If I open the image file for NanoPi NEO, I don't see the FAT32 boot partition.

 

> fdisk -l Armbian_5.38_Nanopineo_Ubuntu_xenial_next_4.14.14.img

Medium Armbian_5.38_Nanopineo_Ubuntu_xenial_next_4.14.14.img: 1,4 GiB, 1488977920 Bytes, 2908160 Sektoren
Einheiten: sectors von 1 * 512 = 512 Bytes
Sektorengröße (logisch/physisch): 512 Bytes / 512 Bytes
I/O Größe (minimal/optimal): 512 Bytes / 512 Bytes
Typ der Medienbezeichnung: dos
Medienkennung: 0xbcf97591

Gerät                                                  Boot Start    Ende Sektoren Größe Id Typ
Armbian_5.38_Nanopineo_Ubuntu_xenial_next_4.14.14.img1       8192 2908159  2899968  1,4G 83 Linux

If I flash the image on sd card I can't boot with it.

Usually, the best diagnostics would be a serial console to those three pins ...  the second one is enabled at USB OTG port, but it's available after the system is up.

 

Why there should be a FAT partition? This is Linux and we use only one ext4. Did you use Etcher for writing to SD card? Is card reliable?

 

Perhaps this problem:

 

Thank you, for your reply. Of cause Linux is able to read ext4. But I thought, that the first level bootloader of the H3 can't do that. All other ditributions I know are using a seperate fat partition for the bootloader.

Or is the bootloader located in raw format in front of the ext4 partition? This would explain all the free sectors in front of the ext4 partition.

 

Yes, I used Etcher. SD card is fine. At the moment I use the Linux distribution of FriedlyArm which is working fine on the same SD card (with a fat partition).

 

I will try to get the output of the serial console, so we can see what the bootloader is telling us...

5 minutes ago, coolchip said:

All other ditributions I know are using a seperate fat partition for the bootloader.

RaspberryPi needs FAT partition and some people even thinks that this is a special feature, which prevents boot failures and similar crap  Having boot FAT here is the "as compatible to Rpi as possible" crap even it does not create gain. TBH, there is some gain, for Windows folks, to edit boot environment ... but this, I believe, exists and works properly only on Armbian ... which has EXT4 by default 

 

9 minutes ago, coolchip said:

Or is the bootloader located in raw format in front of the ext4 partition? This would explain all the free sectors in front of the ext4 partition.

 

Exactly. For Allwinner boards, check this: http://linux-sunxi.org/Boot_Process

 

10 minutes ago, coolchip said:

Yes, I used Etcher. SD card is fine. At the moment I use the Linux distribution of FriedlyArm which is working fine on the same SD card (with a fat partition).

 

Then it can be SD card slot problem. Friendly ARM usually uses stock u-boot, which do not check if SD card is present, our (mainline) checks that. 

 

Serial console is a must to proceed.

Ok... it's alive. Seems that I only had trouble with ipv6. 

 

Thank you very much for your efforts and the great explanations. Now I know a bit more about the boot process at ARM Cores.