Rock-5B NVME Mess-up

#1

Hi,

I bought a 5B, EMMC, case and 8" LCD. Burned Debian on to a micro-SD and everything worked fine. Burned the image to EMMC. Still everything was fine. Now I wanted to move to nvme.
Burned Ubuntu on to an nvme and tried to follow the instructions for burning bootloader to SPI-NOR.

I am not sure if it was that the instructions provided were complex / incorrect or my inability to understand the procedure, the going was tough. Finally managed to boot into the nvme, but then ubuntu will not detect the wifi card or my wireless mouse / keyboard.

I wanted to go back to the EMMC / SD card images, but could not manage to do so. There was no way to replace the ubuntu image on the nvme with a debian image without an nvme / usb adaptor. Finally, got hold of an nvme/usb adaptor and burned a debian image onto the nvme. Now for whatever reason, the system will not boot from the nvme. Can somebody give a clarity on the procedure to boot from nvme on the following aspects?

  1. What is the default boot sequence? My understanding is - (a) SD card - if present. (b) EMMC - if present. No nvme. Is this correct?
  2. What is the correct sequence of burning the SPI-NOR? The instructions provided on the wiki is a bit confusing to me. The simple procedure says - burn zero.img followed by rock-5b-spi-image-g49da44e116d.img and you are done. The advanced (external) method states - burn loader and spi image. Does the image used for the simple method combines the loader and spi image?
  3. If I erase the SPI-NOR will the system go back to the original boot sequence?
  4. In the sequence after burning the SPI-NOR, are the SD card and EMMC ignored if nvme is present?
  5. Is there a way to make the rock-5b multi-boot?

TIA

#2

Default boot sequence is probably SPI -> SD -> eMMC
With SPI You can get additional nvme support as well as some network boot and even boot menu (for sure works on uart), also there are some scripts that You can customize in SPI gaining Your boot sequence. Also You can short two pins as in docs skipping SPI.
Wifi support is provided by kernel + some firmware, not every image has that ready, on some You need more packages (sometimes non-free).
You don’t need to erase SPI with zero image if You want to burn something there in next step. For SPI pay attention for image type You want to get on nvme to boot. Some support gpt layout.

#3

Hi Dominik,

Thanks for the help. Can you point me to some documentation on changing the options on the SPI-NOR and the pins for boot selection?

#4

After several attempts, I was locked out of the system - it won’t boot from EMMC. However, today I tried once again after booting from SD card and it worked. Probably, the new bootloder (dated 7/6/23) did the trick.

#5

I’m glad You make it,
most information can be found on wiki: https://wiki.radxa.com/Rock5/install/spi
browse for other topics there regarding different installation methods.
Out of box board should work with sd/emmc and usb-pd adapters, but some are too slow with pd negotiation and updating bootloader helps to solve those issues.