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I'd read rumors that uBoot has the ability for a multi-boot menu, but I was never able to get any video out of it to my DVI monitor to explore that too deeply. What I ended up doing was installing this UEFI port, and booting from it (instead of uBoot): https://github.com/edk2-porting/edk2-rk3588 The image takes up over 8MB, but the built image is only 6MB in size. So you need to use dd to zero out a space first. The difference is where it stores the configuration. It can be flashed onto a microSD card or once you're confident in it, onto the SPI-NOR. I've done both. There are a few other versions of it for other hardware (other than rk3588). https://github.com/orgs/edk2-porting/repositories?type=all&q=edk2 That will boot UEFI and into grub very easily, and I do use grub to select which OS to boot into. I have one grub partition, and multiple installed OS partitions. The edk2 port is highly configurable, and recognizes hardware, including the network. Not sure if it's usable for remote access or not in its current build, but I think it can, at least, boot off the network. You can also configure a standard layout/path for your devicerees and overlays, where it will load them, but I haven't tested that out yet. If you don't override in the edk2 configuration or in grub, it will use the Vendor or Edge kernel's devicetrees (built in), or ACPI (also built in). Btw, I built it last night with a tiny change I made to the Orangepi5-plus edge devicetree to re-enable the ES8388 audio, and tested it out in Trisquel 12 with its kernel (with the devicetree from edk2) - it worked! The great thing is - their git clone and build process puts ALL the source files on your computer, so you don't need the internet to build, and you can know that any changes you make in the source code won't be "updated" overwritten by the build process. I've found with Grub, the update-grub utility will not find and add devicetrees, so you have to do that manually or hack in (which is what I've done). But again, apparently the edk2 port would make that unnecessary. So to add to the resources already mentioned, the edk2 port is open-source - they did it. Btw, I have also read that uBoot can boot grub directly, but I think you have to supply it with the address to load it into. Without knowing what I'm doing (when I first got my SBC), I didn't want to touch that.

Although writing the USB using Linux produced a good GPT the efi partition (FAT32) is unmountable and hence I cannot change anything. I tried gparted to fix it but the checkdisk failed. Hence I cannot follow the original guidance I had found. Where am I going wrong? thank again for any help

Overlay was renamed at some point to just uart5 `/boot/dtb/allwinner/overlay/sun50i-h616-uart5.dtbo` (without `ph5`), so `overlays=uart5` works and is available at /dev/ttyS1

Providing logs with armbianmonitor -u helps with troubleshooting and significantly raises chances that issue gets addressed.

Well using Linux to write the USB appears to have fixed the problems. Damn Windows Thank you for the pointers, much appreciated.

Hi all, I'm trying to use a DHT11 temperature and humidity sensor with my Armbian-based Orange Pi. I grabbed this DHT11 module. It’s cheap and seemed ideal for simple readings. The wiring matches the usual 3.3 V setup (VCC, data, GND), and I'm using the Adafruit_DHT Python library with the right pin number. Here’s my problem: Readings work perfectly right after reboot. tempo is consistent and logical. After a few minutes, the humidity values hang (stuck at 0 %), and temperature readings start to spike randomly or freeze. Resetting the board or restarting the Python script often fixes it temporarily. I've double-checked wiring (no loose connections), shielded against shorts, and even tried using a 10 k pull-up resistor on the data line. but the issue persists. Questions: Could this be a timing issue with how the Armbian kernel handles the GPIO? Any known quirks with DHT11 + Armbian or Orange Pi boards? Would using a level shifter or adding a small capacitor help stabilize the data line? Would love to hear from anyone who’s successfully run DHT11 sensors on Armbian or suggestions on how to dig into what's causing the freeze-up. Thanks for any help! —Jordan

nice, thank you for your feedback

We have a long wish to implement OTA solution into the build framework. The problem is - like always - time / not enough man power to run another (sub)project. Instead of reinventing the wheel - better is to follow / use (learning from) experts made frameworks: https://rauc.io/ as a base perhaps also this https://github.com/silitics/rugix/issues/82 and https://qbee.io/docs/index.html - all as extensions. If we can join resources, to do it right, its easier. But its still timely and complex due to the nature of what Armbian is dealing with.

