Excalibur

Do you still have this issue?

Since Armbian no longer provides precompiled image I have to build my own image with the following command `/compile.sh docker BOARD=rockpi-4b BRANCH=current RELEASE=bullseye BUILD_MINIMAL=yes BUILD_DESKTOP=no KERNEL_ONLY=no KERNEL_CONFIGURE=no`. I then flashed this image to a microSD card and was hoping to update my U-Boot on SPI. Instead I got the following message once I updated SPI with `nand-sata-install`: The system stuck on the last line. I then tried to `dpkg -i linux-u-boot-current-rockpi-4b_21.08.1_arm64.deb` and reinstalled SPI bootloader. This actually get me a little bit further: Then the system also stops here. Hopefully this can be fixed soon.

I got it working eventually. Thanks.

No error this time but I just prefer to use supported software if possible. If Debian breaks they have to fix it since their image is targeting generic aarch64 and that will be a regression. If Armbian breaks I might be pushed off since the target is not officially supported.

I believe Armbian already produce mainline U-Boot for this board so you don't need to compile yourself. The package is named `linux-u-boot-espressobin-edge` so you need to extract it yourself. That is what I used to boot vanilla Debian with grub-efi. However, ATF BL1 BL2 BL31 are listed as version 1.5 instead of 2.4. U-Boot was fine and distro boot works so I didn't worry about those.

Follow up on hrw. I was planning to install pimox on ESPRESSObin to run virtual OpenWrt and a docker host, which requires a Debian like host. I coudn't get vanilla aarch64 Debian to boot on the board so I turned to Armbian. To my surprise the board is now moved to not supported status. I ultimately got Debian to boot in EBBR and recorded my steps here in case anyone here also want to switch to a different distro. As for pimox I got it installed but idle memory consumption is around 800M. I have tried to run the board as a NAS via on board SATA and USB 3, which was very sluggish (could be my USB 3 docking station's fault). I'm very sad that the board is so resource limited that a little bit more CPU or memory can definitely make it much more capable. At the moment I flashed OpenWrt and only put one docker service on it, since upgrading OpenWrt requires reflashing SD card.