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R4S images do not boot

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I'm trying to get either Debian Core or FriendlyCore (I'm presuming that is some kind of Ubuntu derivative) to run on my R4S. It is running OpenWRT from the OpenWRT site (]rk3399-sd-friendlywrt-22.03-20230210.img.gz) and it runs OK. So the R4S is not to blame.

Both the Debian Core image and the FriendlyCore image have an unusual partition layout:

Code: Select all

GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.9

Partition table scan:
  MBR: protective
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.
Disk /dev/sde: 124735488 sectors, 59.5 GiB
Model: USB3.0 CRW   -SD
Sector size (logical/physical): 512/512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 73987B6B-4974-4C94-A3E8-58AB2EB7A946
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
Main partition table begins at sector 2 and ends at sector 33
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 15234340
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 16350 sectors (8.0 MiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1           16384           24575   4.0 MiB     FFFF  uboot
   2           24576           32767   4.0 MiB     FFFF  trust
   3           32768           40959   4.0 MiB     FFFF  misc
   4           40960           49151   4.0 MiB     FFFF  dtbo
   5           49152           81919   16.0 MiB    FFFF  resource
   6           81920          163839   40.0 MiB    FFFF  kernel
   7          163840          262143   48.0 MiB    FFFF  boot
   8          262144         2752511   1.2 GiB     FFFF  rootfs
   9         2752512        15234340   6.0 GiB     FFFF  userdata


This is from rk3399-sd-debian-bullseye-core-4.19-arm64-20230314.img. I uncompressed the img.gz file to avoid any error from a gzip | dd pipe because of alignment or something like that, though I've never encountered such a problem before.

Note that the partition codes are all zero, which is very unusual for a GPT partition. I ran the "strings" program on the first partition, and it turned up a lot of strings that looked like they came from various programs, so that might indeed be a uboot partition.

The R4S I bought is with enclosure, so I don't want to open that to not loose the warranty. I can't access the serial console to debug this problem.

I presume that images on Google Drive at …/NanoPi_R4S_series/01_Official images/01_SD card images should be usable with a regular R4S, but I have no idea how to get them to run.
Arture Le Coiffeur wrote:
I'm trying to get either Debian Core or FriendlyCore (I'm presuming that is some kind of Ubuntu


Did you try https://www.armbian.com/nanopi-r4s/ ?

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