I will soon be in the situation of having an offsite Helios4 installation at my non-techie father's place on another continent. I want to prepare for being able to do remote updates and if possible even some Armbian image testing. For that, I need a robust, bullet-proof and fully remote mechanism. The most I should assume to be able to ask my father is to unplug and replug the machine to powercycle. I hope you guys don't mind me joining your conversation to discuss my options. In the past, I had a setup on X86 with grub that I would like to hopefully replicate now in function with the Helios 4. There was a very minimal (read-only?) OS in a partition (network with DHCP, sshd) that would be the default boot target. The machine would always boot into this after a power cycle. From there, I issued a grub-reboot command to reboot into my desired OS. If I screwed the main system up somehow, I was always able to go back into the minimal system. How would I go about doing that in the Armbian world? From your discussion, it seems to be about tweaking armbianEnv.txt. But how can I do that in a way that has a bullet-proof option the system falls back to after a power cycle but also allows me to tweak it in a way that survives a warm reboot? I do like btrfs a lot and believe it should play a role here. I read @eselarm mentioning btrfs support in u-boot. How can I verify which u-boot is installed on my machine and whether it supports btrfs or not? Edit: https://embear.ch/posts/sw-update-concepts/ https://rauc.io/ https://mender.io/ https://bootlin.com/pub/conferences/2022/elce/opdenacker-implementing-A-B-system-updates-with-u-boot/opdenacker-implementing-A-B-system-updates-with-u-boot.pdf

There are various recent reports of windows corrupting the partition table.

If I remember correctly, recently there was a similar thread on the forum re GPT corruption under windows. Not sure, but there might be some useful info. Alternatively, flashing under Linux might be an option.

Hi, I am returning to Armbian after quite a few years. I was trying to follow guidance from nexbox-a95x-armbian and after a search found the debian & Ubunt images (https://www.armbian.com/uefi-arm64/) which I downloaded and wrote to a USB using Rufus (also balenaEtcher). I then tries to look at the FAT32 partition contents but the GPT was corrupt - tried many windows tools and Linux.I "repaired" the GPT using Linux tools but then the FAT32 filesystem was corrupt. What am I doing wrong? any help much appreciated

Thanks for the reply @laibsch . I looked for alternative solutions and it seems to be possible to only disable certain parts of PAM instead of the whole thing. Specifically it seems like the armbian dynamic MOTD is the biggest part of the problem. I opened /etc/pam.d/sshd , and commented out these lines to disable the motd: session optional pam_motd.so motd=/run/motd.dynamic session optional pam_motd.so noupdate And rebooted. This drastically improved the speed, from 5 seconds to around 2-3 seconds on first login and 1 second on subsequent logins. Still pretty bad though, what is there that needs to take one whole second or more to do to open a simple shell connection?

hi, I am unable to boot Armbian on Gamebox G11 Pro. I am able to boot CoreElec and Emuelec easily via sd card. I have tried every tip and trick to boot it, lot of Armbian versions and forks. Can you suggest a suitable armbian dtb file for the same. The most reliable method to boot it.

G11 Pro has S905x2 SoC, 2GB RAM ,100Mbps LAN, 16GB eMMC storage with Android 9 preinstalled

@Nick A also there are some problem with root, when i try ‘su’ on terminal emulator, it showed /system/xbin/su : permission denied is there any problem with root?

