Partitions are overwritten by rkdeveloptool flash

I am workin on Rock5B with eMMC (64GiB).
For my work

  1. I need ubuntu image with Wayland so I am using Ubuntu image from here ubuntu-22.04-preinstalled-desktop-arm64-rock-5b.img.xz
  2. The eMMC needs to have two partitions one to have OS and another one is for user data to store for persistence. So I used rkdeveloptool to make the partition like below:
    The partition info is below: (file name: partition.txt)
    FIRMWARE_VER: 6.0.0
    MACHINE_MODEL: RK3399
    MACHINE_ID: 007
    MANUFACTURER: RK3399
    MAGIC: 0x5041524B
    ATAG: 0x00200800
    MACHINE: 3399
    CHECK_MASK: 0x80
    PWR_HLD: 0,0,A,0,1
    #uuid:rootfs=00000000-0000-0000-0000-00000000
    #KERNEL_IMG: 0x00280000
    #FDT_NAME: rk-kernel.dtb
    #RECOVER_KEY: 1,1,0,20,0
    #in section; per section 512(0x200) bytes
    CMDLINE: mtdparts=rk29xxnand:0x107421875@0x00000000(rootfs),-@0x107423000(data)ro

Used the command to make the partition:
>> sudo rkdeveloptool gpt partition.txt
Writing gpt succeeded.

The parition is listed as below:
>> sudo rkdeveloptool ppt
************Partition Info(GPT)********
NO. LBA. Name
00. 00000000. rootfs
01. 07423000 data

After this I initiated the Ubuntu flashing:
>> sudo rkdeveloptool wlx rootfs ubuntu-22.04-preinstalled-desktop-arm64-rock-5b.img
Write LAB from file (100%)
Image writing completed successfully

After this the partition table showed only one partition
>> sudo rkdeveloptool ppt
************Partition Info(GPT)********
NO. LBA. Name
00. 00008000. primary

Not sure why the partition is overwritten.
My requirement is to have one OS partition to boot and another to store some user data for persistence.

You can boot the Rock 5B with any system from an SD card with the eMMC empty and use gnome-disks or gparted to flash the eMMC, then use these tools partition the drive as you like. I think you will have more control than with rkdeveloptool.

Remember that the Ubuntu you use automatically grows the rootfs to its max available size on the first boot.

1 Like

Thanks for your info.