C2 No Signal, Solid Red and Blue Light

[sousaplex]

We were using the odroid C2 for a couple of months with a custom android application that ran a power cycle daily. Anyways, a couple of months in some of the boards stopped outputing signal. The monitors connected said there was "No Signal". The next step we took was to pick up a UART chip. I have no experience with this prior, but was able to get the initial boot log from putty. You can find the output attached below:

Code: Select all

GXBB:BL1:08dafd:0a8993;FEAT:EDFC318C;POC:3;RCY:0;EMMC:800;NAND:81;SD:0;READ:0;CH                                                            K:17A;USB:8;LOOP:1;EMMC:800;NAND:81;SD:0;READ:0;CHK:17A;USB:8;LOOP:2;EMMC:800;NA                                                            ND:81;SD:0;READ:0;CHK:17A;USB:8;LOOP:3;EMMC:800;NAND:81;SD:0;READ:0;CHK:17A;USB:8;LOOP:4;EMMC:800;NAND:81;SD:0;READ:0;CHK:17A;USB:8;LOOP:5;EMMC:800;NAND:81;SD:0;READ:0;CHK:17A;USB:8;LOOP:6;EMMC:800;NAND:81;SD:0;READ:0;CHK:17A;USB:8;LOOP:7;EMMC:800;NAND:81;SD:0;READ:0;CHK:17A;USB:8;LOOP:8;EMMC:800;NAND:81;SD:0;READ:0;CHK:17A;USB:8;LOOP:9;EMMC:800;NAND:81;SD:0;READ:0;CHK:0;
TE: 46499092
no sdio debug board detected

BL2 Built : 11:44:26, Nov 25 2015.
gxb gfb13a3b-c2 - jcao@wonton

Board ID = 8
set vcck to 1100 mv
set vddee to 1050 mv
CPU clk: 1536MHz
DDR channel setting: DDR0 Rank0+1 same
DDR0: 2048MB(auto) @ 912MHz(2T)-13
DataBus test pass!
AddrBus test pass!
Load fip header from SD, src: 0x0000c200, des: 0x01400000, size: 0x000000b0
Load bl30 from SD, src: 0x00010200, des: 0x01000000, size: 0x00009ef0
Sending bl30........................................OK.
Run bl30...
Load bl301 from SD, src: 0x0001c200, des: 0x01000000, size: 0x000018c0
Wait bl30...Done
Sending bl301.......OK.
Run bl301...
c: 0x00020200, des: 0x10100000, size: 0x00011130


--- UART initialized after reboot ---
[Reset cause: unknown]
[Image: unknown, amlogic_v1.1.3046-00db630-dirty 2016-08-31 09:24:14 tao.zeng@droid04]
bl30: check_permit, count is 1
bl30: check_permit: ok!
chipid: ef be ad de d f0 ad ba ef be adLoad bl33 from SD, src: 0x00034200, des: 0x01000000, size: 0x00071800
 de not ES chip
[46.615822 Inits done]
secure task start!
high task start!
low task start!
NOTICE:  BL3-1: v1.0(debug):4d2e34d
NOTICE:  BL3-1: Built : 17:08:35, Oct 29 2015
INFO:    BL3-1: Initializing runtime services
INFO:    BL3-1: Preparing for EL3 exit to normal world
INFO:    BL3-1: Next image address = 0x1000000
INFO:    BL3-1: Next image spsr = 0x3c9


U-Boot 2015.01-00189-g205c7b3-dirty (Apr 19 2017 - 16:14:06), Build: jenkins-s905_marshmallow-ACCESS=Gerrit,BRANCH=s905_6.0.1_master,DEVICE=odroidc2-52

DRAM:  2 GiB
Relocation Offset is: 76f34000
-------------------------------------------------
* Welcome to Hardkernel's ODROID-C2
-------------------------------------------------
CPU : AMLogic S905
S/N : HKC213254DFF0927
MAC : 00:1e:06:35:55:a7
BID : HKC2211712
-------------------------------------------------
register usb cfg[1][0] = 0000000077f953a0
register usb cfg[0][1] = 0000000077f953c0
vpu detect type: 5
vpu clk_level = 7
set vpu clk: 666667000Hz, readback: 666660000Hz(0x300)
MMC:   aml_priv->desc_buf = 0x0000000073f2cd30
aml_priv->desc_buf = 0x0000000073f2eec0
SDIO Port B: 0, SDIO Port C: 1
ret = 1 .[mmc_init] mmc init success
*** Warning - bad CRC, using default environment

Saving Environment to MMC...
Writing to MMC(0)... done
In:    serial
Out:   serial
Err:   serial

Hoping this might be similar to what someone here has experienced. Looked at the forums, and while there are some UART entries, nothing that I determined was similar, but again, this is new territory for me.

[rooted]

It seems like the boot variables have been written to eMMC and are corrupt.

How were you rebooting? Are you using eMMC?

[sousaplex]

No, we are using SD cards. We created an image and then flashed it to several C2s. This booting issue has occurred randomly in about 10% of the boards. SD cards used were ADATA.

Process for flashing SD cards:
1. Create image (around 2GB).
2. Use dd to copy image to card
3. Use gparted to expand partition to fit card (removing unallocated space)

[rooted]

Android is extremely IO intensive, the SD cards you are having the issue from may be beginning to fail.

Or the way you are rebooting the devices is causing corruption.

Test the offending cards for corruption of the fat partition on a Windows machine.

[sousaplex]

Thanks, our next version will be on linux. Is this less IO intensive?

I will look into our process for rebooting, and try to minimize the chance that something is being written during reboot.

How would you recommend I test for corruption of the fat partition on Windows? I have access to gparted on ubuntu, but am less familiar with windows.

Thanks again for the input, this has been driving me crazy!

[rooted]

Yes Linux writes to the card much less, especially if you setup logging to use memory and only write to disk every so often.

To test the card simply insert it into a reader on a Windows machine, open explorer and right click on the drive and you should see a scan option (I believe). I don't use Windows either but since fat is a Windows filesystem I usually let it try to scan Windows filesystems (fat32, fat, NTFS).

eMMC is much more suitable for Android, if you continued to use Android I suggest using eMMC

[sousaplex]

Would a higher end card (such as SanDisk Extreme) that rights much faster also mitigate some of these issues? I am currently looking into eMMC but it isn't as easy to find these out in the wild.

For anyone who's going through the same process as me, we are also exploring the eMMC option. I'm currently looking into these eMMC chips: https://www.sandisk.com/content/dam/san ... ial-PB.pdf

[odroid]

High-end UHS SD card is still slower than eMMC due to limited bandwidth in SD controller in SoC.
But, it seems to be very worth to try Samsung EVO Plus SD card.
viewtopic.php?f=80&t=31164&p=225751#p225751

BTW, any subsequent sudden power-off events should break the file system even with the eMMC.
So you have to find a way something like adding a power button.
https://wiki.odroid.com/odroid-c2/appli ... key_wakeup

[rooted]

These type cards with A1 have good random IO which is what you want when running Android. Referring to SanDisk A1, it doesn't have to be this exact card.

https://i.imgur.com/9BvmhRZ.png

But as odroid mentioned you must shutdown or reboot the device properly to avoid corruption. It's why I asked how you are rebooting.