With the latest image, 24.10.0, r28427-6df0e3d02a, downloaded yesterday however last step fails, When i boot from EMMC there is no /dev/mmcblk0p66. This is how it looks:
Unfortunately right now i have no access to one of the other R3’s, but from what i remember the presence of /dev/mmcblk0p128 means that boot image is loaded from /dev/mmcblk0p5, however /dev/mmcblk66, that is recognized as valid f2fs by resize.f2fs and fsck.f2fs is not present and with /dev/root both tools give “Error: Failed to get the device stat”.
Just in case, i did try flashing EMMC from NAND again, but nothing changes.
The default OpenWrt images for the Banana Pi BPI-R3 Mini have a relatively small overlay, which limits the available space for installing packages and storing configurations. This is not a hardware limitation but rather a design choice to keep firmware images compact. To fully utilize the available eMMC storage, the cleanest solution is to build a custom OpenWrt firmware with an expanded root partition (which includes the overlay). Here’s how:
Prepare the build environment – A Linux system with development tools (toolchain) is required. The official OpenWrt documentation provides step-by-step instructions for installing dependencies and obtaining the source code. In short, install tools like gcc, make, ncurses, etc., then clone the OpenWrt repository for the desired version (e.g., the master branch or the latest stable release that supports the BPI-R3 Mini).
Select the BPI-R3 Mini target – Run make menuconfig to open the configuration menu. Navigate to MediaTek → Filogic subtarget and select the BananaPi BPI-R3 Mini (MT7986) profile. This ensures the build system loads the correct default settings for this device.
Set the overlay (rootfs) size – Still in menuconfig, go to the Target Images section. Look for the option “Root filesystem partition size (in MB)” (or MiB). By default, the BPI-R3 Mini is set to a low value (~104 MiB). Modify this value to specify the desired root partition size. For example, to use almost the entire 8GB eMMC, set it to 7100 MiB (~7GB), leaving some space for other internal volumes. Increasing this value will proportionally expand the overlay partition. Optionally, an intermediate value can be chosen depending on the expected space requirements for installed packages and files.
By following these steps, OpenWrt will be built with a larger overlay, allowing full use of the available storage while maintaining compatibility with future firmware updates.
Is that some kind of joke? You mean the ability to download one image and using just SD card and network/serial cable, install it on all available types of flash (NAND,NOR and EMMC), then simply resize EMMC to desired size with tools you can opkg in was intentionally removed in 24.10.0 because it was branded to be “unclean way”. And that true believer must rebuild Openwrt on each upgrade? Sorry, i refuse to accept this. Consider me infidel if must.
After reading your post i just downloaded and installed 23.05.5, resized EMMC the simple and reasonable way, then upgraded it to 24.10.0. Will play with setting build environments and rebuilding some other day, when in mod and with a lot of spare time. Hope i won’t be accused of techno-heresy 40K style and banned for this…
And BTW, you missed the links, BPi3 in question is maxi, not mini.