jeanrhum

I'm able to access the files from my nvme drive 👍
Here is the output of armbianmonitor if you want more details: https://paste.armbian.com/ufapucebiv

https://www.armbian.com/newsflash/armbian-23-02/
 
 
Changelog: https://docs.armbian.com/Release_Changelog/

Hi,
 
This is my first try to add a board to armbian build system.
I got a BPI M2S since several months, but only had time recently to investigate on this promising SBC.
I made a PR here, if somebody wants to try it: https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/4597
The main improvements are to be done for the dts file, since I'm not an expert about such file definition. Only 1 ethernet of the Gbit ports is working, since I copy the config from vim3 that share the same hardware for it.
I didn't try to customize u-boot and I use the one for radxa zero2 that works to launch armbian on the board.
armbianmonitor -u is here: https://paste.armbian.com/piyuqajeye
 

Hi,
 
This is my first try to add a board to armbian build system.
I got a BPI M2S since several months, but only had time recently to investigate on this promising SBC.
I made a PR here, if somebody wants to try it: https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/4597
The main improvements are to be done for the dts file, since I'm not an expert about such file definition. Only 1 ethernet of the Gbit ports is working, since I copy the config from vim3 that share the same hardware for it.
I didn't try to customize u-boot and I use the one for radxa zero2 that works to launch armbian on the board.
armbianmonitor -u is here: https://paste.armbian.com/piyuqajeye
 

Armbian now has a community supported build target for amlogic TV Boxes (aml-s9xx-box).  You can now build your own builds directly with the Armbian build system.
 
This is now an opportunity for members of the community to move the support for amlogic TV boxes forward within the Armbian framework.  If you are not familiar with the Armbian build system check out the Armbian developer documentation.  If you have idea on how you would like to see things evolve/change please use this forum to share your thoughts and ideas and submit PRs for any code changes you would like to see.
 
I am currently testing this code against the four different amlogic based boxes I own, but would appreciate others testing as well.  Once I have completed my testing, I will be updating the FAQ amlogic install instructions with this information.

Many of us are using Armbian not just on ARM single board computers but also on servers (bare metal & virtual). We use our builds since we trust it more then Debian, Ubuntu, not to mention other distributions that are recklessly updating and one ends up as an OS tester and not OS user. Personally I use Armbian Jammy on Ryzen 9 workstation with great success. My primary use case is development / productivity. For the road I used to have 13" Dell notebook which recently suddenly died. It was out of warranty so I had to get something new. After some testings of various devices I settled with 12th Gen Intel i5-1240P powered Lenovo. Then I tried many general purpose distros to see how well they work and all had some (minor) troubles ... 

We are having UEFI images (common image) since some time, but UEFI nor desktops were fine tuned nor ready for such performance daily driver desktop usage. We were close, but not close enough to just run it. Past two weeks we have been lifting general UEFI support, fixed many bugs and what came out is "Armbian ultimate developers desktop build".
 

 
- improved support in GRUB (armbian wallpaper) & HiDPI GRUB support
- all preinstalled applications are normal apt packages
- current 5.15.y kernel, Jammy userland (5.19.y has some strange issues)
- snapd is not installed (user can install it)
- HiDPI support (automated adjustments on big screen resolutions)
- NVIDIA graphics acceleration with proprietary driver (x86 only)
- Intel graphics acceleration also works out of the box
- preinstalled Google Chrome (x86 only)
- preinstalled Microsoft Visual Studio Code (x86 only)
- ZFS 2.1.5 ready (apt install zfsutils-linux zfs-dkms)
- face unlock works perfectly fine on this laptop
- installation to SSD drive to dual boot with Windows 10/11 is supported Armbian classical way by transferring actual live image to the prepared partition via nand-sata-install. All you need to do is prepare spare space on your drive, Windows 10/11 or Linux, UEFI support (most if not all hardware for past 10 years has it).
 
I have tweaked images (XFCE, Gnome, Cinnamon) a bit to my personal needs, but making changes is welcome.
 
Nice to have: disk encryption within nand-sata-install, small bug fixing, additional DEs. Currently we have CLI, XFCE, Gnome and Cinnamon. Others are too buggy.
 
https://www.armbian.com/uefi-x86/
https://www.armbian.com/uefi-arm64/
 
Please report where it works and how (well)!

Samples arrived ♥️ HW looks fascinating, Armbian is yet to be ported so can't comment how good this is in realworld. Its shipped with stock Khadas Ubuntu, kernel 5.4.y, which is good to boot something ...
 
