[solved] Cubieboard : boot problem with single partition

[albertdazurs]

Hello,

I've been struggling for the last few days to perform a fresh install on a Cubieboard 1, following updated procedure available at : http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv7 ... cubieboard with no success.

The board apparently boots from the SD Card but there's no ouput visible on screen when connecting the board to the screen via HDMI and I cannot SSH into the system. The DHCP client list on my router shows no record for the board after boot.

I suspected the issue had to do with the fact that the procedure involves booting from a single-partitionned SD Card, which seems experimental (see : http://linux-sunxi.org/Bootable_SD_card ... _partition ). I re-formatted the card, making one 100Mb FAT partition as parittion 1 to store kernel and boot scripts, and a second ext4 partition for the rootfs, then I placed a new boot.scr in /boot , specifying among other boot arguments, that rootfs was on partition 2, and it worked lke a charm.

I'd be interested iin understanding what went wrong at first. Did others experienced a similar issue ? Could it possibly linked with the SD Card I was trying to use ?

Thanks for any clue on the matter, and please bear with my poor english

[WarheadsSE]

When you make the partitions, make sure that the first block of the first partition is @ 2048, not 63

[albertdazurs]

Thank you WarheadSE, I checked that too, but it didn't solve the problem
BTW, I have the same issue with Cubietruck (device won't boot with a single-partitioned SD card). Will try and change SD Card model to see if it's linked with the type of card I'm using.

[WarheadsSE]

Hook a serial cable while you are at it.

[Soilworker35]

Hi,

I have encountered the same issue here.

I tried both ways. Installing it on a SATA-Drive and on a sdcard with a single partition according to the installation procedure.

It get's stuck on at boot at "Starting kernel...". I can't log into via SSH nor via terminal with an HDMI Monitor connected.

Any help is highly appreciated.

Thanks and kind regards
Patrick

[WarheadsSE]

Serial.
Cable.

[albertdazurs]

Well, I tried with another SD Card with no success.

Here's a link to the full output of the boot process monitored via serial : http://pastebin.com/7skeCyfW

I guess the relevant part is :
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '
[ OK ] Found device /dev/mmcblk0p1.
Mounting /boot...
[FAILED] Failed to mount /boot.
See "systemctl status boot.mount" for details.
[DEPEND] Dependency failed for Local File Systems.')

systemctl status boot.mount -l outputs :
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '● boot.mount - /boot
Loaded: loaded (/etc/fstab)
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Fri 2010-01-01 00:07:55 UTC; 4 years 11 months ago
Where: /boot
What: /dev/mmcblk0p1
Docs: man:fstab(5)
man:systemd-fstab-generator(8)
Process: 88 ExecMount=/bin/mount -n /dev/mmcblk0p1 /boot -t vfat (code=exited, status=32)

Jan 01 00:07:55 alarm mount[88]: mount: /dev/mmcblk0p1 is already mounted or /boot busy
Jan 01 00:07:55 alarm mount[88]: /dev/mmcblk0p1 is already mounted on /
Jan 01 00:07:55 alarm systemd[1]: boot.mount mount process exited, code=exited status=32
Jan 01 00:07:55 alarm systemd[1]: Failed to mount /boot.
Jan 01 00:07:55 alarm systemd[1]: Unit boot.mount entered failed state.
')

And a link with full journalctl -xb output : http://pastebin.com/W4JnFMRT

[WarheadsSE]

You can clearly see it is trying to mount /boot.

You have single partition?
And you are still attempting to use the fstab from a dual partition?

[albertdazurs]

Thank you,

Well, I just followed the procedure and did not check wether /etc/fstab provided in http://archlinuxarm.org/os/ArchLinuxARM ... est.tar.gz was correct. In fact, it is not.

I edited /etc/fstab and now it works fine.

An update of the rootfs archive would probably save time for others...

Thanks for your help.