I have a NanoPi Neo V1.4 running Armbian 23.8.1 bullseye with kernel nanopineo 6.1.63-current-sunxi.

Now, that I got my micro-USB port working for a SD card holder, I want to programmatically backup my boot SD on a regular base to another SD.

Yes, it works by a full dd-copy. but this is quite time consuming and I want to skip some directories while backup, which does not work with dd.

 

The idea:

• Take a new SD (same model as source SD)
• Create a new partition table and a primary partition 1 with fully equal parameters as my source SD
• Format partition 1 with ext4 and mount to /mnt
• rsync all files (exclude some directories as e.g. /var/log) from source / to target / (which is /mnt/)
• Use this SD in case of a problem with the source SD as new boot SD

 

In /boot/armbianEnv.txt i have rootdev=/dev/mmcblk0p1. No UUID used.

 

But, it just does not boot. The LED's of my NanoPi stay on with no blinking at all. Nothing is written to /var/log.

Unfortunately I cannot connect a console to the NanoPi to see the boot messages. Only SSH at this time.

 

What is missing on the new SD? I assume something with the U-Boot bootloader?

 

Can anybody help me? What is missing and needs to be copied to the SD? I assume to the bytes 512-8192 just in front of partition 1 and after the partition table.

Even that a full dd works, I'd like to know how to do that manually.

 

Thanks a lot for help 🙂

Edited February 10, 20242 yr by mdrmdr

Why is it always the case that after asking for help, you keep looking and then you find the solution? 😉

 

The SD boots using the instructions on this page: https://docs.armbian.com/User-Guide_Recovery/#flashing-boot-loader

In my case using this U-Boot files: https://mirrors.dotsrc.org/armbian-apt/pool/main/l/linux-u-boot-nanopineo-current/

 

Maybe this helps someone having the same issue.

 

Update question:

Maybe one can answer that: I did use u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin from the above URL, which works perfectly well.

Why does the same file from https://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/dists/bullseye/main/installer-armhf/current/images/u-boot/NanoPiNeo/ not work?

With the one from the Debian site, the NanoPi does not boot. To write I use: dd if=u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin of=/dev/sda bs=8k seek=1

 

Update 2:

Guess I found my error. The Debian U-Boot file is just not made for an NanoPi Neo running Armbian.

I'm now using the one which comes with the installation, which is /usr/lib/linux-u-boot-current-nanopineo/u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin. This works fine.

Edited February 11, 20242 yr by mdrmdr