• Registered: 2014-07-30
  • Posts: 43

Topic: Display doesn't work when booting from SSD

I used this guide to install the system on SSD:

http://novena-guide.readthedocs.org/en/ … -sata-disk


I made two attempts, both failed.

First attempt:

I just issued 

sata-install.sh /dev/sda

After I rebooted (I set the sata eeprom flag) the display didn't work. So I logged in via UART, and discovered  that system is operational. But it's just bare debian. Ok, I added kosagi repo and installed all the packages found at:

apt-cache search novena

All but one - I didn't install firstrun

After that I rebooted and screen showed the U-boot sequence, but after the kernel kicked in it went black

I thought, maybe if I install novena-firstrun it will fetch some of the dependencies responsible for communicating to the eDP, but after installation the system froze showing "Setting up novena-firstrun" inside apt-get install. And subsequent boots ended up being stuck at "Starting kernel", sending serial break didn't have any effect. The system properly hanged.


Second attempt:

I did everything explicitly as described in the aforementioned document. Except I downloaded the newer versions of the .deb packages. Rebooting into the SSD resulted in the same issue as above - system hanged on "Starting kernel". And the display only worked for a bit until the kernel started.


I haven't tried the rsync method yet, it should work, but I'd really like to set up the system from scratch myself as I tried on my first attempt. I'm sure I just missing something.

  • xobs
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  • Registered: 2014-05-25
  • Posts: 442

Re: Display doesn't work when booting from SSD

You might be missing the steps to create /etc/fstab.

The directory /boot/ must be mounted on the MMC disk.  You should have an entry similar to the following:

/dev/disk/by-path/platform-2198000.usdhc-part1 /boot vfat defaults 2 2

That way, when U-Boot and the kernel are updated, they will get moved to a location where the SPL and U-Boot (respectively) can read them from the disk.  If you don't have that, then the kernel won't get updated.

  • Registered: 2014-07-30
  • Posts: 43

Re: Display doesn't work when booting from SSD

xobs wrote:

You might be missing the steps to create /etc/fstab.

The directory /boot/ must be mounted on the MMC disk.  You should have an entry similar to the following:

/dev/disk/by-path/platform-2198000.usdhc-part1 /boot vfat defaults 2 2

That way, when U-Boot and the kernel are updated, they will get moved to a location where the SPL and U-Boot (respectively) can read them from the disk.  If you don't have that, then the kernel won't get updated.


Nope, fstab is fine

  • xobs
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  • Registered: 2014-05-25
  • Posts: 442

Re: Display doesn't work when booting from SSD

Do you have the "edp" flag set in your EEPROM?  If you run "novena-eeprom" does it list "edp" in the features section?

You may be able to plug in an HDMI monitor to at least see what's on the screen.

  • Registered: 2014-07-30
  • Posts: 43

Re: Display doesn't work when booting from SSD

xobs wrote:

Do you have the "edp" flag set in your EEPROM?  If you run "novena-eeprom" does it list "edp" in the features section?

You may be able to plug in an HDMI monitor to at least see what's on the screen.

The flag is enabled. I connected through UART, so I can see what's on the screen. The problem is that it is stuck on 'Starting kernel...'. I thought I'd wait for a couple of minutes and send a break, to log in into shell, but nope - didn't work.

I ended up copying the / with rsync, it worked fine. Although now I see the systemd error upon login saying "Read ACL failed ...... operation's not supported", but ACL IS enabled... anyways, that's another issue smile

  • xobs
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  • Registered: 2014-05-25
  • Posts: 442

Re: Display doesn't work when booting from SSD

You can create uenv.txt on the root of partition 1 on the internal SD card with the following line in it to force the console to be on the serial port as well as on HDMI/eDP:

finalhook=setenv bootargs ${bootargs} console=ttymxc1,115200.

There's some more information on getting that working at http://www.kosagi.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=268 but hopefully that will at least get you a log.