Trouble getting the official images to boot

[ppheerlen]

Hi guys,

Just got myself a new NanoPi R1 (combo kit, H3 chip, 8GB eMMC and metal case) and I need some help getting started.
I tried following the guide at http://wiki.friendlyarm.com/wiki/index.php/NanoPi_R1, but I'm running into issues.
Downloaded nanopi-r1_eflasher_friendlywrt_4.14_armhf_20191230.img.zip, extracted it and wrote it to a 16 GB Sandisk (HC1, class 10) microSD card with balenaEtcher (https://www.balena.io/etcher/).
Inserted the card in the NanoPi, connected an ethernet cable between the NanoPi's WAN port and my router, connected my laptop to the NanoPi with a serial adapter (https://www.friendlyarm.com/index.php?r ... uct_id=178), started Putty (serial on COM4, 9600 bps) and powered on the NanoPi with a 5V, 2A power supply.
Red LED lighted up and then it started flashing. Nothing in the serial console and waited for minutes for something to happen. Alas, nothing did.

Tried again, this time with the ethernet cable connected to the NanoPi's LAN port. Nothing changed compared to last attempt.
Next try, this time with a 115200 bps serial connection. Nothing.

Tried the other official images https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... 1rITSA3y-C
Again, no success.

Frustrated, I looked for other images and found Armbian. This time I managed to get it to work. I downloaded Armbian Buster from https://www.armbian.com/nanopi-r1/ and wrote the image to an SD card. Connected to NanoPi with the serial adapter and Putty (baudrate 115200 bps, ethernet cable connected to WAN port). Powered up the NanoPi and saw the usual Linux boot messages scroll until I got the login prompt.

So my question is: what do I need to do to get the official images to work?
Thanks in advance for your help.

Paul

[igorp]

Hi guys,

Just got myself a new NanoPi R1 (combo kit, H3 chip, 8GB eMMC and metal case) and I need some help getting started.
I tried following the guide at http://wiki.friendlyarm.com/wiki/index.php/NanoPi_R1, but I'm running into issues.
Downloaded nanopi-r1_eflasher_friendlywrt_4.14_armhf_20191230.img.zip, extracted it and wrote it to a 16 GB Sandisk (HC1, class 10) microSD card with balenaEtcher (https://www.balena.io/etcher/).
Inserted the card in the NanoPi, connected an ethernet cable between the NanoPi's WAN port and my router, connected my laptop to the NanoPi with a serial adapter (https://www.friendlyarm.com/index.php?r ... uct_id=178), started Putty (serial on COM4, 9600 bps) and powered on the NanoPi with a 5V, 2A power supply.
Red LED lighted up and then it started flashing. Nothing in the serial console and waited for minutes for something to happen. Alas, nothing did.

Tried again, this time with the ethernet cable connected to the NanoPi's LAN port. Nothing changed compared to last attempt.
Next try, this time with a 115200 bps serial connection. Nothing.

Tried the other official images https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... 1rITSA3y-C
Again, no success.

Frustrated, I looked for other images and found Armbian. This time I managed to get it to work. I downloaded Armbian Buster from https://www.armbian.com/nanopi-r1/ and wrote the image to an SD card. Connected to NanoPi with the serial adapter and Putty (baudrate 115200 bps, ethernet cable connected to WAN port). Powered up the NanoPi and saw the usual Linux boot messages scroll until I got the login prompt.

So my question is: what do I need to do to get the official images to work?
Thanks in advance for your help.

Paul

Why do you want to downgrade?

[ppheerlen]

Why do you want to downgrade?

It's not that I want to downgrade, I just want to install FriendlyWRT or OpenWRT and use eMMC memory.

In the meantime I found this guide that hopefully will allow me to at least boot OpenWRT:
https://gist.github.com/pjobson/95b67bc ... 0bf15ca99d
This remark might be the key to my problem: "Use the board headers, not the UART. I could never get the UART to do anything".

[igorp]

Why do you want to downgrade?

It's not that I want to downgrade, I just want to install FriendlyWRT or OpenWRT and use eMMC memory.

Best would be to use OpenWrt within Docker container on top of Armbian or some Debian based router/firewall solution. Its also complicated but worth the trouble.

Why do you want to downgrade?

This remark might be the key to my problem: "Use the board headers, not the UART. I could never get the UART to do anything".

Oh, yes. We added console to both headers while here it might be missing.

[ppheerlen]

I solved the problem. For future reference:

- the external serial port does not provide console output for FriendlyWRT and FriendlyCore by default.
- the serial header pins (next to the WAN/eth0 ethernet port) do work. Use a 115200 bps serial terminal.