aegrotatio

We are aware that this experience is not cool, but there are more things to fix before issuing a image rebuild.
 
Our core team is small and rebuilding is done (semi automatic) only by me. Scripts to fully automatize this process are almost done, but testing still must be done manually.

Hi!
 
This is my first post so let me begin by saying thank you for bringing up Armbian!
 
I've just received 3 Orange Pis (one PC which is dead on arrival, one Pi One and one Pi Lite) this morning and spent the whole day finding distros to boot.
 
I had the exact freq fail error and I found this post by searching for this in the forum, so thanks also to aegrotatio for opening up this thread.
 
I tried sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade  and I have resolved the issue.
 
However, the freq fail is an ongoing loop and it was impossible to do it via a keyboard as the screen was filled with the [ERR] lines.
 
I used putty over ethernet and there things were quiet, so I entered the command there.
 
Even then, the first attempt failed with the system giving me an error like "can't write to directory ... because I am not logged in as root" (didn't ommit sudo!).
I attributed this to the [ERR] that must be going on in the background, so I tried it a second time and this time everything went smoothly.
 
May I suggest, since 5.11 is available, to update the downloads in this site to allow users get the 5.11 by first try?
 
It will save a lot, like really a LOT of frustrating hours because the first thing it comes to mind when confronted with something like this on a $10 chinese  SBC is to fear for hardware failure!
 
Best wishes for the Armbian effort, it is high time we get serious with the Arm platform.

Well, your work is wonderful, and I really think you're doing a great job.  I think there's similar attitude problems at Banana Pi communities.
 
I want you to continue supporting Orange Pi H3 boards, for sure.  They are the most powerful working implementation I have found so far.

Ah, forgot that before: Regarding software support everything's already in position (since I would suspect Steven/Xunlong is as smart as in the past and uses exactly the same pins for the same stuff). All we'll have to do get hardware working correctly (applies both to legacy and vanilla kernel) is to use fex/dts from Orange Pi PC and exchange network with the GbE network stuff from Orange Pi Plus.
 
Differences:
DRAM: Xunlong uses the same type of Samsung DRAM on all 512MB/1GB variants and SK Hynix modules on Plus 2/2E. Since we didn't get reports about non-working OPi Plus 2 so far I would suspect DRAM initialization within u-boot for this different DRAM type works. WiFi: Xunlong said they replace 8189ETV used on the older OPi with 8189FTV on OPi Lite, PC Plus and Plus 2E. At least I have no idea whether both chips work with the same driver so unless someone holds a Lite or Plus 2E in his hands (and Igor managed to compile the new driver and include it into Armbian) we simply don't know what to expect Both users of Orange Pi Plus 2 and Plus 2E are encouraged to start DRAM reliability testing using fel-boot-lima-memtester-on-orange-pi-pc-v3 as outlined here: http://linux-sunxi.org/Orange_Pi_PC#DRAM_clock_speed_limit (ssvb's package for OPi PC can be used since the only difference between Plus 2E and PC is a different Ethernet PHY used and this should not make a difference)

Just FYI: Orange Pi Plus 2E is now available for $35 and shipping costs remain the same (pretty low compared to some competitors): 
 
http://aliexpress.com/store/product/Orange-Pi-Plus-2-E-H3-Quad-Core-1-6GHZ-2GB-RAM-4K-Open-source-development/1553371_32665196281.html
 
Please remember that this board was designed based on community requests (dropping the slow GL830 USB-to-SATA bridge and the internal USB hub and exposing all 4 USB ports physically to the outside) and should make up for a really nice server with 2 GB DRAM, Gbit Ethernet and 4 USB ports (3 real hosts ports and one Micro OTG).
 
So now we have the following H3 boards with Gigabit Ethernet:
 
Banana Pi M2+ for $33 (1 GB RAM, 8 GB eMMC, no USB hub / no shared bandwidth, only 2 USB host ports useable) OPi Plus 2E for $35 (2 GB RAM, 16 GB eMMC, no USB hub / no shared bandwidth, 3 USB host ports useable) OPi Plus for $39 (1 GB RAM, 8 GB eMMC, GL830 slow USB-to-SATA, internal USB hub / shared bandwidth) OPi Plus 2 for $49 (2 GB RAM, 16 GB eMMC, GL830 slow USB-to-SATA, internal USB hub / shared bandwidth)   SinoVoip said to release also a cost down version of M2+ without eMMC and WiFi that might be then the cheapest GbE equipped board. But since there you only get 1 GB DRAM (which might be totally ok for most use cases -- please compare with http://www.linuxatemyram.com if in doubt) and they don't use a programmable voltage regulator and always feed the SoC with 1.3V VDD_CPUX core voltage IMO spending a few bucks more to get OPi Plus 2E with twice the RAM/eMMC size, 1 more USB port, more performance and also lesser temperature/consumption is the better idea.   BTW: WiFi capabilities not mentioned intentionally since in my opinion those cheap SDIO 2.4 GHz implementations are all not worth a look (or time/efforts to get the crappy drivers running)

