicroSD no longer brings up the display?

1 Like
30

After booting up with a micro-SD card, the Pocket-Reform ran without any problems.

Great! Thanks for the tip. I wasn’t familiar with that tool yet. I was able to restore the Pocket-Reform and can work with it for now. Of course, the “long-term goal” of an encrypted NVMe drive remains.

If desired, I’d be happy to help get to the bottom of this, so I’ll check in for further troubleshooting once the UART adapter has been delivered.

31

Hi Josch

The cable has been delivered. However, I have since set up a Cryptomator Safe and have thus met my security requirements. Therefore, I’m considering working this way for now to see if I’m satisfied with the performance of the i.MX8MP. If not, I would upgrade to the RK 3588 or Quasar 6490.

However, if I can help get to the bottom of the “error” when running the script, I’d be happy to “sacrifice” my configuration and try to integrate the NVMe under your guidance.

32

Yesterday, a user created this new thread:

As far as I see it, they are in the same boat as you are: Pocket Reform with imx8mp

Did you ever try to enter your luks passphrase blindly? As in: with the screen being black, wait a few minutes, then type your luks passphrase. Does it boot into your encrypted system then?

Also, can you give me the output of this command:

cat /sys/devices/platform/soc@0/32c00000.bus/32e60000.dsi/32e60000.dsi.0/mnt_pocket_reform_panel_version
1 Like
33

Here is the output:

micha@mntprmk:~$ cat /sys/devices/platform/soc@0/32c00000.bus/32e60000.dsi/32e60000.dsi.0/mnt_pocket_reform_panel_version
2
micha@mntprmk:~$
34

I’m not sure what to do.

I got my Pocket up and running again using the reform-flash-rescue command. However, only the eMMC storage is being used (though the encrypted NVMe is still installed).

I boot it up with Hyper+Enter, and after about 35 seconds, the boot process logs appear on the screen. Another 40 seconds later, I can log in via the login screen.