I have just received my BPI-R3 mini and tried to flash the latest OpenWRT image to EMMC (mtk-bpi-r3mini-EMMC-20230719.img). I have followed the official instruction from the wiki.
4. Execute following command to enable and copy image to EMMC device:
* echo 0 > /sys/block/mmcblk0boot0/force_ro
* dd if=bl2_emmc.img of=/dev/mmcblk0boot0
* dd if=mtk-bpi-r3mini-EMMC-20230719.img of=/dev/mmcblk0
* mmc bootpart enable 1 1 /dev/mmcblk0
I couldn’t find bl2_emmc.img in the Google Drive download folder, so I have skipped this step. I have only done the dd if=mtk-bpi-r3mini-EMMC-20230719.img ... step. After this the system doesn’t boot.
[ 1.291585] nmbm nmbm_spim_nand: Signature found at block 1023 [0x07fe0000]
[ 1.299907] nmbm nmbm_spim_nand: First info table with writecount 0 found in block 960
[ 1.311854] nmbm nmbm_spim_nand: Second info table with writecount 0 found in block 963
[ 1.319842] nmbm nmbm_spim_nand: NMBM has been successfully attached
[ 1.326285] 4 fixed-partitions partitions found on MTD device nmbm_spim_nand
[ 1.329276] mtk-msdc 11230000.mmc: phase: [map:ffffffff] [maxlen:32] [final:10]
[ 1.333313] Creating 4 MTD partitions on "nmbm_spim_nand":
[ 1.333319] 0x000000000000-0x000000100000 : "BL2"
[ 1.341531] mmc0: new HS400 MMC card at address 0001
[ 1.346591] 0x000000100000-0x000000180000 : "u-boot-env"
[ 1.351454] mmcblk0: mmc0:0001 008GB0 7.28 GiB
[ 1.356076] 0x000000180000-0x000000380000 : "Factory"
[ 1.361566] mmcblk0boot0: mmc0:0001 008GB0 partition 1 4.00 MiB
[ 1.365880] 0x000000380000-0x000000580000 : "FIP"
[ 1.371112] mmcblk0boot1: mmc0:0001 008GB0 partition 2 4.00 MiB
[ 1.387092] mmcblk0rpmb: mmc0:0001 008GB0 partition 3 4.00 MiB, chardev (249:0)
[ 1.396985] GPT:Primary header thinks Alt. header is not at the end of the disk.
[ 1.404367] GPT:1 != 15269887
[ 1.407322] GPT:Alternate GPT header not at the end of the disk.
[ 1.413310] GPT:1 != 15269887
[ 1.416262] GPT: Use GNU Parted to correct GPT errors.
[ 1.421401] mmcblk0: p1 p2 p3 p4 p5 p6
[ 1.428104] 7 cmdlinepart partitions found on MTD device block2mtd: /dev/mmcblk0
[ 1.435491] Creating 7 MTD partitions on "block2mtd: /dev/mmcblk0":
[ 1.441743] 0x000000000000-0x000000480000 : "BL2"
[ 1.446832] 0x000000480000-0x000000680000 : "RF"
[ 1.451794] 0x000000680000-0x000000880000 : "FIP"
[ 1.456849] 0x000000880000-0x000002880000 : "Kernel"
[ 1.462147] 0x000002880000-0x000042880000 : "rootfs"
[ 1.467449] mtd: device 9 (rootfs) set to be root filesystem
[ 1.474020] mtdsplit: no squashfs found in "rootfs"
[ 1.478901] 0x000042880000-0x0000c2880000 : "usrdata"
[ 1.484315] 0x0000c2880000-0x0001d2000000 : "bmtpool"
[ 1.489709] block2mtd: mtd0: [/dev/mmcblk0] erase_size = 64KiB [65536]
[ 1.496346] hctosys: unable to open rtc device (rtc0)
[ 7.641370] jffs2: notice: (1) jffs2_build_xattr_subsystem: complete building xattr subsystem, 32 of xdatum (25 unchecked, 7 orphan) and 39 of xref (6 dead, 1 orphan) found.
[ 7.658489] VFS: Mounted root (jffs2 filesystem) readonly on device 31:9.
[ 7.665438] Freeing unused kernel memory: 448K
[ 7.669885] Run /sbin/init as init process
[ 7.673989] Run /etc/init as init process
[ 7.677997] Run /bin/init as init process
[ 7.682000] Run /bin/sh as init process
[ 7.685827] Kernel panic - not syncing: No working init found. Try passing init= option to kernel. See Linux Documentation/admin-guide/init.rst for guidance.
[ 7.699961] SMP: stopping secondary CPUs
[ 7.703868] Kernel Offset: disabled
[ 7.707340] CPU features: 0x0002,20002008
[ 7.711330] Memory Limit: none
[ 7.714370] Rebooting in 1 seconds..
It seems it can’t mount the rootfs. If I boot from the SPI NAND it can’t mount mmcblk0p6 partition. If I flash the opensource driver image (mtk-bpi-r3mini-mac80211-EMMC-20230719-single-image.bin) it boots and works correctly and the mmcblk0p6 partition mounts from SPI NAND. I suppose the MTK driver image is broken.