Odroid XU4 eMMC installation problem

[apm]

I recently received my Odroid XU4 and have installed Arch linux on an SD card which is working well. However, I cannot get an eMMC install working. After I go through the partitioning and system installation steps I cannot get the kernel blue-LED "heatbeat" when I insert the eMMC and adapter into the XU4 SD slot and so cannot flash the bootloader to the protected area of the eMMC card.

The eMMC card works fine, after several failures of the Arch install, I installed the hardkernel Ubuntu 15.04 image onto the eMMC card which is working well.

Has anyone had any success getting Arch linux to boot from an eMMC card on the Odroid XU3 or XU4?

[Screamy]

Official Odroid EMMC recovery:

http://odroid.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=en:emmc_recovery_xu3

[supro47]

I had issues as well, but came up with a solution. Install arch on both an sdcard and the emmc according to the instructions. Plug both in, set the switch to sdcard and boot up. For some reason (probably something in either the boot settings or fstab), it boots off of the sdcard, but mounts the file system of the emmc card (so you are running off of the arch install on the emmc). Then run sd_fusing.sh on the emmc (it's either /dev/mmcblk0 or /dev/mmcblk1, I can't remember, but it doesn't hurt to do both). Then poweroff, switch the boot selector to emmc and remove the sdcard. Everything runs as expected after that.

For some reason, you can't write to the hidden boot sector on the emmc card when it's plugged up through a usb reader. The instructions state that you can write to it when it's plugged into the sdcard slot on the XU4, but that wasn't working for me.

[apm]

Many thanks supro47! Your procedure worked and I am now running and booting directly from the eMMC card.

No question that the official Odroid-XU4 installation instructions in "eMMC Module Creation" should be changed to supro47's solution.

Also, in "Micro SD Card Creation" the step 5 and step 6 procedures should end with the additional command "sync" to make sure all files are completely written to the Micro SD or eMMC card before step 7 unmounting.

Thanks again supro47.