Opi PC with 4.x.x kernel options?

[rick]

I need to run btrfs for a headless web server on an Opi PC. The armbian 3.4 kernel btrfs is too green to be used.

 

I was able to install the 4.7.3 kernel (and remove the 3.4.x) using apt. I got btrfs and support for some USB devices, but lost HDMI  and 3 cpu cores.

 

Is there a better option I could try? This board seems to be running like a champ with just one core but I would like to have it fire on all 4 and have at least some video output if I wanted to.

 

Is it ok to ask for recomends as to what board I might better choose? I require  a modern Ubuntu/kernel, decent usb, decent network (gigabit if possible), and low cost. They will be used for personal cloud and backup servers with usb storage or for network router boxes? Wifi and BT not required.

[zador.blood.stained]

Video output is not possible currently, and to activate more cores you need to add "setenv bootm_boot_mode nonsec" to /boot/boot.cmd (somewhere at the beginning) and recompile it to boot.scr

[rick]

Video output is not possible currently, and to activate more cores you need to add "setenv bootm_boot_mode nonsec" to /boot/boot.cmd (somewhere at the beginning) and recompile it to boot.scr

 

 

That did it!! Thank you. Firing on all 4.

[Dan25]

Video output is not possible currently

 

Any chance we could leverage Lima at all, even if it is just to get a tty or basic non-accelerated desktop? Looking at linux-sunxi, a decent libre Mali driver is the only thing keeping this board from being something equivalent to a librebooted thinkpad (which I've had a hand in procuring & flashing before) since there has been so much work done for the H3 already in the mainline kernel.

[zador.blood.stained]

Any chance we could leverage Lima at all, even if it is just to get a tty or basic non-accelerated desktop? Looking at linux-sunxi, a decent libre Mali driver is the only thing keeping this board from being something equivalent to a librebooted thinkpad (which I've had a hand in procuring & flashing before) since there has been so much work done for the H3 already in the mainline kernel.

It's not about Lima or Mali at all. First we need HDMI PHY driver and simplefb driver for sunxi disp2, and without properly licensed sources and documentation it's not easy to do. Until recently (~1-2 weeks) there was no source code for HDMI PHY part at all.

[dhlii]

Any chance there is a summary somewhere of what does/does not work with 4.x.x kernels on H3's ?

 

I do not need HDMI. 

 

 

[zador.blood.stained]

Any chance there is a summary somewhere of what does/does not work with 4.x.x kernels on H3's ?

There is a status matrix on the wiki: https://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort#Status_Matrix

Features marked as WIP may be available already in current branches, but there may be still configuration issues for some boards.

[Dan25]

It's not about Lima or Mali at all. First we need HDMI PHY driver and simplefb driver for sunxi disp2, and without properly licensed sources and documentation it's not easy to do. Until recently (~1-2 weeks) there was no source code for HDMI PHY part at all.

Allwinner released the source for their HDMI PHY driver it appears but didn't properly mark each file as GPLv2 in its header (dri-devel discussion about it), the files that are marked are under GPLv2 though (ex 1, 2). There is a patchset to add it to a mainline kernel, I'm going to try to get some clarification wrt the licensing of those files, but I'm not holding my breath for a response from Allwinner.

 

Perhaps we should pass the hat & see how much the H3 board user community is willing to pitch in to pay for dev work to be done to replace the non-GPLv2 parts, then break it down into milestones & see if we could nab a grant too to help fund said work. After that we could go onto the rest of the SBC & Libreboot community to gather support for jumpstarting Lima, since Mali is an extremely common GPU on nearly everything but the Raspberry Pi, and it is used in the rockchip based chromebooks too (a notable libreboot target).

[jernej]

@Dan25,

 

situation changed a bit few weeks ago. Now, there is tinalinux which has GPL HDMI sources. Actually, Jeff Moine just yesterday posted updated video/HDMI patches to mailing list. There is no possibility to write whole driver from scratch, because there is no HDMI description in datasheet. Some info was successfully obtained through research. If you manage to get it from Allwinner, this would certainly help a lot. It would allow us to improve driver.

[Dan25]

Damn, that changed rapidly. So for H3 based boards we're just looking for a datasheet describing the HDMI interface and how to work with it, so that we can clean up the driver more? Besides the magic Allwinner values, and occasionally disappearing EDIDs, what all are ya looking for in this datasheet?

 

On a different note, seeing as there is no G2D for the H3, is there another 2D X11 accelerator we can take advantage of perchance?

 

Edit: Got a response from Tyle at Allwinner:

 

On 10/23/2016 01:56 AM, tyle wrote:

Hi Dan,

         Thanks for letter.

         All the files in /video_sunxi/sunxi_v3/ diretory are under GPLv2.

         We have been trying to append proper licensing header for all the files.

[jernej]

Most of us are interested in HDMI phy. That way it would be easy to add CEC support and all resolution, although that may work already with current code. You see, most frustrating thing is that you must take guesses. Even if you try, you still can't be completely sure that it will work all the time. Oh, they didn't describe PRCM registers. That way we must rely on U-Boot for multi core support.

 

AFAIK you can't HW accelerate 2D on H3 unless you use GLES for desktop rendering. At one point I will try KDE to see how good it works.

 

BTW, they missed some files when they added GPL license. Maybe I should open issue.

[Dan25]

Definitely open an issue, nag 'em over email if they are unresponsive.