So am trying here to provide more info. Friend of mine borrowed me a usb to serial adapter, but clueless on what to do. On Windows I know about Putty, but would like to do it on Ubuntu. Below is my hardware, so please let me know how I can provide more info (what wire goes where) !?

Honestly, the way it works right now is good enough, it just seemed weird for me since I couldn't find much info about this topic online (both the armbian-config thing, and the btrfs thing) I'll just post the issue on github after writing up some proper documentation behind it! Thanks again!

moved

I've been running ARMbian on my "H96 Max" for 36 hrs now, ha in VLC, i have noticed that if i play the 720 in the native default window, and don't maximize it, it plays perfect with no dropped frames, but it still tears now and then !!. it's because the video does not have to be rescaled. So obviously, the problem is that Hardware Decoding will not work with VLC, and that VLC and ARMbian are just not optimized and not up to the job !!. I have heard that with my "H96 Max"ARM and almost any other SoCs, that they can just not handle the task in ARMbian and in general, , , i was suprized to see the 4 CPU's run a 50% !!, i expected it to be no more than 10 So the main problem is that HVA is not fully supported in my Armbian, and SVA is not working as it should, so a problem with ARMbian again, , , I have been a Computer Technician since 1997 and have seen SVA work perfect on a a lot lesser system, , , , ,Hmmmm, , my 4 Core ARM based "4K fire tv stick max" is a joy to use !!, , , will have to look at the look at its ARM SoCs, especially its GPU

Use of the RTL8211F phy-id in a compatible will stop it from properly being detected as a RTL8211E, so not a good idea. Mainline Linux will not always handle a reset of the RTL8211F Ethernet PHY, at least on Rockchip boards when reset- properties is defined in the PHY-node, so you will end up with a "Could not get PHY" error unless the RTL8211F PHY has been reset by the bootloader prior to Linux. Newer versions of U-Boot does this correctly, older versions like the U-Boot 2022.07-armbian-2022.07 version as seen in your logs does not even try to reset the Ethernet PHY. Upgrading to a newer (and safer) version of U-Boot should solve your issue (and similar issues when Rockchip and RTL8211F is involved for other boards). Using vanilla mainline U-Boot 2025.01 and vanilla mainline Linux 6.12 on a ROCK Pi E v1.21 does not have any issues to identify the Ethernet PHY: U-Boot 2025.01 (Apr 03 2025 - 06:04:07 +0000) Model: Radxa ROCK Pi E DRAM: 1 GiB (effective 1022 MiB) PMIC: RK805 (on=0x40, off=0x00) Core: 247 devices, 30 uclasses, devicetree: separate MMC: mmc@ff500000: 1, mmc@ff520000: 0 Loading Environment from MMC... Reading from MMC(1)... *** Warning - bad CRC, using default environment In: serial@ff130000 Out: serial@ff130000 Err: serial@ff130000 Model: Radxa ROCK Pi E Net: eth0: ethernet@ff540000 Hit any key to stop autoboot: 0 ~ # ip link set eth0 up [ 27.617316] rk_gmac-dwmac ff550000.ethernet eth0: Register MEM_TYPE_PAGE_POOL RxQ-0 [ 27.679150] rk_gmac-dwmac ff550000.ethernet eth0: PHY [stmmac-1:00] driver [Rockchip integrated EPHY] (irq=POLL) [ 27.690181] rk_gmac-dwmac ff550000.ethernet eth0: No Safety Features support found [ 27.690902] rk_gmac-dwmac ff550000.ethernet eth0: PTP not supported by HW [ 27.692259] rk_gmac-dwmac ff550000.ethernet eth0: configuring for phy/rmii link mode ~ # ip link set eth1 up [ 32.070210] rk_gmac-dwmac ff540000.ethernet eth1: Register MEM_TYPE_PAGE_POOL RxQ-0 [ 32.153078] rk_gmac-dwmac ff540000.ethernet eth1: PHY [stmmac-0:01] driver [RTL8211F Gigabit Ethernet] (irq=53) [ 32.165523] rk_gmac-dwmac ff540000.ethernet eth1: No Safety Features support found [ 32.166268] rk_gmac-dwmac ff540000.ethernet eth1: PTP not supported by HW [ 32.167621] rk_gmac-dwmac ff540000.ethernet eth1: configuring for phy/rgmii link mode