Just for curiosity, I've updated my Armbian on my Pine64 to the latest release. The latest u-boot for Pine64 (U-Boot SPL 2017.11-armbian (Jan 25 2018 - 08:32:21) seems to have an issue with the persistent u-boot environment. Once I've written a custom environment back to MMC using `saveenv´ the board hangs during boot.

Environment size: 10335/131068 bytes
=> saveenv
Saving Environment to MMC...
Writing to MMC(0)... done
=> reset
resetting ...
INFO:    PSCI Affinity Map:
INFO:      AffInst: Level 0, MPID 0x0, State ON
INFO:      AffInst: Level 0, MPID 0x1, State OFF
INFO:      AffInst: Level 0, MPID 0x2, State OFF
INFO:      AffInst: Level 0, MPID 0x3, State OFF

U-Boot SPL 2017.11-armbian (Jan 25 2018 - 08:32:21)
DRAM: 2048 MiB
Trying to boot from MMC1
NOTICE:  BL3-1: Running on A64/H64 (1689) in SRAM A2 (@0x44000)
NOTICE:  Configuring SPC Controller
NOTICE:  BL3-1: v1.0(debug):aa75c8d
NOTICE:  BL3-1: Built : 08:32:15, Jan 25 2018
NOTICE:  Configuring AXP PMIC
NOTICE:  PMIC: Output power control 2 is an unexpected 0xd9
ERROR:   PMIC: setup failed: -3
INFO:    BL3-1: Initializing runtime services
INFO:    BL3-1: Preparing for EL3 exit to normal world
INFO:    BL3-1: Next image address: 0x4a000000, SPSR: 0x3c9

This might be an edge case for most of the Armbian users, since Armbian doesn't rely on a custom u-boot environment in oder to boot.

I prefer to use my own u-boot framework instead, but it needs the capability to store a permanent custom u-boot environment.

So if there is a chance to fix this issue I'd really appreciate it. 

I can't find the start of the relevant discussion on the mailing list, but TL;DR saving the environment partially overwrites the u-boot binary, several fixes and safeguards were added to the current stable u-boot release and an ongoing environment migration efforts are planned for next stable releases.

Regarding Armbian - this will be an issue until we migrate to a newer u-boot version.

OK, thanks. I can live perfectly with the 5.24 u-boot release (U-Boot 2017.01-g0675f99 (Jan 20 2017 - 23:04:59 +0100)).

Does this issue affect other boards using mainline u-boot as well?

-

The 5.35 u-boot release (U-Boot 2017.09-armbian (Nov 22 2017 - 17:09:56 +0100)) works as well. 

Edited February 2, 20188 yr by umiddelb