Hi everyone, I’ve just received my Banana Pi r3 and just getting started with it, serial console is ready and connected, sd card burnt is ready with latest Snapshot from official openwrt
Just to confirm, i should boot from sd card and install to nand in bootloader menu? After it’s done, power off device, switch boot switch to boot from nand? That’s it?
Few questions
Latest Snapshot is good to go?
Will it update my bootloader as well?
Nand vs nor , anyone using it on nor , what’s performance difference? What’s preferred
Please mention any additional steps needed for process above?
If you want to use the device in production right away and not be bothered with (rare) bugs in snapshot images, I’d recommend to use the OpenWrt 23.05.3 release instead which is known to be stable and work well on this device.
Yes, choosing to install via the bootloader menu will write the bootloader to the target media (and this is needed. you cannot run vanilla OpenWrt with SinoVoip’s loader which lacks features for uImage.FIT and device-tree overlays).
It’s important to mention that most problems users have been reporting with the installation process were due to faulty or bad microSD cards. If anything doesn’t work, try with a different microSD card.
Also be aware that all 4 dip switches for choosing the boot device (A, B) and chip-select on SPI (C) and MMC (D) bus need to be in the correct position for each step of the installation:
So “Don’t care” isn’t really true, you do need to care also about those.
hello there! i got R3 and i cannot boot it from microsd card to flash it to emmc, i download openwrt-23.05.4-mediatek-filogic-bananapi_bpi-r3-sdcard.img from openwrt site (ether snapshot or 23.05 release wont boot) burn it to microsd card using bpi-copy tools also tried to burn it using dd it doesn’t matter, jumper all in high (up) position and this is what i get output in console:
NOTICE: BL2: v2.9(release):OpenWrt v2023-07-24-00ac6db3-2 (mt7986-sdmmc-ddr4)
NOTICE: BL2: Built : 22:14:18, Jul 15 2024
NOTICE: WDT: Cold boot
NOTICE: WDT: disabled
OTICE: CPU: MT7986 (2000MHz)
NOTICE: EMI: Using DDR4 settings
plex R/W mem test passed
ERROR: MSDC: Command has timed out with cmd=8, arg=0x1aa
ERROR: MSDC: Command has timed out with cmd=17, arg=0x0
ERROR: Partition 'fip' not found
ERROR: FIP boot source initialization failed with -2
PANIC at PC : 0x000000000020533c
but if i insert sd card to pc i can see the fip partition there
and if i burn snapshot it says something about gpt partition error
so i guess im stuck there but i can boot if all jumpers in low position then i get U-boot menu but not much to see there i can’t flash or install anything from there
also the wiki Getting Started with BPI-R3 - Banana Pi Wiki mentions something about some kind of additional packages to have to be put in the usb stick in order to flash to emmc packages like mtk-bpi-r3-SD-WAN1-SFP1-20220619-single-image.img, mtk-bpi-r3-NAND-WAN1-SFP1-20220619-single-image.bin, bl2_emmc.img, mtk-bpi-r3-EMMC-WAN1-SFP1-20220619-single-image.img so what it all about i don’t really get it
Afaik boot from sd card boot with nand is 1-1-1-1 for boot switches. B=0 results booting from nand…so independ on what you have on sdmmc you do not boot from it
Hello, I am using version 21.02 and I want to ask if there is a newer version and where and which one to download specifically. I use (SPIM-NAND) Thank you
Sorry to revive this old thread, im trying to install mainline 23.05.5 openwrt on the R3, i flashed the sdcard following openwrt windows instructions with balena-etcher. The R3 refuses to boot with the message:
NOTICE: BL2: v2.9(release):OpenWrt v2023-07-24-00ac6db3-2 (mt7986-sdmmc-ddr4)
NOTICE: BL2: Built : 12:34:46, Sep 23 2024
NOTICE: WDT: Cold boot
NOTICE: WDT: disabled
NOTICE: CPU: MT7986 (2000MHz)
NOTICE: EMI: Using DDR4 settings
NOTICE: EMI: Detected DRAM size: 2048MB
NOTICE: EMI: complex R/W mem test passed
ERROR: Partition 'fip' not found
ERROR: FIP boot source initialization failed with -2
PANIC at PC : 0x000000000020533c
It is the same error as pidrila got before, did that ever get solved?
Yes, the sdcards i tried were completely empty, apparently i had 2 bad sdcards and i had to get a new 3rd one from another pi to get it to work. I found it odd that both would not work while they did in other pi’s but i guess the R3 is more strict on what cards it accepts
To be fair both were slightly older cards in use with older pi’s maybe they just weren’t fast enough?
It’s possible that they do not support modes bpi-r3 tries in software or not in the ranges it requires.
For new/clean cards: new cards have one partition using full size and gpt is at beginning of card and a backup gpt at the end of disk. This backup gpt is not overwritten by image flashing and may cause issues because both gpt do not match then.
But as far as you understand you got r3 up and running.