Hi Rahul,

On 6 Sep 2019, at 17:06, Rahul Atlury wrote:

> Dear Emmanuel
>
> Let me check the below issues and get back to you

Ok, I found what I missed after digging a bit deeper into the startup 
scripts:

modloop is not used by the initramfs scripts, but the some of the Alpine 
packages (apks/) scripts.

I thought the load order was:

  1. vmlinuz
  2. initramfs
  3. modloop
  4. packages

because modloop-vanilla file was in the boot/ directory, and I failed to 
look further until I solved this issue.

It looks like the actual order is:

  1. vmlinuz
  2. initramfs
  3. packages (at least the main ones?)
  4. modloop

So defining the kernel command line as:

   setenv bootargs "bootargs=earlyprintk console=ttyS0,115200
                    modules=loop,dwmac-sun8i
                    ip=${ipaddr}::${gatewayip}:${netmask}:opi0:eth0:none
                    modloop=http://${serverip}:8000/boot/modloop-vanilla
                    alpine_repo=http://${serverip}:8000/apks
                    apkovl=http://${serverip}:8000/alpine.apkovl.tar.gz"

Enable the loading of the /etc/init.d/ scripts, which in turn make use 
of modloop.

I’m not sure about the use/meaning of alpine.apkovl.tar.gz, but 
anyway: it now works.

I now need to rebuild a better uboot+spl binary, as the default I copied 
from Armbian does not allow to save the environment.

BR,
Emmanuel.