Rock 5 ITX+ – Debian Installer shows only NVMe, not eMMC

#1

Hello Radxa Team,

I recently purchased a Rock 5 ITX with 32GB onboard eMMC . According to documentation, the board ships with Roobi OS by default, and I should be able to install another OS (Armbian, Ubuntu, Debian).

My setup and issue:

  • Device: Rock 5 ITX (32GB eMMC + NVMe)
  • Goal: Install Debian OS on eMMC , mount NVMe for applications (for faster performance).
  • Problem: When I boot the Debian installer and reach the disk selection stage , it only shows the NVMe drive . The eMMC storage does not appear as an installation option.

Troubleshooting steps I tried:

  • Booted into Roobi OS → system seems to run fine.
  • In Debian installer → only NVMe is detected, no eMMC.
  • Expectation: Both eMMC ( /dev/mmcblk0 ) and NVMe should be available.

Questions:

  1. Is there a known issue with eMMC driver support in the current Debian installer for Rock 5 ITX?
  2. Do I need to change any UEFI/boot settings to expose eMMC?
  3. Should I use Armbian/Ubuntu images first, and then transfer Debian manually?

Any guidance or documentation link would be very helpful.

Thank you,
Vicky

#2

You can’t install to eMMC from Roobi, as Roobi itself lives on eMMC. It would have to overwrite itself.
You can do it yourself though, using rkdevtool, or possibly by booting from the SD card first, then dd’ing a system to the eMMC.

2 Likes
#3

Yes I personally did it when installing from SD.

1 Like
#4

Oh, you mean they finally upgraded the eMMC to 32GB ? That’s super cool! Mine is limited to 8GB and caused me trouble to install a minimal OS, I had to add a 16GB SSD on an adapter connected to the WiFi M.2 connector. It would indeed have been much easier with 32GB on board!

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#5

I was under the impression the 32gigs eMMC was standard on the 5 ITX+, but still 8gigs on the ITX 5. Is that not the case?

#6

Maybe they mean the RAM?

#7

Hey @incognito Thanks for the info.

#8

Hello,

In my Rock 5 ITX board both eMMC (Debian 12) and an NVMe (Debian 11) installed.
Currently, the board always boots from the NVMe when it is inserted, but I want to change the boot order so that the eMMC is the default boot device.

I tried pressing ESC, DEL, F12 during startup to get into the boot menu, but I don’t see any boot menu coming up.

My questions are:

  1. What is the correct key (or method) to access the boot/firmware menu on this board?
  2. Is there a way to configure boot priority between eMMC and NVMe?
  3. If the boot menu is not accessible, should I modify U-Boot settings or extlinux configuration to force boot from eMMC first?

Thanks in advance for your guidance.

Regards,
Vicky

#9

There is no BIOS (or “boot menu”) on ARM boards, the boot order is usually fixed. eMMC is native, nvme boot is just enabled by a specific image on the SPI memory (/dev/mtdblock0)
To change it, you either need to nuke the NVME or clear the SPI memory (see documentation how)

Also, this seems like another topic altogether, there were such questions before I think

#10

And to further complete what @incognito said, if you really expect a PC-like experience, the EDK2 project supports the Rock 5 ITX and will bring you a UEFI BIOS. I’ve never tried it on this board, though, and the main purpose of such a BIOS is essentially to standardize the boot process and support booting standard OSes, not just to support pressing F12 or so. It might be interesting to you to have a look at this, but be careful not to brick your board!

1 Like
#11

Hi All,

Thanks for the support. Just a small correction: the hardware I am working on is not Rock 5T ITX , it is Rock 5T ITX+ .

#12

OK, thanks for the clarification.