There is a reason why we don't provide image with mainline kernel for H3 boards. Ethernet should work to be usable for headless operation.
 
Things are still WIP / not ready yet AFAIK.

C'mon guys. The whole issue is exactly none. Idle temperature increases by 10°C, temperatures under load aren't affected at all, a few error messages were thrown out. That's all. And people start to get crazy and spread bullshit like 'burning boards'. Really annoying!
 
And you didn't fix anything you just reverted back to before the update and now use wrong settings since they base on (my) wrong assumptions made a few months ago. The new settings you could've adopted instead will show superiour behaviour. Stop whining now, use your boards as you did before, the next update will fix it.

Fix posted under http://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/1122-arisc-errors-have-returned/

done.

We should add in big letters to download info that disconnecting peripherals (especially WiFi dongles and USB hubs) on first boot helps resolving most of the auto detection problems until this is resolved.

Yes, we are aware of this. We are planning to drop this auto detection since it's not reliable. This means each board will have it's own unique image.
 
There was too much other things with this release so it was postponed.

@Zamar19
 
We enabled a lot of 3rd party devices but we don't manage a list of supported devices. Just give it a try and if it don't work, explore and provide use more information - which switch do we need to enable in configuration:
 
which https://github.com/igorpecovnik/lib/blob/master/config/kernel/linux-sun8i-default.config
 
@aegrotatio
 
I would say this is due to wrong board detection (known problem - we are working on it) - check where is your /boot/script.bin linked to? 

Small update on the One:
How to fix thermal problems with Orange Pi One? (more interesting for users of other distros since we developed a tool that tries to patch settings for the different voltage regulator on the One) How does switching display settings work on Armbian? (might work for other distros also) And now that most of the stuff is working on H3 with Armbian release 5.04 our users start to produce tutorials:
How to get back missing ports on the OPi One with a solder iron? (almost all the ports from Orange Pi PC are still there) Use I2S on Orange Pi  
To be continued -- the next tutorials that are announced will cover I2C, SPI and dealing with RFID readers:
 

Small update or let's better say a quick look at the direct competition:
 
Banana Pi M2+:
 

 
65x65mm in size, GBit Ethernet, 1 GB RAM, AP6212 WiFi/BT (unlike the Orange's WiFi chip this is already supported with mainline kernel), 8 GB eMMC (they already said they might remove this for a cost down variant). Unfortunately not all 3 USB host ports exposed and still relying on the crappy Micro USB connector to power the board.
 
EDIT: build system prepared for M2+ 3 days ago and M2+ maybe fully supported starting with Armbian 5.05 
 
H3-OLinuXino-NANO:
 

 
Only 50x50mm in size, Fast Ethernet, 512 MB RAM (maybe 1 GB as option/later), also not all 3 USB host ports exposed and using Micro USB for DC-IN
 
Prices/availability yet unknown.
 
Olimex chose to use a fixed voltage on the H3-OLinuXino-NANO so max. cpufreq depends on that (they're still testing). So most probably Orange Pi One will be faster (at least memory bandwidth is 32-bit vs. 16-bit).
 
Regarding Banana Pi M2+ I would be careful unless it's confirmed if/how the CPU's voltage is regulated there and whether they managed to implement a few more design flaws as they did with their last boards.
 
The good news: Since we're already supporting H3 with Armbian only minor modifications should be necessary to support these 2 new boards when they're available.

Ok, so you're not talking about chip temperatures but readouts from a thermal sensor somewhere inside a chip that are interpreted by a driver and that might be somewhat off directly after booting? Good luck trying to solve software/calibration issues with a heatsink
 
To stop this useless discussion: Use cpuburn-a7 for several minutes, check the temperature readout (and keep in mind that it's still uncalibrated since no one did the work to do calibration for A20) and check the real temperature on the chip's surface. As I already tried to point out: the A20 is from a different SoC generation, the contained thermal sensor is part of a touch screen controller and more included by accident than by design. That's different on more recent SoCs like the H3: They contain a thermal sensor by design to prevent overheating and to be used for cooling strategies (throttling, disabling CPU cores). And even with these sensors that are way more reliable than the one in A20 we have calibration problems. Don't trust in numbers generated by software!
 
