Flashing SD image to eMMC fails with I/O errors

[Tarmo Kuuse]

Hi!

I was recently flashing a Debian image from https://rcn-ee.net to internal eMMC using an SD card. I was flashing 6 BeagleBone Green boards and 2 of those showed errors in the console during the process:

[  336.911666] omap_hsmmc 481d8000.mmc: prep_slave_sg() failed

[  336.917278] omap_hsmmc 481d8000.mmc: MMC start dma failure

        473.56M  84%    9.12MB/s    0:00:08  [  336.952874] mmcblk1: unknown error -1 sending read/write command, card status 0x900

[  336.960803] blk_update_request: I/O error, dev mmcblk1, sector 1087424

[  336.967438] blk_update_request: I/O error, dev mmcblk1, sector 1087432

 etc ...

The copying completed, the boards rebooted and I couldn't detect any immediate problems running the mal-flashed boards. It does look rather scary, however, so I gave it a quick googling and ended up with this thread:

https://archlinuxarm.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9379&p=48893

Adding the line below to the beginning of "/opt/scripts/tools/eMMC/init-eMMC-flasher-v3.sh" resolves the I/O error.

sysctl -w vm.min_free_kbytes=16384

Any guesses as to whether there's an actual problem with rsync's memory usage, causing errors in the flashing process? Would it be a good idea to update the upsream script used in rcn-ee.net?

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Kind regards, 

Tarmo Kuuse

[Robert Nelson]

Thanks Tarmo!

I've added the change, looks like it's booting with only 2667 kbytes..

==> sysctl: vm.min_free_kbytes=[2667]
==> sysctl: setting: [sysctl -w vm.min_free_kbytes=16384]
vm.min_free_kbytes = 16384

https://github.com/RobertCNelson/boot-scripts/commit/8257ea5800adb6cdc8d4ca3230eac44ae7c54eea

Now running on one of my very (early alpha) picky bbgw, that usually
doesn't want to flash the eMMC..

Regards,


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Robert Nelson
https://rcn-ee.com/

[Robert Nelson]

Very Cool Tarmo!!!

That just flashed my alpha bbgw that almost never flashes. ;)

[Tarmo Kuuse]

Great, I'm happy to hear that :)

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Tarmo