Technical specs at CNX.

Updating images 20220317 (edge 5.17 and current 5.16).
The operation of the standard procedure for installing the system on eMMC via armbian-config has been verified (i.e. you can install the system on eMMC directly on the Quartz64 itself, no additional adapter is needed to write the eMMC module via USB).
Added support for starting the system from USB media. This greatly simplifies and expands the possibilities of running different systems (for example, during testing). Now you can use not only SD cards, but also any USB media to start (and/or work). For example, I installed and configured the Armbian working system on eMMC (with support for launching from USB) and now I easily launch other Armbian test images from ordinary USB flash drives, which is much easier to handle (no card readers are needed to write SD cards, the cost of USB flash drives is much lower and the choice of which models to use \ buy is much wider).

I think a lot of us are in this boat.  I am even in that boat.
 
I can't speak for Igor and the other guys, but my sense is that, for people who step up and try to help out, I think they do try and make a little time.  I would not expect a lot, they are still very busy, etc.  However, the needle may move from 'no time for anything' to 'maybe I can make a few minutes here and there.'
 
I would encourage everyone who is around the periphery like this to hang around on the forums and/or IRC.  Come say hello and just idle when you are at your battle station.    There are also a few guys who are active on IRC in particular.  You can ask questions in there and some times get answers.  And some times not, but don't take it to heart.  And it may take time, some times people answer hours later in IRC.  There are also the forums, where you may have better luck.
 
Even at my low level of knowledge, I have been able to answer some people's questions some times.  So please, do not be afraid to try and help out.
 
I would encourage more experienced members of the community to also help in answering questions, on the forums as well as IRC.  Every single question answered takes a little bit of burden off developers.
 
Ideally we foster a community where power users and other interested parties can help each other learn and figure things out.  I do have some more resources I would like to add to the docs as well about a few things.
 
 
It's never too late, newfriend.    Welcome aboard, and thanks!  I will add you to the list.  Some of above can apply to you, too it sounds like (and many others). 
 
---
 
@everyone,
 
I have been thinking, just because new names are on the list does not necessarily mean that everything will be OK.  Several people are new to the project, I have not seen them in IRC (in fairness, I'm not always on lately), who knows if things work out or not in the end.  So please, if you are considering it, please throw your hat in the ring.  Worst case is we have 2-3 maintainers for a given board.  In which case the work can be done in a collaborative manner.  If someone disappears due to life for some weeks, it would not be the end of the world.  You get the picture. 
 
Thanks again to everyone who is stepping up, it is greatly appreciated!
 
 
                                 
 
 
 

thanks to mara on the pine64 forum I can now compile u-boot for the Quartz64 from source, tested it and it works.
The code is here https://github.com/dieselnutjob/u-boot.git
Instructions are here https://github.com/dieselnutjob/u-boot/blob/quartz64-a/README
 
I also have the source code for his kernel for the board.
I have put that here https://github.com/dieselnutjob/kernel-rk3566.git but I haven't figured out how to compile it yet.
 

!! DEPRECATED !!
Instructions in this thread are oudated and superseded by the new experimental APT repository for hardware video decoding ffmpeg.
Please refer to this thread from now on!
 
Hello, recent upgrades to armbian are regarding kernel 5.15.
I noticed that many v4l2 fixes and enhancements went into this release, so I decided to compile ffmpeg using LibreELEC patched version and mpv over it.
mpv turns out to be statically linked with ffmpeg, so I propose it here for people who is interested in cutting edge kernel and wants to do some tests.
 
This has been tested on Debian Bullseye and Ubuntu Hirsute on following platforms:
Rockchip RK3228/9 (kernel 5.10, 5.14) Rockchip RK3288 (kernel 5.14) Rockchip RK3318/28 (kernel 5.15)  
It should work on allwinner platforms too, but I didn't test it there.
Binaries are built by me on developing boards.
 
The binary for armhf is available here
The binary for arm64 is available here
 
Copy the binary into /usr/local/bin directory of your system (mpv-armhf for 32 bit systems, mpv-arm64 for 64 bit systems):
sudo cp mpv-armhf /usr/local/bin/mpv  
Install dependencies for Debian Bullseye and Ubuntu Hirsute:
apt install libass9 libbluray2 librubberband2 libsdl2-2.0-0 libva-drm2 libva-wayland2 libva-x11-2 libva2 libvdpau1 libx264-160 libx265-192 libxss1 libxv1 libfdk-aac2  
I have had issues with dependencies on Debian Buster/Ubuntu Focal, in particular libx264-160 and libx265-192 are not available there.
I Solved the issue downloading the packages from Debian Bullseye web page and manually installing them.
There may be the need for some other dependency depending upon your actual installation.
 
