Radxa Rock 4 se doesn't boot with latest release, but can be fixed

[uablrek]

The HDMI screen remains blank. Something is written on serial link, but my USB-serial can't handle 1500000 baud, so I can't read it.

Used image

Armbian_community_25.8.0-trunk.375_Rock-4se_bookworm_current_6.12.38_minimal.img.xz

Work-around

The problem can be fixed by replacing the U-boot binary. I made mine available from my google-drive u-boot-rock4_se.bin.

EDIT: please see #39 (comment) for downloadable U-boot images.

Download, decompress, and write it to the SD-card with (assuming Linux):

dev=<device-of-your-sd-card>      # THIS MUST BE CORRECT!!! (mine is /dev/sdb)
sudo dd if=u-boot-rock4_se.bin of=$dev  bs=512 seek=64 conv=notrunc

Now the HDMI comes to life with U-boot printouts, and then the kernel boots OK.

You can read how I build U-boot here. Oh, and my U-boot binary uses 115200 baud.

[leggewie]

Thank you for that information. Can you provide more information on your uboot binary? Does it have a version, can you point to the exact source code to build this binary or something like that?

[uablrek]

From the description:

You can read how I build U-boot here. Oh, and my U-boot binary uses 115200 baud.

Version u-boot-2025.07, built basically with make rock-4se-rk3399_defconfig

[igorpecovnik]

Few ideas for trial and error. Since we switched to Ubuntu Noble as a base, many bootloaders didn't compile correctly. We fixed many, but not all. We can't test all of them anyway. No resources for such extreme expensive operations ...

Use those two switches when building from sources

ARTIFACT_IGNORE_CACHE=yes DOCKER_ARMBIAN_BASE_IMAGE="ubuntu:jammy"

If this works and this not:

ARTIFACT_IGNORE_CACHE=yes DOCKER_ARMBIAN_BASE_IMAGE="ubuntu:noble"

Report it to build framework issue tracker.

[uablrek]

I built with make rock-4c-plus-rk3399_defconfig here u-boot-rock4_cplus.bin.xz.

[uablrek]

I made u-boot-2025.7 builds with rock-*-rk3399_defconfig available on my google drive:

• u-boot-rock4__se.bin.xz
• u-boot-rock4_cplus.bin.xz

These are unmodified _defconfig builds, so they can easily be recreated by others. Also meaning that the baud rate is 1500000.

[uablrek]

Same problem, same work-around with:
Armbian_community_25.8.0-trunk.411_Rock-4se_bookworm_current_6.12.40_minimal.img

[igorpecovnik]

Same problem

If nobody fixed this problem with a PR https://github.com/armbian/build/pulls automatic builds will remain broken. Try to fix this problem in the framework.

[uablrek]

Building right now...

BTW, IMHO you should make this requirement clearer (without the need to run "./compile.sh requirements" as "root")

sudo apt install qemu-user-static

I found it here

[uablrek]

FYI. First build attempt failed with:

   E: Could not read from /var/lib/apt/lists/deb.debian.org_debian_dists_bookworm-backports_InRelease - getline (12: Cannot allocate memory)
   E: The repository 'http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-backports InRelease' provides only weak security information.
   -->--> command failed with error code 100 after 8 seconds

After some google'ing I think this is a Debian problem, but I really can't say (I have 64GiB ram, so that's not the problem).
Anyway, second build was OK. I guess some cached/pre-built things fixed this.

[igorpecovnik]

First build attempt failed with

I saw this error before, but it doesn't show always - not sure where this is originating from - use Ubuntu target - as for addressing this its anyway not relevant.

[igorpecovnik]

IMHO you should make this requirement clearer

This problem is related to base image change mentioned last week #39 (comment)
and I am not sure we fixed that yet. This is something similar.

All needed tools should automatically install - maintaining a list of requirements or packages lists require same amount of work.

[uablrek]

I built with:

ARTIFACT_IGNORE_CACHE=yes DOCKER_ARMBIAN_BASE_IMAGE="ubuntu:jammy" ./compile.sh

But the problem is the same as with:

./compile.sh

(which I assume is Ubuntu:noble)

[uablrek]

I will investigate further, but I must learn how things are done first.

BTW, my compliments to your build-system 👍 I see a lot of work has gone into that. IMO many more projects should use kconfig

[uablrek]

From my build logs:

--> (183) COMMAND: dd if=/armbian/.tmp/work-f2296f33-0cca-4198-b939-b70141b0186b/uboot-write-w0OLa/usr/lib/linux-u-boot-edge-rock-4se/idbloader.img of=/dev/loop19 seek=64 conv=notrunc status=none

The idbloader.img is loaded. I think this is the problem, the file should be u-boot-rockchip.bin. I read it somewhere, I think it was around https://docs.u-boot.org/en/v2023.07.02/usage/fit/howto.html#.

I will check more tomorrow (it's late here)