I am one who experiences repeated boot failures on R1, particularly following kernel updates, even if there has been no version change to u-boot. My work-around has been to re-write the u-boot loader to /dev/mmcblk2, following a kernel update. I would like to try the use of mmcblk2boot0, as described in: IPFire R1
The procedure references Bootable_eMMC, which requires executing command “mmc”, with options. That command is not found in IPFire, nor is the package “mmc-utils” that would provide it. Is this command required, before writing u-boot to mmcblk2boot0 ?
Reading the IPFire R1 page eMMC section https://wiki.ipfire.org/hardware/arm/friendlyelec/nanopi-r1#eMMC It seems to me that you should be able to do everything using the commands in that section. The reference to the Bootable_eMMC article is only related to turning of the eMMC boot partitions write protection. Those commands are in the wiki page anyway.
If you want to follow the commands in the Bootable_eMMC article then you need to carry them out on a separate machine with a sd card reader/writer and with the mmc command available.
Thanks. I have a reserve IPFire (on cubietruck), so I worked through the section mmcblk2boot0 Removing write protect from the boot blocks and installing the u-booot binary to /dev/mmcblk2boot0 went to completion.
A reboot suceeded. The output to /dev/ttyUSB0 is no different from previously, so I cant’ verify that it is now booting from https://mmcblk2boot0. The acid test will be rebooting following the next kernel update (already on core 154 testing)