Cannot install 16.06 with "SD Card method" — "Fail to start BootNext"

Products Support HiKey
#1

Dear HiKey community, I’m trying to get my Hikey to work with the latest software but are unfortunately completely stuck.

I’m attempting to update my HiKey board (2GB LeMaker) to the 16.06 release of the reference platform using the “SD Card method” described on Github (➔ https://github.com/Linaro/documentation/blob/master/Reference-Platform/Platforms/Consumer/PreviousReleases/RPB_16.06/ConsumerEdition/HiKey/InstallDebianRPB.md).

I downloaded the image, ran gunzip to unpack, and dd’ed it to 32 GB SD card (manufacturer: Samsung).

Upon boot, I only get the message “Fail to start BootNext.” If I then select “[3] boot from SD card” from the boot loader menu, I’m just shown the menu again.

The SD card mounts just fine without any problems when I boot the image that came pre-installed on the eMMC (Linux 3.18.0-linaro-hikey).

If I select the option “Debian GNU/Linux (SD card)” from grub, the system boots correctly off the SD card using the 3.18 kernel, showing 8.5 as /etc/debian_version, but does not offer an installer as shown on in the instructions on the Github page. I see these messages during boot up:

[ 11.891906] rc.local[1390]: debconf: unable to initialize frontend: Dialog
[ 11.921710] rc.local[1390]: debconf: (TERM is not set, so the dialog frontend is not usable.)
[ 11.942135] rc.local[1390]: debconf: falling back to frontend: Readline
[ 11.975306] rc.local[1390]: debconf: unable to initialize frontend: Readline
[ 12.001976] rc.local[1390]: debconf: (This frontend requires a controlling tty.)
[ 12.031824] rc.local[1390]: debconf: falling back to frontend: Teletype

I reproduced all of this using two different SD cards (32 GB Kingston and 32 GB Samsung).

I have two questions:

  1. What am I doing wrong? How can I get the HiKey board to boot off the SD card, as described in the instructions on Github?

  2. Now that I’ve booted into LXDE from the SD card, is there some way to manually launch the installer shown in the screenshot (https://camo.githubusercontent.com/49350971d2156376eaf302bbcee7dcb38a2f6b55/687474703a2f2f692e696d6775722e636f6d2f463138776c67552e706e67)?

I really would appreciate any hints and suggestions you can offer. Thanks in advance.