Batocera 30 Odroid XU4 EMMC "Install on a new disk" NOT WORKING

Federiko78

Hi Guys,
I installed the Batocera 30 on my Odroid XU4 using a 16GB Micro SD and work, but I want to install the system into the EMMC , so I tried the “Install on a new disk” features using the menu but after the writing to EMMC I unplug the micro sd card, switch on emmc, and power on, but I have my odroid with the blue led always on for ever :-)…

I tried using a Balena Etcher, emmc to usb 3.0 adapter for flash the img directly on emmc, but doesn’t work.

Please what I can do?

For example with Recalbox is possible to write directly the img into the emmc with Balena Etcher or Win32disk, why is not possible with Batocera?

HELP.
Federico

Jevron

Hi Federico,

I am having very similar issues to you - I can’t get Batocera to boot from eMMC. I have an XU4 with the OGST Gaming Case, and I am able to flash and run Batocera on micro SD. It runs well, but I am looking to use the eMMC as it is faster and less likely to suffer the consequences of many writes/rewrites over time. My particular interest is in N64 emulation, and running those ROMs on the micro SD (Sandisk Ultra and I’ve also tried Samsung EVO) are very jittery - so I’m hoping that the faster eMMC will allow better performance here.

I have gone round in circles now many times trying to get the eMMC to work, and have not managed it yet…

I have an Orange 16GB eMMC which came from Odroid with Linux installed. I didn’t need that, so simply tried flashing Batocera to the card and tried to run it. The blue light stays on forever, no output and no power to the usb’s - so it didn’t boot. Ok no problem I thought - so I completed the eMMC recovery procedure: https://wiki.odroid.com/accessory/emmc/recovery_xu4. The eMMC boots into Android so it must be working. Next I tried re-flashing Batocera 29 (and subsequently 30) to the eMMC. Same result, blue light stays on without booting. I went back over my steps, flashed the micro SD’s to check the images are working, all fine. I have tried flashing the eMMC from Windows 10 and from Linux - still the blue light of death. Have tried Etcher and Win32 Disk Imager. Have tried unpacking the images using WinRar and 7-Zip. I have found that, in Etcher, Windows fails the verification at 99% while flashing the Batocera image. Linux completes it successfully. Now to be honest I am out of ideas and a bit fatigued of this process….

So what I think I understand (please do help me here if I’m wrong); the eMMC needs to have a boot file written into it, which is on a hidden partition and is created whilst completing the eMMC recovery procedure. When you then flash the Batocera Image to the eMMC, that boot file should remain somewhere(?) and allow the eMMC to boot when it’s in the XU4. I don’t know if that’s exactly how it works as I’m new to this, but this is where I think the problem lies.

Hopefully we can work this one out! If anyone can assist then I’d be most grateful
Jev

Federiko78

Hi,
Same results for me…

But If you try to install Recalbox into the EMMC works perfectly…

Anyone can help us with Batocera?

Thanks.
Federico

Jevron

Hi Federico,

I have been successful in flashing Ubuntu, RetroPie and Android to my eMMC module. However, after quite a few attempts now, it is clear that Batocera 5.29/30 is not compatible with eMMC.

If Batocera devs see this would you be able to shed any light on this? @nadenislamarre

Regards,
Jev

catchra

ya i can’t boot from eMMC as well

U-Boot 2017.05-00002-gd0752a9-dirty (Sep 08 2017 - 11:33:04 +0900) for ODROID-XU4
CPU:   Exynos5422 @ 800 MHz
Model: Odroid XU4 based on EXYNOS5422
Board: Odroid XU4 based on EXYNOS5422
Type:  xu4
DRAM:  2 GiB
MMC:   EXYNOS DWMMC: 0, EXYNOS DWMMC: 1
MMC Device 0 (eMMC): 29.1 GiB
Info eMMC rst_n_func status = enabled
Card did not respond to voltage select!
mmc_init: -95, time 12
*** Warning - bad CRC, using default environment

In:    serial
Out:   serial
Err:   serial
Net:   No ethernet found.
Press quickly 'Enter' twice to stop autoboot:  1  0 
reading boot.ini
** Unable to read file boot.ini **
Failed to mount ext2 filesystem...
** Unrecognized filesystem type **
Failed to mount ext2 filesystem...
** Unrecognized filesystem type **
** File not found /boot/boot.ini **
** File not found /boot.ini **
cfgload: no boot.ini or empty file
mmc block read, dev 0, addr 0x40008000, blk start 2047, blk cnt 16384
Bad Linux ARM zImage magic!
Exynos5422 #

dabauum221

Batocera 30 also would not boot from eMMC on my XU4. I have not tried Batocera 31 but it doesn’t seem like they fixed it based on what I see in the change log.

Is there any intent to fix this?

rioda

Hi there, you can follow this guy’s video. It helped me installing on a laptop with emmc, maybe it can work for other devices too.

dabauum221

Just as an FYI, I know that this worked with 5.19 so I am not sure which version the eMMC boot on XU4 broke on. I know it does not work on 5.29.

aaronouthier

Ok, so after about 4 days of tinkering, I managed to get Batocera 33 to boot from emmc on my XU4.

I am going to try and work with the devs of Batocera to get this mainstreamed.

Just goes to show ya’: Patience, persistence, and perseverance pays.

Please DO NOT post email addresses here, or ask me to send the files I modified.

In a day or two, hope to post instructions on making the changes yourself, so everyone can stay up-to-date when a new Batocera version is published.

Be aware: This is still very “beta”-ish. I need to double check that my changes still work on a MicroSD, for example. Still a few things to double-check before I go public with my work.

Bottom line: the extlinux bootloader used currently only works for MicroSD boot, not eMMC, which is why the problem exists. I had to use the older uboot loader used in older versions of Batocera. Even then, there were other changes that needed to be made to boot.

aaronouthier

Instructions - you will need a full Linux pc for this!

Write the latest Batocera image onto your emmc.
Mount partition 1 of the emmc.
Make sure you have linux uboot tools installed.
Go into the boot folder on the emmc.
Run mkimage -n 'Ramdisk Image' -A arm -O linux -T ramdisk -C gzip -d initrd.gz uInitrd
Download and extract Batocera 5.19 update file (boot.tar.xz) to a separate location.
Copy only the boot.ini file from it, onto the root of the emmc.
Open boot.ini in your favorite text editor.
Find the reference to odroid-xu3 and change it to say odroid-xu4. Leave the rest of the line exactly as it is - just change the 3 to a 4. Save your changes and exit.
Completely optional: delete the extlinux folder in the root of the emmc.
Note that if you update Batocera, your system will likely become unbootable again, until the devs incorporate this fix.
Done

aaronouthier

Aaaaaand the devs are already working on implementing the fix…

dabauum221

aaronouthier I tried version 35 and it does not work. Should we expect version 36 to be bootable on the xu4 eMMC storage?