barnumbirr

Had the issue happen semi-regularly to my Helios as well. Same "gibberish" saved to ArmbianEnv.txt as in your example.
Haven't been able to figure out where the issue comes from unfortunately.

Sold on Reddit.
 
Hello,
 
looking at selling my Helios64.

Mostly looking at getting a price check (what's the device still worth) and gauging interest.

Device is in pristine condition, standard fans were swapped for Noctua NF-A8. (standard fans will be included)
I'd prefer to keep this EU only as shipping is going to be a pain.

Hello,
 
So are you selling or just gauging interest? Initially I wanted to wait for batch two, but now... I'd be willing to buy it if you're serious about selling. I'm from EU.

I've had a secondary device connected to my Helios64 over serial for the last couple of months. Unfortunately, even at verbosity 7 it dies so suddenly that the output doesn't actually provide any valuable information:

 
Starting kernel ... [ 2.721938] cacheinfo: Unable to detect cache hierarchy for CPU 0 [ 2.881028] vcc3v3_sys_s0: failed to get the current voltage: -EPROBE_DEFER [ 2.900490] dw_wdt ff848000.watchdog: No valid TOPs array specified [ 3.012992] dwmmc_rockchip fe320000.mmc: All phases bad! [ 3.013479] mmc1: tuning execution failed: -5 [ 3.013881] mmc1: error -5 whilst initialising SD card [ 3.135010] dwmmc_rockchip fe320000.mmc: All phases bad! [ 3.135502] mmc1: tuning execution failed: -5 [ 12.521811] rk_gmac-dwmac fe300000.ethernet: cannot get clock clk_mac_speed [ 15.212309] dw-apb-uart ff1a0000.serial: forbid DMA for kernel console [ 17.035708] lm75 2-004c: supply vs not found, using dummy regulator [ 18.572536] rk_gmac-dwmac fe300000.ethernet eth0: PTP not supported by HW [ 18.817621] OF: graph: no port node found in /i2c@ff3d0000/typec-portc@22 [ 18.833386] OF: graph: no port node found in /syscon@ff770000/usb2-phy@e450/otg-port [ 19.262970] [drm] unsupported AFBC format[3231564e] [ 19.366283] rockchip_vdec: module is from the staging directory, the quality is unknown, you have been warned. [ 19.410603] r8152 4-1.4:1.0 (unnamed net_device) (uninitialized): netif_napi_add() called with weight 256 [ 19.421732] hantro_vpu: module is from the staging directory, the quality is unknown, you have been warned. [ 24.903650] platform regulatory.0: Direct firmware load for regulatory.db failed with error -2 helios64 login: DDR Version 1.24 20191016 In soft reset SRX channel 0 CS = 0 MR0=0x18 MR4=0x1 MR5=0x1 MR8=0x10 MR12=0x72 MR14=0x72 This is what my uptime looks like over the last 90 days. Again, none of the reboots were triggered by me.


 
Reboots wouldn't be such a pain the backside on their own if 90% of them didn't retrigger a mdadm RAID resync...

SOLVED!!!

Of course this was due to armbianEnv.txt being corrupt. Restoring the file from backups allows the device to boot cleanly again.

No, don't need to perform fix if you're only ever going to use the 1Gbps interface AFAIK.

From the wiki:
Source: https://wiki.kobol.io/helios64/sata/#sata-controller-diagram

From the wiki:
Source: https://wiki.kobol.io/helios64/sata/#sata-controller-diagram

From the wiki:
Source: https://wiki.kobol.io/helios64/sata/#sata-controller-diagram

From the wiki:
Source: https://wiki.kobol.io/helios64/sata/#sata-controller-diagram

From the wiki:
Source: https://wiki.kobol.io/helios64/sata/#sata-controller-diagram

sudo insmod /lib/modules/5.9.11-rockchip64/kernel/drivers/leds/trigger/ledtrig-netdev.ko sudo systemctl restart helios64-heartbeat-led.service  

If you want the fans of your Helios64 to start spinning earlier, look no further. This will allow the fans to spin at a constant speed from the earliest stage of initrd until fancontrol is started by the system. My use-case is for full disk encryption and recovery in initramfs, sometimes I can have the machine powered on for quite a while before fancontrol starts. Or, if the boot process encounters an error the fans may never start, this prevents that.
 
Step 1: Tell initramfs to include the pwm-fan module
echo pwm-fan | sudo tee -a /etc/initramfs-tools/modules  
Step 2: Create a new file at /etc/initramfs-tools/scripts/init-top/fan with the following contents:
#!/bin/sh PREREQ="" prereqs() { echo "$PREREQ" } case $1 in prereqs) prereqs exit 0 ;; esac . /scripts/functions modprobe pwm-fan for pwm in /sys/devices/platform/p*-fan/hwmon/hwmon*/pwm1; do echo 150 >$pwm done exit 0 Feel free to change the value 150 anywhere between 1-255, it decides how fast the fans will spin.
 
Step 3: Enable the fan script for inclusion in initramfs and update the initramfs image:
sudo chmod +x /etc/initramfs-tools/scripts/init-top/fan sudo update-initramfs -u -k all  
Step 4: Reboot and ejoy the cool breeze.

Another approach I thought of after the fact is booting the helios64 to the stock armbian image on a sd-card, and doing all of the filesystem operations connected over SSH.  You'll still need a place to copy the old root filesystem to.  You could use the sd card (which would be slow), a USB storage device, or you could mount the 3.5" storage array from the helios.  I would be curious to try this to see if this avoids the "no space left on device" errors I was getting when un-tarring the root filesystem back onto the new btrfs filesystem.

Sure thing! Here it goes:

With the Noctua fans, this config makes the Helios64 silent most of the time while keeping SoC temperatures below 75C and HDD temperatures below 35C.

Sure thing! Here it goes:

With the Noctua fans, this config makes the Helios64 silent most of the time while keeping SoC temperatures below 75C and HDD temperatures below 35C.

$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list deb http://deb.debian.org/debian buster main contrib non-free #deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian buster main contrib non-free deb http://deb.debian.org/debian buster-updates main contrib non-free #deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian buster-updates main contrib non-free deb http://deb.debian.org/debian buster-backports main contrib non-free #deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian buster-backports main contrib non-free deb http://security.debian.org/ buster/updates main contrib non-free #deb-src http://security.debian.org/ buster/updates main contrib non-free $ cat /etc/apt/sources.list.d/armbian.list deb http://apt.armbian.com buster main buster-utils buster-desktop

Just the standard Noctua NF-A8 PWM (Chromax.Black.swap because I'm a weeb :D). No dust filter for me yet: I think it might impede airflow too much but I'll see over time.

Operating temperature for the Rockchip RK3399K SoC is -20°C~85°C. Don't know about the rest of your questions as I haven't taken my Helios apart (yet ;) ).