Sd boot img? (can no longer boot)

MNT Pocket Reform
1

Hi, where do I find an img to try to boot from sd? I get a 404 on https://mnt.re/system-image…
Suddenly I can no longer boot. Oled works. Turning on also starts keyb backlight but screen remains blank thereafter - I’d like to try to boot from sd
Thx

2

The repo for the system images is here:

Reform / reform-system-image · GitLab

Unfortunately the link in the README (https://mnt.re/system-image) is not working at the moment so you’ll need to look for an image in in the “Build” / “Artifacts”:

Artifacts · Reform / reform-system-image · GitLab

Find the latest successful build, selected it and go to “Browse” the “Job artifacts” on the right side menu. At this moment you’ll end up at:

Artifacts · build (#4529) · Jobs · Reform / reform-system-image · GitLab

Good luck!

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3

Did you recently do an “apt upgrade”? This might be this issue:

We diagnosed that problem today on IRC:

https://mntre.com/reform-irc-logs/2024-06-21.log.html#t09:22:03

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4

Really sorry for these issues. I overhauled the https://mnt.re/system-image URL now so that an index.html with a redirect to the latest successful job artifacts is created every 5 minutes. This should get rid of any outdated links.

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5

Hi all - pocket back to working state - thx for support.
To doc for other newbies like myself:

  • on other computer: download image from Artifacts · build (#4529) · Jobs · Reform / reform-system-image · GitLab
  • gzip -d pocket-reform-system-imx8mp.img.gz
  • lsblk to find your sdcard
  • sudo dd if=pocket-reform-system-imx8mp.img of=/dev/sdX bs=8M status=progress (change SdX to what you found in previous step
  • boot from this sdcard on your pocket - go through setup
  • mount boot partition from emmc (use lsblk to find)
  • copy vmlinuz from boot on sdcard to boot on emmc
  • (I didn’t need to copy any other libs)
  • reboot without sdcard should work again
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6

Thank you, these instructions are correct. If you are using Debian, you can apt install bmap-tools and replace this:

With this:

  • bmaptool copy https://source.mnt.re/reform/reform-system-image/-/jobs/4529/artifacts/file/pocket-reform-system-imx8mp.img.gz /dev/sdX

The advantages of using bmaptool instead of wget, gzip, dd are:

  • only one command instead of multiple
  • no need to download the image to the local disk first
  • no need to unpack it manually before flashing
  • automatically prevents you from writing the image to a disk that is in use, thus reducing the chances to break your installation
  • only copies the blocks that actually contain data, thus you only need to actually copy 3.2 GB instead of the full 4.5 GB
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7

The issue is also present in the Debian linux kernel currently in experimental. It is tracked here:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1074111

So the Reform community just happened to notice this bug before everyone else did.

8

Thanks to the Reform community, a bug in binutils which results in a non-functional kernel image on arm64 was found and a workaround is now present in the Debian kernel itself:

Here is the binutils bug for anybody who is interested in the gory details:
https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=31924
Thanks to the users who reported this, the problem was found early and was only limited to Debian experimental. I reported the issue the same day that the Debian linux upload to unstable was scheduled, which (if it had happened) would’ve broken quite a few more systems.

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9

boot from this sdcard on your pocket

How do I achieve this?
If I power it on it boots directly into a broken installation on the eMMC device. I didn’t found any suggestions how to select any other boot device.

BTW, I use the RK3588

10

Welcome to the forum @akki!

Your u-boot on eMMC will first look at the first partition of the SD-card to find boot.scr which then in turn loads the linux image and initramfs. So once you flash the factory image to an SD-card and insert that into your Reform, u-boot will automatically boot that instead of your existing installation on eMMC.

11

Unfortunately it doesn’t. I flashed a sd-card and inserted it, but it still boots from eMMC.

[Edit: sorry, first things first: thank you for your answer!

I tried two different sd-cards with the latest build artifact, but it doesn’t recognize the sd-card as a boot device.]

[Edit 2: Turns out, i used two different broken sd-cards (kind of) and card reader with timing problems.
If I fiddle with the dd command, I got a bootable image.
dd ... bs=1M was the solution. Otherwise the partition seams ok, but not bootable.

Thanks again!]

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12

Oh wow, how odd! I’m glad you found the source of the problem!

Also, if you run into problems, feel free to start a new thread dedicated to your issue instead of resuming an existing one. Thank you!

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Aye! Next time I will start a new one. Thanks! :slight_smile:

1 Like