Re: Pinebook Pro boot from NVME

[paul <goodoldpaul@autistici.org>]

Hi Vagrant,

On 10/12/23 06:41, Vagrant Cascadian wrote:
> On 2023-10-07, paul via wrote:
>> I'm interested in using the best distro in the world on my Pinebook Pro
>> (currently the bootloader is broken on master, see [0], but guix
>> time-machine allows me to still be able to proceed).
> I was not aware of this bug, will try and take a look at it sometime,
> though not quire sure when...
>
>
>> I'm able to do so and Guix boots perfectly from choosing the SD card
>> from the Tow Boot menu but I'm unable to make the default image boot
>> from a NVME disk.
>>
>> This is the workflow I'm using:
>>
>> image=$(guix time-machine --commit=d6a53849935f8584e1df57faa79c18c23fbb2aa1 --system image -e '(@ (gnu system images pinebook-pro) pinebook-pro-barebones-raw-image)' --system=aarch64-linux)
> If you are using this specific commit to get a working u-boot, you
> probably do not need to, as Tow Boot replaces u-boot entirely... but on
> to the real issue...
Could you please elaborate on the correct way to boot a Guix system with 
tow boot? I'm not very experienced but, since I run tow boot, how can I 
build a correct image without u-boot?
>
>
>> sudo dd if=$image of=/dev/mmblk1 bs=4M status=progress oflag=sync
>>
>> for flashing the sd card and
>>
>> sudo dd if=$image of=/dev/nvme0n1 bs=4M status=progress oflag=sync
>>
>> for flashing the nvme disk.
> Since you dd'ed the exact same image to both partitions, they will have
> the identical filesystem labels and uuids, and which one is associated
> with the label/uuid may vary from one boot to the next... this is likely
> the cause for the behavior you describe...
:( Thank you, this is what happens by testing at late night.
>
>> I'm using tow boot and i have armbian on emmc, guix system on sd card
>> and guix system on nvme. One really strange behavior happens:
>>
>>   1. I choose the nvme option in tow boot
>>   2. I'm instantaneously presented the U-Boot menu (as opposed to when I
>>      choose the sd card, where I'm also presented u-boot but quite a lot
>>      slower) so I'm pretty sure that the bootloader is correctly read
>>      from the disk
>>   3. a Guix System loads but when I log in as root and run mount the /
>>      filesystem is mounted on /dev/mmblk1
> Does it boot to the NVMe partition correctly when you remove the SD
> card?
No it does not. If I remove the sd card and don't change anything else 
guix is not booting. I'm attaching [0] a video of the behavior, 
basically the screen stays black forever.
> You need to change at least one of them to use a different filesystem
> label, and the system configuration needs to be updated as well. Or
> build a second image with an alternate label/uuid (it should go fairly
> fast, as most of the components will be identical). It would also be
> wise to not have identical uuids, though I am not sure how easy that is
> to do...

That was an extreme situation in which i found myself after many failed 
trials. My goal is just to be able to dd an image able boot a Guix 
System from nvme.

Is there something i can do to increase verbosity of some log? Maybe 
uboot or the kernel?


Thank you for your time,


giacomo



[0]: https://libre.video/videos/watch/ce63c53b-68c9-4943-b74b-52e71af6fc20