RK3588 (Axelera BSP 1.2.1): Unable to Boot Ubuntu 22.04 from SATA – Mender Forcing eMMC RootFS

Update — What We've Tried So Far

Hey, wanted to share progress in case it helps anyone with the same setup.

The Mender override fix: Discovered that mender_setup hardcodes mender_kernel_root every boot, so setting it manually gets overwritten. The workaround was using mender_post_setup_commands which runs after Mender's setup:

fw_setenv mender_post_setup_commands "setenv mender_kernel_root /dev/sda1"

This correctly overrides the value — confirmed via fw_printenv. The kernel does attempt to boot from SATA, but then mender_try_to_recover kicks in and falls back to eMMC silently.

What the Ubuntu rootfs has:

• /sbin/init (systemd) ✅
• /lib/aarch64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 ✅
• /lib/modules/6.1.148-rockchip-standard/ (copied from BSP) ✅
• Correct /etc/fstab with UUID ✅
• initramfs generated via update-initramfs -c -k 6.1.148-rockchip-standard ✅
• ldconfig run inside chroot ✅

Still splash freezes every time. Without UART we can't see why pivot root is failing.

Current workaround — chroot + VNC: Since we can't boot natively, we set up a working Ubuntu environment via chroot over ADB:

mount -o remount,rw /
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/ubuntu
mount --bind /dev /mnt/ubuntu/dev
mount --bind /proc /mnt/ubuntu/proc
mount --bind /sys /mnt/ubuntu/sys
chroot /mnt/ubuntu /bin/bash

Then started a TightVNC server inside the chroot and connected from the host PC — giving us a full XFCE desktop running Ubuntu 22.04 over VNC. It works but it's not a native boot.

New issue: Now trying to use the Voyager SDK inside this Ubuntu environment and hitting:

Found kernel driver version 1.2.3, but at least version 1.4.1 is required.

The BSP ships with kernel driver 1.2.3 but the SDK needs 1.4.1+. Is there a newer BSP that includes the updated driver? And does anyone know the debug pad pinout for UART on the Metis board — that would let us finally see what's failing during the SATA boot attempt.

Thanks 🙏