Regarding toys you started with the RPi Zero. Always out of stock, if not you have to order an expensive bundle containing a bunch of crap and you're limited to one piece per order: https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pi-zero-complete-starter-kit
 
And if you're not a tinkerer/maker you can't do anything with a 'Zero' except of using it as a very slow desktop without connections to the outside.
 
I'm talking about IoT/controller stuff where I need connectivity (Ethernet, USB), a few sensors (SPI, I2C, maybe 1-Wire) and sometimes also performance. And I need to get this up and running quickly and reliably. The board in question doesn't matter that much if it has the necessary features and is supported by my distro of choice: Armbian. Now we can also use cheap Orange Pis too (hardware quality is good, software/support from the vendor sucks -- but the latter doesn't matter at all fortunately)
 
And BTW: You should really open your eyes and realise that there exist more than 3-5 SBC manufacturers in this world

The specific SoC doesn't matter that much. With the ones I use normally (cheap, $0.5, just do a search for 'heatsink 20x20 cubie') you get 50°C instead of 60°C (A20 will not get that hot -- and you should keep in mind that newer SoCs with their budget cooling strategies are somewhat different since throttling is part of the design -- compare with 'Turbo boost' in x86 land): http://linux-sunxi.org/User:Tkaiser#Xunlong_settings
 
And you should keep in mind that your set of criteria to choose between different devices might not match those of anyone else. I would also suspect if you try to buy 100 or more you can make a good deal with Xunlong and then choosing Ones instead of PCs is simply a reduction of costs by a third since customs/VAT should scale almost linearly (at least we want to use these devices on a larger scale in projects -- and unlike the 'RPi Zero' toy the One is a solid product for the use cases we have in mind)

Ethernet works with kernel 3.4.x. Mainline driver for Ethernet in H3 (same as in A64 and A83T -- Allwinner chose a new IP block compared to the older SoCs) will be ready in a few weeks. And USB-to-Ethernet adapters do exist if you want to use mainline kernel right now with the One or PC or any other H3 device.
 
The heatsinks are mine, if you get an Orange Pi One where voltage switching works as expected no heatsink is necessary -- compare with our latest findings: http://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/617-wip-orange-pi-one-support-for-the-upcoming-orange-pi-one/?p=5420
 
But thx for mentioning heatsinks: I normally use one for A20 (20x20 mm). These fit on the PC but won't fit on the Orange Pi One due to placement of other components. You need heatsinks that do not exceed 16x16 mm in size. But as already said: They're not necessary if you've a board that is not defective (mine is obviously).
 
Regarding RPi Zero: comparing real products with virtual products is not that fair http://whereismypizero.com
 
And it's simply a matter of the use case. For the project we're currently developing the One can always be used instead of the PC when only one USB port is needed (printing/scanning workflow with RFID authentication). You should keep in mind that the Orange Pi One is many times faster than the 'Zero' (important since we're using the device as software RIP converting PDF to primitive PDLs), there Ethernet and USB do not have to share bandwidth and it's also cheaper (when you add shipping costs to the virtual product that no one can buy). Most importantly: Would you use an SBC that is not capable of running Armbian?!

EDIT: All of the below written stuff is outdated and not recommended to run on any Armbian installation anyway. Simply use Armbian with default settings and you're done. In case you want to adjust settings, search the forum for 'h3consumption' utility.
 
EDIT: Please be aware that it seems voltage switching on the various Orange Pi One boards seems to have some tolerances. A user reported his Orange Pi One crashes randomly when staying on the lower voltage with the new fex settings so unless it's confirmed which voltages are really used or how to measure the real voltage the proposed fix here might lead to undervoltage/stability issues on some boards.
 
EDIT 2: In the meantime it seems only my board suffers from overvoltage so v0.3 of fix-thermal-problems.sh will apply default settings for Orange Pi One/Lite again.
 
When we first started with Orange Pi H3 SBCs a few months ago we had to realise that the SoC was blamed for overheating. Fortunately this was mostly due to overvolting/overclocking. I developed a rather primitive script to fix this stuff by converting script.bin to a temporary file, adjusting the relevant parameters to sane values and converting this back to script.bin last year.
 
