@Mathias @GreyLinux - Some pics of my "dirty" setup.

@soerenderfor
wow that is incredibly tight. Great effort getting all that to fit into the NAS case, utilising every inch.

I have a meager 2x 2.5 inch SSD's  so lots of wasted space .

I might have to ask your opinion on the simpNaS solution you use , but that's a topic for another thread .

@GreyLinux - The "flexi sata cables" was a MUST to fit the 5 drives. 

I have used SimpNAS with sucess, works for the most "out of the box" with many of the sata cards i used.

Now i run Armbian buster and OMV again, the reason is i use OMV on my other machines. And also that i can boot from the sata card and no sd or emmc is needed.

@GreyLinux - How is it going with your new sata card and the board? Thanks,

@soerenderfor
its going really really well , I've just installed simpnas on the rockpro64 and I'm seriously impressed, it's brilliant . The card has been working flawlessly doesn't skip a beat with heavy uploading and the rockpro64 barely uses any of it's processing power to run several docker  containers and simpnas .

I'm running kernel 5.8.17

@GreyLinux - Same as me, really impressed. When you find the "right card", it took some time for me (7) different cards.

I think I was just lucky that a lot of you guys had tried other cards and I could learn from your hard work . Marvell card for the win !

@GreyLinux - Do you boot over micro? You can boot from the card if you flash spi on the board, i do  run from SSD

@soerenderfor
I think this will be my next step ! Currently I do indeed boot from the SD card . Would you have any info on how to best to boot from the ssd instead?

@GreyLinux - Yes, i can show how i done it, i will wirte tomorrow. Its late for me now. I be back tomorrow

@GreyLinux - Sorry for the delay, i did use 2020.01-ayufan-2014-gff2cdd38 uboot. I'm pretty sure just flashed it on sd card (not 100% sure) and flashed spi, the i could boot Armbian from my "5" port on sata pcie card.

Maybe it is possible with

armbian-config

I'm not sure, because i haven't tryed uboot update from armbian-config.

On 11/13/2020 at 9:28 PM, soerenderfor said:

@GreyLinux - Sorry for the delay, i did use 2020.01-ayufan-2014-gff2cdd38 uboot. I'm pretty sure just flashed it on sd card (not 100% sure) and flashed spi, the i could boot Armbian from my "5" port on sata pcie card.

Maybe it is possible with

armbian-config

I'm not sure, because i haven't tryed uboot update from armbian-config.

 

 

Nice 👍 thanks @soerenderfor
this is my next objective . I will have a look into whether I can do it with armbian-config .

On 11/13/2020 at 10:28 PM, soerenderfor said:

On 11/13/2020 at 10:28 PM, soerenderfor said:

@GreyLinux - Sorry for the delay, i did use 2020.01-ayufan-2014-gff2cdd38 uboot. I'm pretty sure just flashed it on sd card (not 100% sure) and flashed spi, the i could boot Armbian from my "5" port on sata pcie card.

Maybe it is possible with

armbian-config

I'm not sure, because i haven't tryed uboot update from armbian-config.

 

Hi @soerenderfor, can you explain a bit further the process?

 

I downloaded the u-boot-flash-spi-rockpro64 from there : https://github.com/ayufan-rock64/linux-mainline-u-boot/releases/tag/2020.01-ayufan-2014-gff2cdd38

I downloaded the last release of armbian for RockPro64.

 

Then :

 -Flash u-boot

- Install armbian then use armbian-config to move the system to my Sata SSD (Boot from SPI - System on SATA)

- Still in armbian-config, I accepted/declined the option to update the bootloader in the SPI flash

 

I did those three in every order, flashing first then installing, installing then flashing, accepting the update to the bootloader in armbian-config, then declining it...

 

Leaving the bootloader on the SD card does works ("Boot from SD - System on SATA" in Armbian-config), but I can get my RockPro64 to boot directly from the SATA SSD.

 

What am I doing wrong / What did you do exactly to make it work?

@soerenderfor Sorry for double commenting, I misused the @ function in my first message

@Waryle - Myself did use, uboot from.. Auyfan, i'm pretty sure, it was an img to burn on the sdcard to the spi. It was pretty easy. I will look for it tonight. Thanks.

*Im not 100% sure if the uboot, was able to boot from any port, what card do you use?
*This one on your sdcard -  u-boot-flash-spi-rockpro64.img.xz, boot up. If remember right it is that one, and when your box start blinking, it should be done. I did wait a minut, just to make sure it was done right.

NOTE

**2020.01-ayufan-2014-gff2cdd38 released

ayufan: rockchip: allow to boot scsi4, as JMS585 can have 5 drives

Sorry, the forum limits me to 1 comment every once in a while, I couldn't answer earlier.

 

@soerenderfor

I did use a Samsung SD Card ( https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Class-Micro-Adapter-MB-MC32GA/dp/B0749KG1JK/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=samsung%2Bsd%2B32gb&qid=1607026358&sr=8-3&th=1 ).

I did flash the u-boot-flash-spi-rockpro64.img.xz using those instructions : https://github.com/sigmaris/u-boot/wiki/Flashing-U-Boot-to-SPI

I even waited an extra 5 minutes afterwards before rebooting just to be sure.

 

I also tried Sigmaris' 2020.10 uboot version, and asked for help there : https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=8685&pid=84734#pid84734

 

Just to be sure : you are currently booting from SPI directly to a SATA drive, not from EMMC, right?

6 minutes ago, Waryle said:

the forum limits me to 1 comment every once in a while, I couldn't answer earlier.

 

That is part of some (unfortunately necessary) spam prevention measure.

 

I gave you a like, so that restriction should lift within 24 hours.

 

Cheers!  And welcome to the forums.

@Waryle I boot up from SSD drive, i use a 5 port sata card. And boot from the upper port "5"  

Im not sure if it can boot from other ports, but i did disconnet all other drives, than the "boot" drive, on first boot-up

Edited December 3, 20205 yr by soerenderfor
Added boot procedure

On 12/3/2020 at 9:28 PM, TRS-80 said:

 

That is part of some (unfortunately necessary) spam prevention measure.

 

I gave you a like, so that restriction should lift within 24 hours.

 

Cheers!  And welcome to the forums.

That was very kind of you, thank you!

On 12/3/2020 at 10:01 PM, soerenderfor said:

@Waryle I boot up from SSD drive, i use a 5 port sata card. And boot from the upper port "5"  

Im not sure if it can boot from other ports, but i did disconnet all other drives, than the "boot" drive, on first boot-up

I have finally found the problem after hours of looking up for documentation and retries. I had the idea to take a PC monitor and plug the RockPro64 on it to see what kind of error it could throw, and work from there :

• Uboot seem to boot only on the first SATA drive of the list : I had a SATA card with 4 ports, I plugged my SDD in the port 1 and my two other drives in the 3 and 4.
• Uboot does not like BTRFS. Once I have plugged the SSD on the port 1, I had a initramfs error, so I went again in armbian-config, used the "Boot from SPI - System on SATA" option, and this time I chosed Ext4 instead of BTRFS.

It's working now. I could have found a way to put only the /boot on an Ext4 partition and the system on BTRFS, but I have lost too much time and I'm gettting lazy, so I'll just leave it that way, Ext4 is perfectly fine anyway.

 

Thanks for you help !

@Waryle Thanks for update, and the fine description. Yeah, BTRFS is a problem i did also hit the "wall" and did also go through with Ext4, i havent got any downtime yet.