ODROID-HC4 keeps getting corrupt?

[frenkel]

I have two ODROID-HC4 devices. I reboot one of them every few months (for kernel updates etc) and once in a while it will hang on the Hardkernel bootscreen. There is no way to get it past that, toggle power, removing harddisk, nothing helps except for reflashing SPI. The other device does not seem to suffer from this problem, although it is rebooted less times (it's on a remote location). What can the cause of this be? I'm using the default Odroid Debian 11 software that can be installed from petitboot.

Thanks in advance for any hints!

[tobetter]

There is no way to get it past that, toggle power, removing harddisk, nothing helps except for reflashing SPI

Does this mean you have flashed SPI flash memory with recovery image? What's the version of Petitboot now?
By any chance, are you able to capture the serial log from the device when the problem happens?

[frenkel]

I've flashed it with spiupdate_odroidhc4_20201222.img
Is that a recovery image? I'm not sure, I thought it contained something like "factory defaults". Is this maybe the cause of my problems?

Unfortunately I cannot access the serial logs. Is there something else I can do to debug this when it happens again?

[tobetter]

I've flashed it with spiupdate_odroidhc4_20201222.img
Is that a recovery image? I'm not sure, I thought it contained something like "factory defaults". Is this maybe the cause of my problems?

Unfortunately I cannot access the serial logs. Is there something else I can do to debug this when it happens again?

The image is to recover SPI flash memory. What happen when you boot with the SD card after flashing the image?

[frenkel]

Everything works fine after I flash that image. It is my "fix"/"work around" for my problem.

[tobetter]

Everything works fine after I flash that image. It is my "fix"/"work around" for my problem.

With the image, did you see something update is being processed in HDMI display? So it looks like updating is performed?
When you remove SD card, then cannot boot up?

[frenkel]

With that image it start to reflash for a few minutes. I've done this a couple of times now, so that last time I did not seem updates, just the same as previous runs.

When the hang on the splash screen occurs removing the disks and the SD card does not boot into anything either. Just the hanging splash screen.

[tobetter]

With that image it start to reflash for a few minutes. I've done this a couple of times now, so that last time I did not seem updates, just the same as previous runs.

When the hang on the splash screen occurs removing the disks and the SD card does not boot into anything either. Just the hanging splash screen.

When you boot with the SD card again, does it boot from SD card and not proceeding updating any more?
Run these commands in the shell of Petitboot, and try reflashing/recovering Petitboot again.

Code: Select all

flash_eraseall /dev/mtd0
flash_eraseall /dev/mtd1
flash_eraseall /dev/mtd2
flash_eraseall /dev/mtd3

Once you are able to boot to Linux system after Petitboot, please check if you have /dev/mtd* and share the output of uname -a.

[frenkel]

Yes, it doesn't update anything anymore when I boot from SD card. Just the bootloader (petitboot?) and then it boots from SD card.

Currently this is the output you requested:

$ sudo ls /dev/mtd*
ls: cannot access '/dev/mtd*': No such file or directory

$ uname -a
Linux toaster 5.16.0-odroid-arm64 #1 SMP PREEMPT Debian 5.16.16-202204242219~bullseye (2022-04-24) aarch64 GNU/Linux

When I run those commands you send, how will I be able to reflash/recover Petitboot? Is it a menu option, do I need an image?

[tobetter]

Yes, it doesn't update anything anymore when I boot from SD card. Just the bootloader (petitboot?) and then it boots from SD card.

Currently this is the output you requested:

$ sudo ls /dev/mtd*
ls: cannot access '/dev/mtd*': No such file or directory

$ uname -a
Linux toaster 5.16.0-odroid-arm64 #1 SMP PREEMPT Debian 5.16.16-202204242219~bullseye (2022-04-24) aarch64 GNU/Linux

Thanks,

When I run those commands you send, how will I be able to reflash/recover Petitboot? Is it a menu option, do I need an image?

After flash_eraseall command, Petitboot won't work any more so you need to flash SD card again with the same image so it flashes SPI flash memory. The commands with flash_eraseall will clean internal environment settings, so it won't be changed.

Also I doubt the case that SPI flash memory is corrupted somehow in Linux, but it couldn't be since there is no /dev/mtd*.

[frenkel]

Great, thanks for your help I'll try these steps tomorrow night!

[tobetter]

Great, thanks for your help I'll try these steps tomorrow night!

Sure, please let me know how it goes.

[frenkel]

I've run the flash_eraseall commands and reflashed the spiupdate_odroidhc4_20201222.img afterwards. It seems to me that the spiupdate already does the flash_eraseall commands based on the output I saw, for example: Erasing 4 Kibyte @ 800000 - 100% complete. But let's see how it goes in a few weeks. If this has not fixed the problem, are there any other steps I could try?

Thanks again for your help.