RockPi 4B: Boot from USB storage (Create u-boot SD card)

Hi everyone!

I currently have setup the ubuntu server image on a micro sd card, placed directly in the on-board sd card reader. Using this I can boot my RockPi 4B and use Ubuntu on it without problems

The next thing I wanted to do now, is to boot from a USB hard disk. From my understanding the RockPi 4B cannot boot directly from USB storage, and i need to use u-boot.

To this end I am following the steps in https://wiki.radxa.com/Rockpi4/dev/u-boot

I successfully checked out the repo on my laptop, and called “./build/mk-uboot.sh rockpi4b”, which produces the expected files:
XXX@YYY-ubuntu:~/Desktop/tmpUboot/rockchip-bsp/out/u-boot$ ls -l
total 2504
-rw-rw-r-- 1 m m 163836 Jun 17 14:57 idbloader.img
-rw-rw-r-- 1 m m 297294 Jun 17 14:57 rk3399_loader_v1.20.119.bin
drwxrwxr-x 2 m m 4096 Jun 17 14:57 spi
-rw-rw-r-- 1 m m 1048576 Jun 17 14:57 trust.img
-rw-rw-r-- 1 m m 1048576 Jun 17 14:57 uboot.img

Following the steps of “Method 3: Update U-Boot on Micro SD Card/eMMC module”, I insert an SD card into my laptop (unformatted, unmounted) and executed the three dd commands with the proper device for sdx
sudo dd if=./idbloader.img of=/dev/sdx bs=512 seek=64
sudo dd if=./uboot.img of=/dev/sdx bs=512 seek=16384
sudo dd if=./trust.img of=/dev/sdx bs=512 seek=24576
sync

Now I place this SD card into my RockPi 4B’s integrated SD card reader.

However when I power it up, u-boot doesn’t seem to be working. I say so due two observations:

  • Just powering it up connected to HDMI: No signal is output. According to the internet, u-boot itself should offer some command line interface.
  • Putting my other SD card (the one with the original system on it) into an USB SD card reader, and into an USB port of the RockPi, and then powering up the system: No signal on the HDMI port. here I would expect the system to ultimately boot from the Sd-card in the USB reader, going first via uboot on the sd card inserted into the integrated reader.

Does anyone have some information about this process that could help? I would be glad for any help!
My ultimate goal here is to boot off the USB hard disk, so if there is a better way that u-boot on an SD card I’m open to it as well. :slight_smile:

Ultimately resolved via a different method as described here: 4C_plus no running OS?

(no u-boot, but simply deleting rootfs from an sd card with the image on it will lead to it being able to boot from the connected usb storage)