jcorbet

First I have to thank all maintainers for their work. I ran this server for 1.5 years before something broke. Since armbian is maintained by volunteers I want to cheer you up and thank you for your hard work. However just today my little server would die after apt-update/upgrade. I use a SATA drive together with a boot SD-card (only containing /boot). I can observe the following behavior: The system leds indicate that booting is sucessful (blue LED does blink regularly, I can detect HDD usage by observing the green LED), yet SSH login that I have been using for years now is impossible. The device is also not responsive when pinging it. From my router's dashboard I can not detect a sucessful network connection, yet the NIC's orange LED would blink regularly. Sadly I do not own an UART adapter, maybe I should have bought one sooner. What I have already done: Mirror the SD card using dd. I am uploading the file and will post the link here for review. // Upload finished: https://mega.nz/file/yYJwEIiA#zw4lBfeJ8wXyxS1EeGDpMGERbQquEoxvNaCh2CFwTbg Notice that the focal images seem to be corrupt. I have added focal sources since I needed more modern packages for installing ntopng. Maybe this had something to do with it. I am very glad if someone has some advice, well any advice. I would hate to setup everything again

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So, now I compiled the kernel with the script and also managed to install the .deb packages. Then I checked for kvm support via dmesg | grep but found none. Ultimately I chose to delete all dtb files in the dtb-latest folder under /boot but the one tagged xu4-kvm, but this resulted in the machine failing to start. Luckily I have made a backup so I could go back. However I have no clue what goes wrong and even more important I do not know how to find out. What should I be looking for? Edit: I have got the machine running again. It was me having set (correctly at the time) the hc1 config via armbian-config. I now found the ArmbianEnv text file, so ... I entered xu4-kvm as "board_name". board_name=xu4-kvm rootdev=UUID=4adb9ebc-d03b-4b14-a3d2-f0a3315c7f00 rootfstype=ext4 usbstoragequirks=0x2537:0x1066:u,0x2537:0x1068:u Yet, when I run "dmesg | grep kvm" I do not see any support of virtualization despite the boards hardware virtualization capabilities. So ... what to do now? Board runs WITH NEW KERNEL. I can verify things happened lately. (See timestamps). I can verify the kernel I compiled with the config from hardkernel and your build-process is in fact *.107. So ...? Edit2: I also tried adding an overlays parameter to ArmbianEnv, but still I got no kvm support. The machine also works flawlessly. Which is strange. Anyways - this is my current NOT working as expected config: board_name=xu4 overlays=xu4-kvm rootdev=UUID=4adb9ebc-d03b-4b14-a3d2-f0a3315c7f00 rootfstype=ext4 usbstoragequirks=0x2537:0x1066:u,0x2537:0x1068:u I still am completely in the dark what goes on here. Edit 3: I found a line in the boot.ini where I could set the kvm dtb. But it changed nothing :(. This really sucks!

Hi. I am now at looking around and modifying things. Oh man - there is so much to decide. Can I safely make appropiate decisions or should I only make the slightest modification possible solving the problem? Any way: I have found virtualization support, but I have not actually found KVM. I diffed the two configs of hardkernel to look for the options. Yet I do not seem to have every option that they tick. Have a look: https://www.diffchecker.com/y8uJifYA (right at the end is the most juicy stuff regarding KVM) What does this mean? EDIT (again): I also cannot locate where one can choose between different timers like it was mentioned in the guide.

Thank you for your answer. Can you explain to me how to exactly configure the kernel for KVM? I can for sure setup the buldenvironment and stuff .. but then I am a bit clueless what to do? What do I have to adjust? And where do I find the data? And when the process runs how do I update my existing installation with the new stuff? Is there some general guide on compiling ARMbian with KVM?

Hi forum, I want to try out KVM virtualization since I found out that Odroid HC-1 (=Odroid XU4) does in fact support hardware virtualization and should therefore have a good performance. (Is this true, has someone already done this and can confirm?) In the past I have worked with other virtualization software but this would be my first time to use kvm. Not long ago I started a server projet which works very very well and serves all my needs. The little board is so efficient indeed that I got more than 1GB of unused RAM and also a lot of unused performance. Therefore I wondered whether I could safely use the board to virtualize an environment where I could safely try out things and have some remote desktop experience. Since the board also has an onboard GPU which sits idle (since I am using the minimal version as I do not need graphical output for some fileserver) maybe one could even use it to watch youtube remotely (when it is blocked in your office or something like that). So long story short: How do I get KVM running and get myself a *nix guest which I can log into via vnc or rdp or some other protocol? And would it be worthwhile or will the performance basically be rubbish? My research: Guest OS: Obviously I would like to try out Armbian as a guest since it is a very well maintained distro and a dream performance wise (thank you so much!). Since KVM is able to overprovision I can pass on all of the boards capabilities to the guest and do not have to artifically split the memory between host an guest. However I got no experience with armbian as a guest. I know it is very optimized for the boards it supports so I really got no clue whether this idea is any good. Is this a good idea? Host/KVM: I am running 18.04.2 LTS. Some people claim that KVM is already enabled while other guides claim it is not enabled. (See: https://magazine.odroid.com/article/kvm-odroid-xu4/ and https://www.hardkernel.com/blog-2/ubuntu-18-04-for-odroid-xu4/). So ... I do not now where I am and I do not know what to do. I will experiment with the board now (did a fresh image of the ssd where my filesystem resides). And so I will venture into the unknown - unless someone gut some knowledge here Would be very appreciated Can I work with this guide: https://wiki.odroid.com/odroid-xu4/application_note/software/kvm Kernel 4.14 is installed here. I do not know whether armbian differs from vanilla in this regard ... So I checked and armbian uses it's own improved dtb. Can I somehow have the improved armbian dtb and have kvm? If so, how do I do it? May be a silly question but I have never before compiled my own kernel, so this will be a first :). This is the related config, it seems: https://github.com/hardkernel/linux/blob/odroidxu4-4.14.y/arch/arm/configs/odroidxu4_kvm_defconfig I do not understand a thing except for that I am not suppoesed to touch it. Funnily though when I try to follow this guide I get this error when calling make for the first time: make odroidxu4_kvm_defconfig HOSTCC scripts/kconfig/conf.o SHIPPED scripts/kconfig/zconf.tab.c SHIPPED scripts/kconfig/zconf.lex.c SHIPPED scripts/kconfig/zconf.hash.c HOSTCC scripts/kconfig/zconf.tab.o HOSTLD scripts/kconfig/conf *** *** Can't find default configuration "arch/arm/configs/odroidxu4_kvm_defconfig"! *** scripts/kconfig/Makefile:112: recipe for target 'odroidxu4_kvm_defconfig' failed make[1]: *** [odroidxu4_kvm_defconfig] Error 1 Makefile:547: recipe for target 'odroidxu4_kvm_defconfig' failed make: *** [odroidxu4_kvm_defconfig] Error 2 So I think I would be better of following some other guide. ...

