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ROCK 4C+ can't get Armbian booted.


Engineer-id

Buiding images based on Debian or Ubuntu with  6.1 linux mainline and 5.15 is not building correctly. Sure I get the development environment to build linux operating systems built ok, including u-boot, but flashing bookworm, bullseye or buster to sdcard just creates:

DOS Partition Table
Offset Sector: 0
Units are in 512-byte sectors

      Slot      Start        End          Length       Description
000:  Meta      0000000000   0000000000   0000000001   Primary Table (#0)
001:  -------   0000000000   0000032767   0000032768   Unallocated
002:  000:000   0000032768   0002441215   0002408448   Linux (0x83)

Which obviously doesn't boot:

[Debug terminal output]

U-Boot TPL 2022.07 - armbian

rk3399_dmc_of_to_plat: Cannot read rockchip, sdrams-params -1

DRAM init failed -1

I am trying to get docker up and running as I want to use it in my project. I received a starter kit, put it together and it booted up ok from the sdcard. Updated and upgraded it, I installed docker and tested to find it wouldn't run as it required a vital net component, '...VLAN_BRIDGE...' to be installed, but it was missing in the kernel configuration. Followed the prompts to reconfigure the kernel (rebuild my own kernel) only for it all to come crashing down before my eyes a few hours later and before the build had finished.

Previously:

I downloaded ubuntu focal server for this ROCK 4C+ card expecting it to have the component installed ... it didn't, then debian bullseye kde version also missing the VLAN_BRIDGE component (I wasn't really expecting it to have it configured being a desktop version, but the server, I thought, yes!).

I have gone a bit further with my Armbian builds partition and dd'd idbloader.img and u-boot.itb onto the sdflashcard at the appropriate places, but it hasn't made any difference to the boot, and as far as I can tell there is no extlinux.conf on any of the armbian images. I probably should flash the boot.img, but all I can find is a u-boot.img, so I haven't tried it yet.

This is what my ubuntu focal server edition partition looks like:

GUID Partition Table (EFI)
Offset Sector: 0
Units are in 512-byte sectors

      Slot      Start        End          Length       Description
000:  Meta      0000000000   0000000000   0000000001   Safety Table
001:  -------   0000000000   0000000063   0000000064   Unallocated
002:  Meta      0000000001   0000000001   0000000001   GPT Header
003:  Meta      0000000002   0000000033   0000000032   Partition Table
004:  000       0000000064   0000008063   0000008000   loader1
005:  -------   0000008064   0000016383   0000008320   Unallocated
006:  001       0000016384   0000024575   0000008192   loader2
007:  002       0000024576   0000032767   0000008192   trust
008:  003       0000032768   0001081343   0001048576   boot
009:  004       0001081344   0062584927   0061503584   rootfs
010:  -------   0062584928   0062586879   0000001952   Unallocated

Next step might be to write some of this stuff into my armbian build partitions / spaces. Any one else in the same boat? I wonder why there is no support for docker in the downloadable images for the ROCK 4C+?

The article quoted at the beginning is old and you should use 6.3 edge and 6.1 current and yes, 6.1 has ROCK 4C+ support built in as stated in the article. Adding support in the Armbian build for ROCK 4C+ (rock-4cplus) and copying the defconfig before hand though works fine.

It's been a while since I installed linux, earliest I remember was RedHat Linux 5.2 which came bundled on a magazine as a disc back 30 years ago.

The ROCK 4C+ board doesn't have a SPI or the USB3.0 OTG option  not a lot going for it! Or am I missing it? 

Built images are not working, so what has to be done? All this, leaves my project way off in the background, right out on the Edge.

Sorry, if I haven't been much help, I am sure you can fix this though. And apologies if this post is in the wrong forum as my first thought was to post in the 'Getting Started Forum', still think so! :)    

 

 

 

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