Run mpv in a virtual terminal (videos up to 4K) with this CLI:
mpv --vo=gpu --hwdec=drm --gpu-hwdec-interop=drmprime-drm --drm-draw-plane=overlay --drm-drmprime-video-plane=primary <video.mp4>  
Mpv can be run in X11 with this other CLI, but due to buffer copying it requires a good CPU - rk3228 and rk3328 won't even play 720p, rk3288 do 720p fine:
mpv --vo=gpu --hwdec=auto-copy --gpu-context=x11egl --gpu-hwdec-interop=drmprime-drm <video.mp4>  
This is an experiment and your mileage may vary a lot:
H.264 codec should be well supported around the boards; H.265 has more limited support VP8 should be generally supported VP9 seems to still require some work.

Hi, I'm looking at this too, but I'm new to Ansible and starting to learn about it.
I've forked autotests and started to play with playbooks and roles. My modest additions can be viewed here: https://github.com/jeanrhum/autotests
 
As I understand, QA repository is the new way to go and all must be built from scratch. I'll continue my expriments on my side, waiting for guidelines on QA to see if I can help in some way.

Armbian is an established Linux for single board computers that is used in enterprise, IOT micro services and various hobby deployments. Recent desktop improvements bring the platform on-par with key players in the Linux desktop arena while keeping the key advantage – you can easily build your own Linux distribution.
 
 
 
 
Armbian provides stable releases every three months. They are driven by CURRENT LTS kernel. Adventurers which likes rolling releases, can check EDGE releases which are using latest daily kernel builds with fresh packages from sid, hirsute or impish userland.
 
Armbian has powerful build system which can build a whole Linux distribution, an OS image or a kernel. Key advantages are simplicity, speed and excellent hardware support. Provides native or cross compilation.
 
This release is hard work of exceptional individuals who have contributed their time and expertise into this release. Many thanks to – in alphabetic order:

@balbes150 @AristoChen @belegdol @Werner@Heisath @iav @Igor @Icenowy @lanefu @jock @piter75@Rich Neese@rpardini@going @tkaiser @tparys @TonyMac32 @Azq2 @henkiejan1 @juanesf @psztoch, @redchenjs @Uglymotha

Special thanks to users and vendors @orangepi, @friendlyelec, @khadas and @olimex that understand the importance of our work and supports the project with donations of cash, hardware & expertise.

Enjoy!
 
Highlights
 
minimal, server or XFCE, Cinnamon and Budgie desktop fast and effective automated language selection on first run regular stable and daily beta & EDGE updates CLI is powered with ZSH or BASH added automated kernel upgrade on EDGE 5.13.y kernels added mainline based SPI boot support for Odroid HC4 added Qemu virtual Armbian builds added CSC images for Tinkerboard 2, Rockpi N10, added ZFS upgrade to v2.1 improved Github Actions CI and CDN network added Cinnamon and Budgie desktop enabled 3D support wherever its possible and works reasonble well added Khadas VIM1-3 & Edge boards, Avnet Microzed enabled VPU support for Rockchip added legacy kernel support for OrangepiZero2, Nvidia Jetson declare Ubuntu Hirsute and Debian Bullseye packages as stable added Ubuntu Impish and Debian Sid as beta build targets added KDE plasma DE as a beta build target
Details:
 
What’s Left
 
long term armbian-config refactoring upgrading Rockchip u-boot from 2010.y to latest resolving Allwinner boot troubles on last u-boot enable 3D on Meson G12 / SM1 infrastructure improvements: mirros, runners, publishing.  
Details:
 
Tough Decisions
 
Odroid C4/HC4 boot problem has to remain unresolved in CURRENT 5.10.y kernel since fixing it would break Khadas boards. Problem was properly solved in EDGE kernel. We had to disable 3D on latest Amlogic boards due to instability Leaving behind published Deepin, Enlightenment, Gnome, i3, KDE plasma, Mate, Xmonad desktop due to space constrains and lack of maintenance. These options are still available within the build tool.  
Known problems
 
XFCE desktop is missing package gvfs-backends and xarchiver bullseye doesn’t properly detect locales Helios64 eMMC IO errors with CURRENT kernel OrangepiZero2 EDGE kernel based image doesn’t boot. Will be fixed in bug fix release.  