@Cancer if NetworkManager is masked I'd unmask that for use with netplan e.g. systemctl unmask NetworkManager systemctl enable NetworkManager systemctl start NetworkManager In the 'minimal IOT' images for OrangePi Zero 3, NetworkManager is not shipped with my images. I'd need to install that myself. Perhaps for other boards or images, NetworkManager could have been included by default. (but like you mentioned masked) in my /etc/netplan/configfile.yaml , I configured it as like that 3 lines, removed other liines so that I used NetworkManager utilities to configure the interfaces. I think that is 'simplier' than fumbling with netplan yaml configs which I'm unfamiliar as well. I'm actually running a Wifi AP, but that the AP itself is not managed by NetworkManager, it is managed by hostapd, as given prior https://gist.github.com/ag88/de02933ba65500376d1ff48e504b1bf3 I prefer hostapd as like discussed with @bushw, I think NetworkManager WiFi AP uses dnsmasq by default and setup a NAT (i.e. configures firewall rules for NAT masquerade) https://thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/doc.html and a dhcp server to distribute ip address to the Wifi clients. While this works, it may not be the configuration I prefer. The other thing is hostapd logs every wifi connection in journalctl logs, that is something I specifically want, so that I can check the connections if need be. NetworkManager it seemed do not log the connection attempts at the AP. As to the rational that NetworkManager WiFi AP uses dnsmasq and setup NAT, 'mess with firewall rules', I think that is because it is a 'canonical' configuration that 'just works'. Because otherwise you need to consider routing , bridging , whether to run dhcp server etc which don't have any standard setup for a 'WiFI AP' based network. I.e. the config is specific and unique to your network configuration (the whole physical network, not just the board) and you need to configure that manually, e.g. with using hostapd. you can build 'very complex' networks if you bother to go the distance, e.g. to do routing, ipv6, special NAT, special firewalling etc, to the extend if you have the skill, I think you can even configure clients to 'roam' across WiFI APs in your network, that is not 'mesh' but rather a full 'autoroam' setup of network configs. but everything is manual, custom and specific / unique to your physical network. on a different off-topic note, my WiFI AP (hotspot) that I configured as described in the gist has been running (very) well on my OrangePi Zero 3 'for months' practically as a desktop WiFI AP. Throughput is good (I get slightly above 100 Mbps due to OrangePi Zero 3 having a good wifi chip), Armbian runs well on it, and I even run various apps on it. e.g. I managed to run rpi-monitor on it there is a thread about OrangePi Zero 3 but that it seemed for the edge kernels and images, there may be 'some troubles', I've not tried it though. I'm not sure if it affects the 'stable' images, hopefully that the 'stable' images which is a bit older in terms of kernel releases are still ok.

I already ordered a usb to usb cable, bout 0.5 meters ( about 20 inches ) Already have adb too

@ag123 I was writing about configuration from minimal armbian image for bananapi pro, you're writing something about gnome interface... your default it's in minimal armbian image default in the file /etc/netplan/armbian-default.yaml (different name for some reason known to Igor) and this file should be set to 600 as required by netplan while it isn't in the image. As I wrote before Network manager is masked where have you taken this idea from? It's running so why do you want to install nmtui is best of all. Hmm maybe also old and bad from someone's perspective Anyway , question is if network manager should be unmasked (what then?), or default netplan config changed to some dhcp settings for netplan to directly get info about network. How can i be sure that config will work after reboot?

The mmcblkXbootX partitions are hardware defined partitions on eMMC storage device and can be used by storing boot firmware.

