Desktop images with Armbian Linux v6.12 variant Cinnamon with mesa/vpu support fails to boot from SD card.

The message displayed on screen is "Begin: Running /scripts/init-premount ... (initramfs) _"

SPI was erased, and the minimal install have no issues booting from a sd card.

 

The SBC is an Orange Pi 5 Plus with 16gb ram

This ending up in initramfs with recent build I recognize, although I had this on a Radxa ROCK 3A and root cause is still unknown but I can't reproduce the problem with newer kernel, newer U-Boot, other power supply, other SD-card. So I am still curious what the reason was.

As this is 6.12, so mainline (kernel and uboot) and I would like to experience Cinnamon after a decade of not using/booting it, I did some thinking and downloaded the OPi5+ image you refer to and unpacked it onto a RPi4 free SD-card slot. Some string grep in the image shows:

 

U-Boot SPL 2024.10-rc3-armbian-2024.10-rc3-Sd11a-Pa706-H80a2-Vd733-Bda0a-R448a-dirty (Nov 30 2024 - 09:30:48 +0000)

 

Then mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 and I see there is a /core file, it seems a crash of the image generator tooling. anyway, I patched a vendor uboot for the Rock3a in the /dev/mmcblk0, set verbose=7 and set dtb not OPi5+ but for my RK3A, then unmount and put into my Rock3a and I could surf the web with FireFox ESR, even though Rock3A is RK3568 and the kernel version string contains 3588. (I have my SPI-flash disabled, so same as yours erased)

 

Then patched a mainline uboot from my normal Rock3a roottree (Noble, beta updated) onto the SD-card:

U-Boot SPL 2024.10-armbian-2024.10-Sf919-P35d0-Hba75-Vea36-Bdacf-R448a (Dec 09 2024 - 13:26:39 +0000)

Rebooted and still all OK.

 

The minimal 6.12 based image contains the same   2024.10-rc3-armbian-2024.10-rc3-Sd11a-Pa706-H80a2-Vd733-Bda0a-R448a-dirty  U-boot, so it might be a power or SD-card issue, I don't know.

 

Now maybe related to it, I have seen 1 or 2 times an I/O error with my Rock3a a few days ago, I have not really logged it as there are more important things to figure out first, but It might be a TRIM issue, a temporary busy stall or so. Anyway, I use/convert to Btrfs sooner or later as only then I can detect longterm (corruption) issues.

 

A test of Desktop images with Armbian Linux v6.12 https://dl.armbian.com/orangepi5-plus/Noble_current_kde-neon-kisak worked perfectly with sdcard. Which lends credence to the bookworm image having an issue, and not kernel 6.12 related issue. I have tested a variety of sd cards with the bookworm image, all failing at the initramfs stage.

You could check the UUID with blkid

 

/dev/mmcblk0p1: UUID="b23e98d0-700e-4a09-88b6-95675ee524f5" 

 

Then check if this is the same in /boot/armbianEnv.txt and /etc/fstab

11 hours ago, royk said:

You could check the UUID with blkid

 

/dev/mmcblk0p1: UUID="b23e98d0-700e-4a09-88b6-95675ee524f5" 

 

Then check if this is the same in /boot/armbianEnv.txt and /etc/fstab

I could run the image without doing any change to UUID in /boot/armbianEnv.txt and /etc/fstab. The big difference is of course that my test is another board+CPU+DTB. But on the other hand that makes it more strange. The 'Linux' OS part seems OK as it is able to run on a Rockchip 3568 SoC.

 

But the fact that there is a core file in the root of the image means that something went wrong during generating the image. That can be anywhere. I have not checked in detail where the core file originates from.

From a functional Orange Pi 5+ Debian Bookworm (vendor) OS I mounted the SD card containing the Armbian Bookworm with 6.12 kernel, I checked the uuid for the mounted mmblk1p1 (I don't have mmcblk0p1)

/dev/mmcblk1p1: LABEL="armbi_root" UUID="baa71ffd-ca4c-4b04-acfa-956e263f56dc"

with /boot/armbianEnv.txt being set to rootdev=UUID=baa71ffd-ca4c-4b04-acfa-956e263f56dc

and /etc/fstab being set to UUID=baa71ffd-ca4c-4b04-acfa-956e263f56dc / ext4 defaults,noatime,commit=120,errors=remount-ro 0 1

 

A boot to the Armbian Debian Bookworm 6.12 Cinnamon desktop SD Card stops at the initramfs loading  stage. I've downloaded the image several times and used balena etcher to write to a variety of sd cards, each failing at the same stage.

flash 6.12 desktop,server images into emmc , also the same problem

The SBC is an Orange Pi 5 Plus with 16gb ram

I think I found the reason for my problem. I was using POE with a splitter for powering the OP5+ and after switching to a power adapter the system worked fine, and I have the Cinnamon variant of kernel 6.12 booting appropriately.