[bpi-r4] Debian or Ubuntu on emmc

Banana Pi Router design BPI-R4(MT7988)
1

Hello everybody!

How to install debian or ubuntu image on emmc memory? I tried to install ubuntu-24.04-server-bpi-r4-5.4-aarch64-sd-emmc.img but it won’t boot. I have shapshot OpenWrt image installed on snand.

Can I please some tutorial?

2

Emmc needs bl2 in boot0 block and set partconf right to boot from boot0

Basicly like r3 (and others)…

https://wiki.fw-web.de/doku.php?id=en:bpi-r3:uboot#writing_emmc

Skip the gpt part and flash your (or mine) image to userpartition. Below that is the bl2 part (3rd code block)

BPI-R3> mmc dev 0
switch to partitions #0, OK
mmc0(part 0) is current device
#switch to boot0 block
BPI-R3> mmc partconf 0 1 1 1
BPI-R3> mmc erase 0x0 0x400
BPI-R3> fatload usb 0:1 $loadaddr bl2_emmc_usb.img
200072 bytes read in 19 ms (10 MiB/s)
BPI-R3> mmc write ${loadaddr} 0x0 0x400

MMC write: dev # 0, block # 0, count 1024 ... 1024 blocks written: OK
#switch back to user-partition
BPI-R3> mmc partconf 0 1 1 0
3

I used your image generator @frank-w and now it works.

If someone will look how i did it:

  1. clone repo: GitHub - frank-w/BPI-Router-Images
  2. Download emmc uboot file, eg: https://github.com/frank-w/u-boot/releases/download/CI-BUILD-2024-10-bpi-2024.10-2024-11-03_0940/bpi-r4_emmc.img.gz
  3. create file sourcefiles_bpi-r4.conf:
skipubootdownload=1
imgfile=bpi-r4_emmc.img.gz
kernelfile=bpi-r4_6.9.0-main.tar.gz
  1. run command: ./buildimg.sh bpi-r4 jammy
  2. start nand image and copy to device: gunzip -c bpi-r4_jammy_6.9.0-main.img.gz | dd bs=512 conv=notrunc,fsync of=/dev/mmcblk0

That’s all.

1 Like
4

Thanks for report,have not yet included emmc flag in the buildimg.sh completely.

You should use newer kernel (6.11) as i recently fixed spi1 and pwm6 based on information from @dangowrt

5

Thanks a lot for this. Worked beautifully!