Good news. Full-fledged working images (20210826) of ArmbianTV for P2 are ready. All the equipment works in them and you can start and configure the system via an HDMI monitor and a keyboard/mouse. 

For those who are interested in reducing the price of Firefly RK3566\rk3568 boards. I am trying to convince Firefly representatives of the need to add rk3566\rk3568 boards without the eMMC module to the line of products sold. This will significantly reduce the price. This is especially noticeable on the variants of the eMMC module with 64\128GB. For those who plan to use these models with SATA or NVMe (after the version of the u-boot loader for SPI is finalized, for direct launch with SATA\NVMe). At the first stage, to fully start the entire system with SATA\NVMe, you can use the bootloader from the SD card. I invite everyone interested to express their opinion, so that Firefly representatives could assess the prospect of such an option for delivery.

I received samples of P2 and M2. the first impressions are very positive. I checked the launch of the official versions of Ubuntu 18.04 from Fyrefly. Everything starts and works from the SD card. The startup process is very simple, I downloaded the image, unpacked it, wrote it to the SD card, connected it to P2\M2, turned on the power and the system automatically updated the bootloader in eMMC, rebooted and the Ubuntu system automatically started from the SD card (the regular Station system in eMMC is saved and works if there is no SD card).
 
I really liked the mechanism for connecting SATA devices (SSD\HDD) to P2, it is very simple. I immediately connected a 240GB SSD drive. It was automatically detected and appeared in the system. WiFi antennas on P2 are full-fledged and large, they obviously did not save money here and will ensure proper operation. 

Been dreaming of this one for a while.  Finally got a weekend to focus on it recently.  I'm hoping someone is eager to take what I've done and move It along some more.

Here's what we have so far.

* a linux 'family' called virtual.conf
* a kernel config called linux-virtual-current.config
* a board called virtual-qemu.wip
 
The result is a full HVM accelerated armbian image with a kernel compiled with all the virtio drivers for disk, network and video.   Also a u-boot.bin made for qemu that can boot the image when used as the qemu bios/firmware
 
I've ran it as a VM on ubuntu using plain qemu on a Ampere eMag box.. and using UTM (qemu) on Apple M1 in MacOS

this is using u-boot, not uEFI.. and you need to copy the u-boot.bin manually from cache/sources/u-boot...../u-boot.bin and use it as your chosen bios for qemu.  I left some quick breadcrumbs on how to launch within the board config file.
 
I want to keep the u-boot option, but obviously we need this to support uEFI booting to be viable for the masses.

Next steps:

* automatically resize and convert resulting image to qcow2 format
* solve how to add cloud-init to image
* solve for installing grubEFI for booting and whatever partition layout is needed
* figure a proper way to write uboot to the image so thet qemu can boot without loading as a bios
* strip extra hardware drivers out of kernel and make this thing lean

PS Did I mention Desktop Works too?

 
 
 

Hi Malaga,
Your question is not directly related to armbian or any relevant OS for a given board, but it is more a question about docker itself and how it manages data: https://docs.docker.com/storage/
On dockerhub, you'll find most images where the data specific to the encapsulated software is binded to a local folder by setting the relevant volume. Look for instance to this image: https://hub.docker.com/r/linuxserver/nextcloud where -v /path/to/appdata:/config defines the location where your can access to the config files from the host operating system and -v /path/to/data:/data corresponds to the data stored with nextcloud so that you can target any local drive properly configured and mounted from the host operating system.

I tried something: https://github.com/armbian/dl-router/pull/13

Suggestion for a (near future) product.
 
We're still lacking a good SBC out in the wild for small clusters.. Recent SoC performance is good.. Currently all the homelab and k8s nerds are just using RPI4s because they have a header for POE support.    We know there are better options.

We had pitched this to orange pi but weren't receptive. Just sharing my idea here.
 
