Openwrt emmc for R4 Lite

Banana Pi Router design BPI-R4 Lite /BPI-R4 Mini(MT7987A)
1

Trying to flash regular openwrt images to emmc partitions, but was only able to find instructions for bpi R3, not R4 lite. I tried it for R4 lite with files for openwrt standard v25 rc4, but could not boot from emmc partition after that. Here are the instructions I followed, apart from partitioning, since that had already been done by banana-pi emmc installation image.

#dd if=immortalwrt-mediatek-filogic-bananapi_bpi-r3-mini-emmc-gpt.bin of=/dev/mmcblk0

echo 0 > /sys/block/mmcblk0boot0/force_ro

#dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mmcblk0boot0 bs=512 count=8192 conv=fsync

#dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=512 seek=13312 count=8192 conv=fsync

dd if=immortalwrt-mediatek-filogic-bananapi_bpi-r3-mini-emmc-preloader.bin of=/dev/mmcblk0boot0

dd if=immortalwrt-mediatek-filogic-bananapi_bpi-r3-mini-emmc-bl31-uboot.fip of=/dev/mmcblk0p3

dd if=immortalwrt-mediatek-filogic-bananapi_bpi-r3-mini-initramfs-recovery.itb of=/dev/mmcblk0p4

dd if=immortalwrt-mediatek-filogic-bananapi_bpi-r3-mini-squashfs-sysupgrade.itb of=/dev/mmcblk0p5

Also found this table, but not sure if it correlates to p1-p5 partitions on emmc.

OpenWrt official GPT for EMMC
Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
  1            8192            9215   512.0 KiB   8300  ubootenv
  2            9216           13311   2.0 MiB     8300  factory
  3           13312           21503   4.0 MiB     EF00  fip
  4           24576           90111   32.0 MiB    EF00  recovery
  5          131072         1048575   448.0 MiB   FFFF  production
2

I wonder why you are mixing openwrt and immortalwrt. Installation steps may differ. Also R3 may be different to R4 and R4Lite when it comes to offsets on nand.

Why do you not start with openwrt sdcard image and install via uboot-menu?

What does debug uart tell you for emmc?

3

The immortalwrt was just part of the install instructions for R3, I’m focusing on installing openwrt 25.12 rc4. I have not found out how to use uart, and what you suggest about sdcard image and uboot-menu, I would have to find some instructions on how to do. I was following the install instructions on docs.bananapi official website, but they only show how to write their pre-made image to emmc, not the offical openwrt files. I tried to get uart going with usb-c console port and minicom, but I only get junk symbols when restarting router after it is found on ttyUSB0.

4

You have to configure uart to 115200 baud 8n1 flow control off in your application (minicom). Then you should see something useful and then use uboot meju to install other devices (nand first and then boot from this and install emmc).

5

I managed to get minicom working, and got into the uboot menu. Everything works now, successfully installed to emmc from uboot menu while booting from nand. Thanks for great help.

6

I was trying to install 25.12-rc4 too but when I did the upgrade via web-ui I got this message:

Device bananapi,bpi-r4-lite not supported by this image
upgrade: Supported devices: bananapi,bpi-r4-poe bananapi,bpi-r4-2g5
Signature check OK 
Image check failed.

The uploaded image file **does not contain a supported format**. Make sure that you choose the generic image format for your platform.

how did you upgrade it? Is BPI-R4-Lite supported with the official OpenWRT build? I’m using the banana image, thanks