@Ducdanh Nguyen it should work. https://developer.android.com/tools/adb

@Cancer Netplan is from Canonical, so I'd guess ubuntu would likely use a similar setup https://netplan.io/ https://netplan.readthedocs.io/en/stable/netplan-tutorial/#running-netplan-for-the-first-time https://docs.armbian.com/User-Guide_Networking/ and the renderers can be NetworkManager or Systemd-Networkd as described in their pages as well. The setup is less than intuitive, but that I'm more familiar with NetworkManager. What I did instead is that, for my netplan config /etc/netplan/10-dhcp-all-interfaces.yaml: network: version: 2 renderer: NetworkManager # Different than 'networkd' I only used a 'minimal' config as like above. That would make it use NetworkManager as the renderer. I think it is also necessary to install NetworkManager for some e.g. 'minimal IOT' images apt install NetworkManager Then that if you are running it with a keyboard, monitor with gnome graphical interface you can use a gui editor like nm-connection-editor network-manager-applet https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NetworkManager to setup the network configs, the Gui is kind of 'guided' and tends to be 'easier' for beginners. if you don't have that I think there is nmtui - text based with (ncurses) menus nmcli - command line cli configs if you are using nmcli say operating from a text console, there are some tutorials you may find through a web (e.g. google) search https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/redhat-network-interface-configuration/ https://www.tecmint.com/nmcli-configure-network-connection/ https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/how-to-add-network-bridge-with-nmcli-networkmanager-on-linux/ https://dev.to/faaiq_amarullah/managing-networking-based-on-rhel-8-202e in general, while editing network interfaces, I take 'ample precautions' and operate over the serial debug console (using a usb-uart dongle), as you may get 'locked out' if you are in one of the network connections that you are editing. If you are using a full desktop say with a monitor and keyboard, that's ok as well. I think the 'iot minimal' images some of those use Systemd-Networkd as default, so some of the setup may still be in Systemd e.g. Systemd-resolved. That could affect your DNS resolver configs, what I did is I googled for configs about Systemd-resolved and maintained my primary and secondary (DNS) nameservers in /etc/systemd/resolved.conf I'm not too sure if that is after all necessary. NetworkManager is 'higher level' than configuration commands as like ip or ifconfig, in a sense that it 'manages' the interfaces. while ip and ipconfig are normally per-invocation command, NetworkManager stores its setup in /etc/NetworkManager. One should normally use the gui or nmcli / nmtui commands to configure them instead of editing the files directly. And remember to save the configs as permanent instead of temporary while using the gui, nmcli or nmtui. With that normally the configs will persist across reboots. This is probably more organised perhaps 'simplier' than say editing scripts say using the 'old' way say in /etc/interfaces. After you configured interfaces e.g. with nmcli, nmtui or the gui editors, normally to check status of the interfaces you could run commands like nmcli c show (show connections) nmdli d status (show devices) etc to show the state of interfaces configured by NetworkManager. the 'lower level' commands like ip (or ifconfig (apt install net-tools to get that) ip link (show link status) ip a (show addresses) can also be used to check on the status of the intefaces. listing wifi APs I think is nmcli d wifi list connecting to an AP I think is nmcli d connect SSID password "wifipassword" name a_name_for_this_connection ifname wlan0 note that there are options for reconnect, normally it does that, if that is not desired you may need to edit that say via nmcli c edit connection etc

I don't like brainless matrix. Not using ifconfig however newer doesn't always mean better especially when it's not fool proof configured. Nevermind. When in new basic images we have 3 programs/processes instead of one for network and system after reboot doesn't come to back without checking configuration something is wrong. if one is new to new config must find what manages the network. Question is who are images for? Not for newbies for sure. Correct me if I'm wrong in any point: I can see in docs on main pages that netplan.io controls configuration. Really? Network manager does it however is masked and netplan is redirected to network manager config from what I've seen. When somebody doesn't know newer stuff must investigate/ask/look for solution or having at least admin knowledge in this matter. docs say that at first boot I should see: ``` Internet connection was not detected. Connect via wireless? [Y/n] y Multiple wireless adaptors detected. (...) ``` Never have seen such thing at all in armbian Docs should show defaults properly and if one needs more the rest in deeper details. However it doesn't look

Great to see continued development for RK3318/RK3328 boards, Armbian support really helps unlock their full potential for lightweight Linux projects.

@usual user The USB and Ethernet ports are exposed, but how would that work exactly? I don't know how to make the software boot from USB or Ethernet and even if I did I don't know what to boot into that can write an image file to the emmc chip. I can find no info on this on radxa or armbian sources.