Rock Pi 4B does not boot

#1

I just got a brand new Rock Pi 4B and I already have a boot issue. It is a Rock Pi 4B with 32GB of eMMC and so I just follow the steps available here (option 2) to install the OS. I downloaded Debian desktop, flashed with a SD card, inserted and booted the Rock Pi 4B. So far so good, it booted nicely and the first thing I did was to update and upgrade the OS. I then followed the steps to install the OS in the eMMC:

  1. Download again the Debian Desktop
  2. sudo dd if=os.img of=/dev/mmcblk1

Then just shut down and removed the SD card.

Now the problem is that it did not boot, and worst, it does not boot with the SD card inserted. The blue led sequence is a solid on, and then after a while two quick flashes, pause, two quick flashes, and so on.

Tried the read from UART ( at 1152000) the boot sequence but I’m getting rubbish. Tried to read at different speeds, like 9600 but got nothing.

So, any help will be welcome. Thanks.

#2 
baudrate         1500000
bits             8
parity           N
stopbits         1
#3

Try flashing eMMC over OTG if you can, also get your serial console over GPIO working so you can see what’s going on. Your story sounds very similar to something I’m going through with a couple units. Flashed fine and booted fine the first time, but system gets corrupt very quickly. Successive boots are unlikely to succeed. Errors in the serial console are related to bad checksums, ramdisk failures, corruption, etc. Sometimes I get kicked to the SPI flash sub-system console, other times it just hangs. The issue manifests itself a lot like bad flash in that the errors vary, the only consistent thing is that there are errors. Which OS is used makes no difference whatsoever. Same behavior.

#4

Ok, I was able to get UART working ( thanks @avaf, I just assume the default was 115200). These are the last log lines I got (the full log is too big to fit a single post):

6.250472] RTL8211F Gigabit Ethernet stmmac-0:00: attached PHY driver [RTL8211F Gigabit Ethernet] (mii_bus:phy_addr=stmmac-0:00, irq=POLL)
[    6.251743] RTL8211F Gigabit Ethernet stmmac-0:01: attached PHY driver [RTL8211F Gigabit Ethernet] (mii_bus:phy_addr=stmmac-0:01, irq=POLL)
Begin: Loading essential drivers ... done.
Begin: Running /scripts/init-premount ... done.
Begin: Mounting root file system ... Begin: Running /scripts/local-top ... done.
Begin: Running /scripts/local-premount ... done.
Begin: Will now check root file system ... fsck from util-linux 2.33.1
[/sbin/fsck.ext4 (1) -- /dev/mmcblk1p5] fsck.ext4 -a -C0 /dev/mmcblk1p5 
rootfs: The filesystem size (according to the superblock) is 7437068 blocks
The physical size of the device is 597249 blocks
Either the superblock or the partition table is likely to be corrupt!


rootfs: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; RUN fsck MANUALLY.
    (i.e., without -a or -p options)
fsck exited with status code 4
done.
Failure: File system check of the root filesystem failed
The root filesystem on /dev/mmcblk1p5 requires a manual fsck
(initramfs)
#5

An update. I did fsck -yf /dev/mmcblk1p5, and it starts to boot from the SD card but stops in the middle. These are the last lines:

[  OK  ] Started Light Display Manager.
[  OK  ] Reached target Graphical Interface.
         Starting Update UTMP about System Runlevel Changes...
[  OK  ] Started Update UTMP about System Runlevel Changes.
[   17.347725] Bluetooth: hci1: BCM4345C5 Ampak_CL1 UART 37.4 MHz BT 5.0 [Version: Version: 0039.0089]
[   17.348557] Bluetooth: hci1: BCM4345C5 (003.006.006) build 0089

Debian GNU/Linux 10 rockpi-4b ttyS2

rockpi-4b login: [   17.935192] brcmfmac: brcmf_fw_alloc_request: using brcm/brcmfmac43456-sdio for chip BCM4345/9
[   17.936168] brcmfmac: brcmf_c_process_clm_blob: no clm_blob available (err=-2), device may have limited channels available
[   17.937543] brcmfmac: brcmf_c_preinit_dcmds: Firmware: BCM4345/9 wl0: Feb 11 2020 11:54:51 version 7.45.96.61 (be7af2d@shgit) (r745790) FWID 01-a41d86bd es7.c5.n4.a3
[   18.549514] ieee80211 phy0: brcmf_netdev_set_mac_address: Setting cur_etheraddr failed, -52
[   18.897508] rk_gmac-dwmac fe300000.ethernet eth0: Link is Up - 1Gbps/Full - flow control rx/tx
[   18.898327] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth0: link becomes ready
[   18.990362] broken atomic modeset userspace detected, disabling atomic
[   21.138531] broken atomic modeset userspace detected, disabling atomic
[   22.804580] broken atomic modeset userspace detected, disabling atomic
[   24.471051] broken atomic modeset userspace detected, disabling atomic
[   26.122184] broken atomic modeset userspace detected, disabling atomic
[   27.825691] broken atomic modeset userspace detected, disabling atomic
[   29.488335] broken atomic modeset userspace detected, disabling atomic
[   31.161650] broken atomic modeset userspace detected, disabling atomic
[   32.862572] broken atomic modeset userspace detected, disabling atomic
[   34.525252] broken atomic modeset userspace detected, disabling atomic
#6

Second update (sorry, is the last one).
I reinstalled Debian on the SD card it boot correctly. I also followed the guide to install image to eMMC from USB OTG port and it worked nicely. I’m now able to boot from eMMC.