SD-Card slot broken

HiFive Unmatched
5

@andre @dorms

You are right, for now the simplest solution is to boot from the SD-Card and then instruct to jump onto NVME’s rootfs install. That’s what I finally did by modifying inside the \boot\extlinux\extlinux.conf file on SD card the line:

append root=/dev/mmcblk0p4

with

append root=/dev/nvme0n1p1

Later on when, once I booted on NVME’s ubuntu install and updated this last, it complains that I’m not running the latest kernel (since I booted with the one on sd-card) but it’s ok. I also tried the latest image available there of May (the one on SD card bundled with the board is from March). But the execution process was stopped around USB HID devices detection. Maybe I did something wrong during the image installation on another SD card (32 Gb too). Hopefully I still have the original SD-card with March release which is still running fine (with same USB HID devices). I’ll re-check this operation.

I originally misunderstood these instructions:

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image925×608 32 KB

I thought that the NVME could be the primary boot. But it can’t be. When I read the software reference manual available there and in particular § 2.7 it all went more clearer.

I noticed on this forum’s comment from @JawnSmith that:

The need for the SD card to be present is actually part of the board’s firmware rather than u-boot itself, so unfortunately an SD card will be required.
EDIT: I stand corrected, it is actually possible to flash bootloaders into EEPROM and set the DIP switches to boot from EEPROM. If there’s some interest in how to do that I’d be happy to do a write-up.

I would definitely be interested by such procedure :grinning:

For the board’s itself personnaly I would see these two changes:

  • take a SD Card connector without any spring system, which is more reliable. It should survive more than 6 ejections :wink:
  • move the SD card connector away from the USB connector for the serial console. The access to the SD card is always a bit complicated if you let the USB cable plugged in, next to this SD card connector. Or you take the habit to always remove this USB cable before messing with this SD card connector.

This may be considerations which are important for first installation steps. Probably that in a few weeks I will don’t use these this SD card slot if I can change this boot-up process, and also use less this serial console. I’ll see.

Thanks all for your remarks & advices.