A Lean SBC exclusively for server tasks.
"The Ultimate Homelab SBC"

Real 802.11at POE+ means only 1 cable for your compute node
Use SPI flash for custom provisioning configuration
 
Optimized for Compute
"Ready for clustering and kubernetes"
Has the Performance and Storage you need to easily deploy for clustered computing

Suggested Reference Specs
RK3399K or similar performant SoC Gigabit Ethernet 4G Dual Channel LPDDR4 16-32gig EMMC SPI flash 128mbit/16megabyte No Wifi No bluetooth No audio No CSI No HDMI USB 3 802.11af/at support or support for RPI4 style 6 pin POE hat All Ports in rear? holes for additional heatsink mounting options

Station M1 is based on a firefly board quite similar to roc-rk3328-cc. However, the M1 has a different layout with all ports on the left or on the right, and it is enclosed in a metal case used also as a heat sink. The device tree is also different (rk3328-roc-pc instead of rk3328-roc-cc) and by default a smooth android 10 system is installed on emmc. Additionally, the powering of this board is ensured by a 5V USB-C port instead of a micro-usb for the roc-cc. You can find official pictures and specifications here.
 
My M1 has 2GB ram and 16GB emmc but variants with 4GB ram and more emmc storage can be bought. Currently, an armbian CSC image can be downloaded (bullseye or focal) or built using armbian buiding system.
I tried several images and all boots fine with almost everything working out of the box for a server use case. Here is the log of armbianmonitor with a buster build from the end of january 2021 with kernel 5.10.9: http://ix.io/2Nol
 
Idle the temperature goes under 40°C in a room where the temperature is about 21°C and the metal case is not warm. Running sbc-bench in this context produces these results: http://ix.io/2NoL
The temperature never goes over 61°C without any throttling. Compared to some other rk3328 SBCs, the M1 is cooler and this is mainly due to its metal case.
 
After general configuration with armbian-config, installing openmediavault and docker were as easy as possible, since they are also available through armbian-config in the softy menu.
After connecting an usb3 drive, I got an efficient nas system for a personal use. It can also be considered as a home-server while running several additional services thanks to docker (home-assistant, zigbee2mqtt, pyload, etc.). With this use case, the 4 A53 cores and 2 GB of ram are more than enough and all is running smoothly.
 
I also use other similar arm boards and here is my comparison:
- an amlogic S912 TV box with 3GB ram and GBit ethernet using armbianTV: 2GB is enough in my case and rk3328 is better supported than s912. Moreover, s912 is not officially supported by armbian, and latest armbianTV images are not compatible. The USB3 port on M1 is also a great improvement over USB2 for s912. TV boxes may also have unrecognized wifi chips whereas M1 has working wifi (and bluetooth ? not tested).
- Librecomputer lafrite 1GB: it is officially supported by armbian and it works well. Its main drawbacks compared to M1 is only 1GB, USB2 and only 100MBits ethernet, but it is much cheaper.
- Pine64 Pineh64 model B: IMO it is the real competitor to the M1. It has similar features with USB3 and GBE. It is officially supported by armbian and it has a more powerful SoC (Allwinner H6: 1.8Ghz 4xA53 with mali 720 gpu). However, this board is much warmer than M1 since in the same room its temperature is greater than 60°C while idle and throttling may occur on moderate to heavy loads. For moderate use case M1 is enough.
 
What to expect in the future:
- We can hope that this SBC becomes quickly officially supported, since the CSC release is already very mature (in my opinion).
- The main element that can be missing with mainline kernel for some use cases is the GPU (for desktop use) and VPU, but they are available on 4.4 kernel.
 
Another review of the M1 (using also armbian): https://www.thanassis.space/stationm1.html
Official forum: https://www.stationpc.com/forum-60-1.html

If you want integrated wifi, several sbc can be used and some others will require an usb wifi dongle. The key
For instance, the pineH64-B with 2 or 3GB of ram may do the job quite well and you can add an emmc module: https://www.pine64.org/pine-h64-ver-b/
A similar device is Orange Pi Lite 2.
If you want something closer to a tv box, station M1 is also a nice choice even if it is only community supported for now: https://www.firefly.store/goods.php?id=130
 
If you want a stronger cpu, any of the armbian supported sbc based on rk3399 will answer your needs (check for wifi in case it is not integrated on some boards, eg. rock pi 4A).

For this software, I prefer to use the docker official installation method with standard linux install over docker: https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/installation/docker/

This one is integrated and it should work.
https://github.com/armbian/config/blob/master/debian-software#L767-L801

Stumbled across while digging through Github.
https://github.com/sharkdp/bat
 
Its like code { font-family: Consolas,"courier new"; color: crimson; background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2); padding: 2px; font-size: 105%; } cat but has syntax highlight and other cool stuff. Nicely they provide arm and arm64 binaries for lazy people