No HDMI output after 8.21.1 update on Orange Pi 5

General Discussion
21

did you already tried to flash bootloader to SPI? There should be an option if you boot from SD card.

22

I think I found the issue: v8.22 · MichaIng/DietPi@3c3b04a · GitHub

I am not yet sure how this can cause issues booting from NVMe but not when booting form SD card, and also I am not entirely sure how it can cause failing HDMI output while other things work, but for the boot issue we investigated during our last meeting it seems logic:

  • The update did set the variable for the device tree file empty instead of removing it. So the bootloader tried to load /boot/dtb/ instead of /boot/dtb/rk3588-orangepi5.deb or so. And we saw an error of the bootloader about failing to access /boot/dtb/, which me misinterpreted as that it failed to access its content, while probably it tried to load the directory itself into RAM, which of course must fail.
  • However, as long as U-Boot has no clever fallback for this, I would assume it to fail boot on every media, not just NVMe and not just HDMI. So it remains a little mystery.
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23

Thank you, @MichaIng, for the fix.
I can’t reproduce reported problem anymore with:

root@opi5:~# neofetch 
        #####           root@opi5 
       #######          --------- 
       ##O#O##          OS: Armbian 23.8.3 bookworm aarch64 
       #######          Host: Orange Pi 5 
     ###########        Kernel: 5.10.160-legacy-rk35xx 
    #############       Uptime: 3 mins 
   ###############      Packages: 1251 (dpkg) 
   ################     Shell: bash 5.2.15 
  #################     Resolution: 3840x2160 
#####################   Terminal: /dev/pts/0 
#####################   CPU: (8) @ 1.800GHz 
  #################     Memory: 425MiB / 15718MiB

dietpi upgrade was done like that:

root@opi5:~# cat /etc/os-release 
PRETTY_NAME="Armbian 23.8.3 bookworm"
NAME="Debian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="12"
VERSION="12 (bookworm)"
VERSION_CODENAME=bookworm
ID=debian
HOME_URL="https://www.armbian.com"
SUPPORT_URL="https://forum.armbian.com"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://www.armbian.com/bugs"
ARMBIAN_PRETTY_NAME="Armbian 23.8.3 bookworm"

root@opi5:~# uname -a
Linux opi5 5.10.110-rockchip-rk3588 #23.02.2 SMP Fri Feb 17 23:59:20 UTC 2023 aarch64 GNU/Linux

root@opi5:~# cat /boot/dietpiEnv.txt 
rootdev=UUID=e9cf7650-54f5-4215-aefd-da93b30527c4
rootfstype=ext4
# The init system logs to the console defined last.
consoleargs=console=tty1
usbstoragequirks=
extraargs=net.ifnames=0
docker_optimizations=off
overlay_path=rockchip
overlay_prefix=rockchip-rk3588   <<<<
overlays=
user_overlays=
fdtfile=rockchip/rk3588s-orangepi-5.dtb    <<<<

root@opi5:~# dietpi-update 
 DietPi-Update
...
[  OK  ] DietPi-Update | Update available:
[ INFO ] DietPi-Update | Current version : v8.20.1
[ INFO ] DietPi-Update | Latest version  : v8.21.1
...

[  OK  ] DietPi-Patch | Setting in /boot/dietpiEnv.txt adjusted: overlay_prefix=rk3588  <<<<
[  OK  ] DietPi-Patch | sed -i /^[[:blank:]]*fdtfile=/d /boot/dietpiEnv.txt   <<<<
...
[  OK  ] DietPi-Patch | Patched to DietPi v8.21
...
[  OK  ] DietPi-Update | Incremental patching to v8.21.1 completed

root@opi5:~# cat /boot/dietpiEnv.txt 
rootdev=UUID=e9cf7650-54f5-4215-aefd-da93b30527c4
rootfstype=ext4
# The init system logs to the console defined last.
consoleargs=console=tty1
usbstoragequirks=
extraargs=net.ifnames=0
docker_optimizations=off
overlay_path=rockchip
overlay_prefix=rk3588
overlays=
user_overlays=

I see suggested patch v8.22 · MichaIng/DietPi@3c3b04a · GitHub in the logs of dietpi-update script, so I assume, it did the job. I did not revert suggested by @MichaIng changes to confirm the patch.

I boot from TF card (not NVMe), all my previous attempts to update DietPi from v8.20.1 to v8.21.1 ended up with “no HDMI-A output”. Also I can’t comment, how Debian bullseye vs bookworm is important here in the context of reported problem, since in my case DietPi v8.20.1 was already backed by bookworm distro.

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