Hello, I am using my Renegade with the Armbian I compiled myself. Now there is only one partition on my system:

Number  Start    End      Size     Type     File system  Flags
        0.03MiB  16.0MiB  16.0MiB           Free Space
 1      16.0MiB  5580MiB  5564MiB  primary  ext4
        5580MiB  7620MiB  2040MiB           Free Space

I want to add a boot partition like Raspberry OS, so I can make some configration on the PC through boot partition. Raspberry OS's partition always like that:

Number  Start     End       Size      Type     File system  Flags
        0.02MiB   4.00MiB   3.98MiB            Free Space
 1      4.00MiB   260MiB    256MiB    primary  fat32        lba
 2      260MiB    14939MiB  14679MiB  primary  ext4
        14939MiB  14940MiB  0.95MiB            Free Space

Is there any method?

32 minutes ago, DavidJS said:

Is there any method?

https://github.com/armbian/build/tree/master/config/boards
Add BOOTFS_TYPE="fat" to the end of the board config file. Perhaps it works if added as a parameter. But this is internal switch - if it won't work properly, its on you to debug.

@Igor,thanks for your relpy!
I tried to add the BOOTFS_TYPE="fat" to the end of the board config file. It really generated the boot partition! But after the bootloader boot, the kernel cannot boot successfully, the console shows like below:

U-Boot 2021.07-armbian (May 28 2022 - 14:59:35 +0800)

Model: Firefly roc-rk3328-cc
DRAM:  1022 MiB
PMIC:  RK8050 (on=0x40, off=0x00)
MMC:   mmc@ff500000: 1
Loading Environment from MMC... *** Warning - bad CRC, using default environment

In:    serial@ff130000
Out:   serial@ff130000
Err:   serial@ff130000
Model: Firefly roc-rk3328-cc
Net:   eth1: ethernet@ff550000
Hit any key to stop autoboot:  0 
switch to partitions #0, OK
mmc1 is current device
Scanning mmc 1:1...
Found /extlinux/extlinux.conf
Retrieving file: /extlinux/extlinux.conf
349 bytes read in 4 ms (85 KiB/s)
1:	Armbian
Retrieving file: /boot/uInitrd
Failed to load '/boot/uInitrd'
Skipping Armbian for failure retrieving initrd
SCRIPT FAILED: continuing...
64809 bytes read in 9 ms (6.9 MiB/s)
7[r[999;999H[6n8Scanning disk mmc@ff500000.blk...
Found 3 disks
No EFI system partition
BootOrder not defined
EFI boot manager: Cannot load any image
MMC Device 0 not found
no mmc device at slot 0
starting USB...
Bus usb@ff5c0000: USB EHCI 1.00
Bus usb@ff5d0000: USB OHCI 1.0
Bus usb@ff580000: USB DWC2
scanning bus usb@ff5c0000 for devices... 1 USB Device(s) found
scanning bus usb@ff5d0000 for devices... 1 USB Device(s) found
scanning bus usb@ff580000 for devices... 2 USB Device(s) found
       scanning usb for storage devices... 0 Storage Device(s) found

Device 0: unknown device
Speed: 100, full duplex
BOOTP broadcast 1
BOOTP broadcast 2
BOOTP broadcast 3
BOOTP broadcast 4
BOOTP broadcast 5
BOOTP broadcast 6
BOOTP broadcast 7
BOOTP broadcast 8
BOOTP broadcast 9
BOOTP broadcast 10
BOOTP broadcast 11
BOOTP broadcast 12
BOOTP broadcast 13
BOOTP broadcast 14
BOOTP broadcast 15
BOOTP broadcast 16
BOOTP broadcast 17

Is there any step I haven't made?

18 minutes ago, DavidJS said:

Is there any step I haven't made?

Yes. You didn't read my answer. I said that "if it won't work properly, its on you to debug". I suspected this will happen since we are not paying attention to making FAT boot support  This exists in the system with one reason only - in case some hardware can't be boot from ext4 directly, we use this and adopt boot scripts to meet this scenario. And this is your job - to adopt boot scripts - what boot log tells you?

15 minutes ago, Igor said:

Yes. You didn't read my answer. I said that "if it won't work properly, its on you to debug". I suspected this will happen since we are not paying attention to making FAT boot support  This exists in the system with one reason only - in case some hardware can't be boot from ext4 directly, we use this and adopt boot scripts to meet this scenario. And this is your job - to adopt boot scripts - what boot log tells you?

Oh, so except the boot log I provided above, is there still other logs I can find?

6 minutes ago, DavidJS said:

Oh, so except the boot log I provided above, is there still other logs I can find?

 

No, that's all.

@Igor, I found the log showed:

Retrieving file: /boot/uInitrd
Failed to load '/boot/uInitrd'

And I made the system without boot partition and boot successfully, it can retrieve the "/boot/uInitrd" successfully. So on the "ok system", I continue to type:

"ls -l /boot", and it shows:

root@renegade:/boot# ls -l
total 60676
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     1536 May 16 16:12 armbian_first_run.txt.template
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    38518 May 16 16:12 boot.bmp
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   232159 May 16 16:01 config-5.16.20-rockchip64
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root       22 May 16 16:11 dtb -> dtb-5.16.20-rockchip64
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root     4096 May 16 16:11 dtb-5.16.20-rockchip64
drwxrwxr-x 2 root root     4096 May 16 16:10 extlinux
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root       26 May 16 16:11 Image -> vmlinuz-5.16.20-rockchip64
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 12589167 May 16 16:16 initrd.img-5.16.20-rockchip64
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  6331787 May 16 16:01 System.map-5.16.20-rockchip64
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root       26 May 16 16:16 uInitrd -> uInitrd-5.16.20-rockchip64
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 12589231 May 16 16:16 uInitrd-5.16.20-rockchip64
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 30327296 May 16 16:01 vmlinuz-5.16.20-rockchip64

There is a file of "uInitrd-5.16.20-rockchip64" on the /boot direction.

 

And on the system I add boot partition, there is no "uInitrd-5.16.20-rockchip64"! Maybe this is the key?

What does your extlinux/extlinux.conf file look like? Without seeing the contents I can't be sure, but on its face it looks like it can't load the files, because it can't find them.

 

For example; since you are now booting from a boot partition, it shouldn't be checking for `/boot/$file. Instead it should be loading the files from the `/` of the boot partition.

On 5/28/2022 at 6:45 PM, Cornelius said:

What does your extlinux/extlinux.conf file look like? Without seeing the contents I can't be sure, but on its face it looks like it can't load the files, because it can't find them.

 

For example; since you are now booting from a boot partition, it shouldn't be checking for `/boot/$file. Instead it should be loading the files from the `/` of the boot partition.

Thanks for your remind! It is the key, it still used "/boot/" on the extlinux/extlinux.conf file. After I changed it, it works!

 

Thank you for you two, @Igor, @Cornelius