Now Orange Pi One is there and the manufacturer simply disappeared. They sell a new board but there's zero information, OS images, any comments on settings, no schematic, simply nothing. This intercultural thing is still really amazing!
 
EDIT: Schematics have been released: http://linux-sunxi.org/Orange_Pi_One#See_also
 
First investigations showed that the different way to regulate the SoC's voltage seems somewhat broken and Orange Pi One is overvolted by design (affects temperature, stability and probably longevity negatively)
 
Since most Orange Pi One users cluelessly use OS images for Orange Pi PC and have not the slightest idea what's going on I fixed the fix-thermal-problems.sh script to differentiate between the older Orange Pis and the new Orange Pi One. The script checks the amount of available DRAM and if it's 512MB then it applies sane settings for Orange Pi One (no voltage switching since this is dangerous -- see above).
 
Anyone here with access to Orange Pi forums (me not -- I lost my logon credentials the 2nd time and this crappy forum doesn't send out password reset links!) should inform the users there that they should take care and that fix-thermal-problems.sh now is also able to cure Orange Pi One. Please spread the word and link to this thread.
 
1st note: Since most users have not the slightest idea what's going on on their SBC I tried to simplify installation of a small lightweight monitoring solution. If anyone wants to be able to simply monitor what's going on on his Orange Pi: In case a Debian based distro is used it's easier than anytime before: http://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/617-wip-support-for-the-upcoming-orange-pi-one/?p=5317
 
2nd note (mostly to the other Armbian devs): I also want to collect some feedback on this 'adjust script.bin on the fly' approach since the h3disp utility we develop should be able to run not only on Armbian but on most of the images currently used with any Orange Pi model. We try to improve and not to force someone to use a specific distro/image

In my humble opinion it is not worth to save $5 and it's better to buy full OPiPC for $18.69. However for some simple applications like armbian server/NAS/home automation/etc OPiOne could be good enough. But for multimedia there are serious limitations. Most significant is memory - only 512MB. You can consider using only OpenELEC but still with some limitations. For example forget about 4k in h265 because OpenELEC uses too much memory and doesn't want to open such videos. Some plugins have memory leak issues (like YT addon). Forget about Androids - those for OrangePi need 1GB for comfortable use. Of course for analog audio you need to solder 2 very tiny wires which is rather difficult because it is very close to SoC and points are very tiny. Same for USB. It's not worth to save $5. Also I don't like CPU power management in OPiOne which makes it hotter than PC. I personally purchased One just for fun. And I love gadgets Maybe I will use it for multimedia, as OpenELEC dongle for one of my TVs. But only when jerney solves problem with HDMI-CEC support - I just want to use same remote for TV and multimedia. I don't need 4K, but YouTube can be problematic because it crashes frequently on One due to lack of memory.
I also don't want to wait for Lite which will have same limitations and additionally no ethernet port. WiFi is not huge benefit because I can buy WiFi dongle for $1.7 which is less than $2 price difference between One and Lite.
OPiPC is for sure most profitable buy currenly. I will rather wait for 2GB version of PC.

Start to code? Here you find adoptions that enable these 4:3 resolutions: https://github.com/dni1337/OrangePI-Kernel/commits/master
 
But these new definitions should not overwrite existing resolutions but instead add more modes to be used. The same would help with A64 since the BSP 1.2 kernel used there (based on kernel 3.10.x) uses same code and it's also the same HDMI controller inside.
 
BTW: Currently in an very early stage and 'work in progress': https://github.com/longsleep/sunxi-disp-tool
 
But we should switch to this tool later on sun8i since this will save the reboot to change resolution. Longsleep wants to try out higher resolutions than 1080p today, maybe we need more memory reservations for framebuffer then. But at least there's some progress regarding different display resolutions and switching between them.

A month ago it worked but I've no clue whether it still does. You can try it out yourself but need a serial console anyway (no HDMI support currently): Armbian_5.10_Orangepih3_Debian_jessie_4.6.0-rc1.7z
 
At least I won't look into it until 4.7 (and the THS patches ready, without working thermal throttling it's somewhat dangerous to encourage people to run mainline kernel on H3 -- please keep that in mind)

BTW: The FriendlyARM folks were the only paying attention to this security flaw and now do it exactly that way: https://github.com/friendlyarm/h3_lichee/commit/5d4d02b1c8f336ba002eed4d97dee3a51ea76cdd