OK. Then I will complete my installation and set it up as a productive system. I am not so sure about how to backup this. But I am sure I will come up with a solution. Maybe I will just create an installation script and backup the content. When reading your bash scripts I feel like I really should learn it. Best to you both and the rest of the team

Okay. Can I help in any way? What commands shall I run/what outputs shall I generate? As I own the hardware maybe I can give back by providing information/testing software Found this when googling: https://github.com/hardkernel/u-boot/tree/odroidxu4-v2017.05 (XU4 is the "same" hardware as HC-1) However I just started out with SBCs so I am really not knowledgeable ^^.

Thank you. Really. And everyone who contributes to this software obviously

Ok. I see. So what one ought to do is disable resizing (systemctl disable armbian-resize-filesystem on first boot) in order to maximize spare SD size for the controller to be able to survive. Then you clone it to SSD with armbian-config. Then you have everything deleted but /boot. Then you enjoy SSD speed and surviving SD with enough space for kernel update. Correct way of doing this in the future?

Ok. Have tried it. Error message also gone. Shoudl hopefully work now. Thank you for the clarification PS: Since SD is small - will I have problems with kernelupdates in the future? I plan to use the serverfor ~4-5 years. Can I manually erase the old rootfs files after the transfer? Or is this done automatically and everything is OK? Sorry, for all the confusion I might be causing. When editing the fstab I noticed that only /boot is mounted. So I can erase everything else from /media/mmcboot, right?

I will start to list all the commands I have tried to resolve the problem here: systemctl start armbian-resize-filesystem (run as root) - no visible output, does not seem to change anything /usr/lib/armbian/armbian-resize-filesystem - ran the script there with the parameter start. Did not work either. I am now reading the comments in the script to understand what it does and what my options are :). Any help however at this point would be very appreciated since I think it might be a problem with the software and not with my install alone. Maybe we can fix it together for future users. //Edit 1: Seems Armbian does not expect a usecase as with the HC-1: # check device capacity. If 4GB or below do not use whole card but leave a 5% spare area # to help older cards with wear leveling and garbage collection. In case this reduced card # capacity is less than the actual image capacity this is a clear sign that someone wants # to use Armbian on a card of inappropriate size so he gets what he deserves (at least he # should know what he's doing) But it does make sense to use a 1GB SD Card if you are just using it to boot but the rootfs is on the SSD, right? So the SSD handles the "real" computing while the SD just serves as an initial image to install on the SSD. Or is there any misunderstanding here on my side? If so, ideally it would make 2 partitions, so that I can resize the boot partition afterwards. (and delete the old rootfs). Can I somehow achieve this with armbian? # if SD card is larger than 4GB then create another partition behind first one(s) So this means, armbian will never attempt to create a boot partition in my case, right? I still do not understand the script but I can read the comments

Hi, can someone point me towards the next best thing to try out? I would really like to advance my understanding of this problem If you need more data I can run every test that you like. Best Julian

New Upload Hi, I hope this helps. I am very irritated that it displays January 19th as logdate. What I have done to obtain it is use armbian-config and then System/3rd Party -Diagnostics. Best Julian

Hi community, I am a newbie when it comes to SBCs and Armbian, but I will do my best to thoroughly explain the problem. Problem: Armbian (Ubuntu 18.04 based, release for HC-1) Despite me rebooting a zillion times, resizing does not happen/finish/...: Error message (displayed exactly like this): Warning: a reboot is needed to finish resizing the filesystem Please reboot the system as soon as possible ilesystem Please reboot the system as soon as possible Hardware: SBC: Odroid HC-1 2GB RAM (known working) Storage: 1GB SD Card|250GB SSD (I know the SD is tiny, but I do not want to use it for anything else but booting|root shall be migrated to the ssd via armbian-config) - SSD and SD are both known working, SD has already been tested with h2w What I have already done: http://ix.io/1z6Z (Output of the diagnostic utility provided) Trying to free as much space on the SD as I can (because I suspected it might have to do with the size of the SD) - down to 690k by removing localization/other unused stuff Trying multiple CLI commandos to initialize resize but to no avail. Can you suggest me any solutions or even helpful links? Any help is appreciated. I really want to make this work :D Best jcorbet