sven-ola

Hello @Malay, et.al, after submitting my PullRQ to the Armbian repo, I think it's best to cope first with the annotations I received from that. It complains about missing board photos, and some LLM generated blurb partly valid suggestions, partly not. The current status of Armbian's Spacemit support does not make the RV2 board a good video player: GPU support is missing and I'm pretty unsure if it's possible to include the HW video encoding / decoding feature that is in the chip. Which is 4k@30 with diverse codecs according to the chip description PDF. I am glad, that X11 framebuffer video runs and I am unsure if I can proceed here b/c I am not a video / GPU / EGL / vulkan specialist. Anyhow, thank you for the pointer to the Spacemit FAQ I did not recognize until now. While the PowerVR page from mesa3d states: "no IMG BXE-2-32" (https://docs.mesa3d.org/drivers/powervr.html), the respective Gitee repo contains closed-source BSD licensed Risc64 compiled shard objects (*.so), probably similar to the Nvida binary user space closed drivers that does the GPU support for the big videos cards. This may be worth a look, but as I wrote above, prio task is to bring the support into the Armbian tree. Best // Sven-Ola

I uploaded fresh images, that includes a trixie-edge-desktop-mate image I tested with my Hardware. Mate looks good and working, but switching between internal / HDMI audio needs some fiddling with the audio setting widget (may be a misunderstanding between pulseaudio and drivers). Changeing Sound-Pref:HW:profiles seems to do the trick. There is no chromium for RISCV, thus you need to install firefox-esr or netsurf-gtk manually. I think this is ready for primetime now, so I clicked on the "Pull-Request" button (see https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/9299). Got lots of auto email from the Github robots, will check tomorrow. LG // Sven-Ola

In the meantime, I fixed internal audio for "edge" (was: missing headphone GPIO). And also investigated around the esos.elf RTOS firmware. There's a license for that, which I added to my tree. The license basically says: use but do not infect with GPL: https://gitee.com/spacemit-buildroot/buildroot-ext/blob/k1-bl-v2.2.y/board/spacemit/k1/target_overlay/lib/firmware/LICENSE.spacemit_esos. Continuing on kthread issue. LG // Sven-Ola

Hello @JamesCL! I got the same error. You need to select at least one desktop package - error shows up with empty DESKTOP_APPGROUPS_SELECTED= Hello @Malay: That was on my todo list. I grabbed an eMMC from an old Odroid. It tried to boot if inserted. Thus boot sequence is: SD/TF, then eMMC, then MTD. So I booted with SD. eMMC showed up in /dev/mmcblk2. I started armbian-install, selected "Install on eMMC". Now it tries to boot that old Odroid image. So boot0, uboot, and SBI are there. Should work if you copy an image to /dev/mmcblk2. @All others: if that kernel thread for realtime-CPU (and HDMI audio) is active, the board always reports a load=2.0 or higher. This does not cause a very un-responsive Wayland-Gnome3-Desktop, this has other causes. Anyhow, this desires more investigation, since running a polling process to grab data from a realtime CPU does not sound right, there has to be an Interrupt or so, so I may again revert the reverted reversion (of the RPMSG kthread). Also I learned, that the Fedora project has an even larger esos.elf (rCPU firmware). I am curious what additional stuff may be in there 🤔 LG // Sven-Ola

Already got answer from upstream programmer❣️ That kernel thread in RPMSG was removed due to excessive CPU usage. I got the impression that this is true: edge:desktop is nearly un-usable. Also they say: there is kernel 6.19 from upstream/upstream in the make. For now, I'm reverting HDMI audio (and all other rCPU funcs) for edge. LG // Sven-Ola

Hello @JamesCL! The current image from https://privat-in.de/ should work. I will upload new images any minute now. However: if you only need Ethernet, Orange Pi R2S [1] is a better choice probably, b/c you got extra 2 times 2.5 gbit with that... Best // Sven-Ola [1] http://www.orangepi.org/html/hardWare/computerAndMicrocontrollers/service-and-support/Orange-Pi-R2S.html

Hello @Malay. Never mind - I' am not a native English speaker too. I have not tested the GUI intensively because my Goal is using this little board as a mini-server. Also, I think it's best getting the basics up before turning to the high-level GUI and media stuff. The "current" 6.6.99 kernel seems not to work with Wayland. You can switch to X11, change /etc/gdm3/custom.conf. The "edge" 6.18.7 is works with Wayland. Integrating GPU support is out of my focus currently, I am even unsure if this applies for Orange Pi RV2: https://sdk.spacemit.com/en/graphics/graphics_driver_framework/ ? HW Video decoding is another rabbit hole. The documentation is Chinese at best 🤪 LG + HTH // Sven-Ola

Got HDMI audio working. We need to enable SPACEMIT_DUMMYCODEC (done with a Kconfig change). And we need a working audio DMA. But this raises questions: the fix was to enable the extra kthread found e.g. from Xunlong/Ky into drivers/remoteproc. This fixes the communication to the Realtime CPU (the esos.elf driven Undoc) -> ADMA working -> HDMI audio working for edge and current. However, with edge the extra kthread addon was removed upstream recently [1]. I think it's best to ask the change authors. I will upload fixed images in an hour or so. Best // Sven-Ola [1] https://github.com/jmontleon/linux-spacemit/commit/d6a6ebede205669d2def873c3ab694a6ef1a4826

Hello @Malay! No need to raise your voice. Anyhow - thanks for the feedback. The missing HDMI audio has a deeper reason: the communication with the Realtime-CPUs does not work. Background: HDMI audio needs a special DMA: adma, that in turn is supported by the rCPUs (the extra Cores running the real-time-OS from esos.elf) and that does not communicate correctly via rpmsg currently. Not sure why and also not sure if this is true with the other RiscV/Spacemit boards. The 2280 M.2 slot works, I am pretty sure. If you need a running Armbian *with* HDMI audio, grab the orangepi-rv2-ky branch from my repo. It's older and I use it to compare working vs. non-working currently. Also, there's a reason this has no pull request to Armbian/main: it's work-in-progress. LG // Sven-Ola

Have solved another todo: grab overlay *.dtbo from Ky/Xunlong. There is still some quirks with SD/TF read/write speed (UHS / 1.8v mode). Also applied for Armbian maintainership on orangepirv2 in advance. Had some experiments with that M.2 to PCIe adapter I recently got. That oversized thing is an older Radeon with an Opi RV2 mounted on top. That does not work (no, card is so old it does not require extra 12V). Second image is a even older Nividia Geforce, That one shows up with "lspci" but does not work b/c no RiscV drivers (that's expected). Next ist an TP-Link / Aquantic 10 GbE Ethernet card. That one works, even without that extra power supply from the PC next to it. Not sure, if the Spacemit CPU can handle the ten gigs... Last image: the 2280-to-PCIe adapter with the eternal SATA power feed cable. LG // Sven-Ola

Have uploaded a new "edge" image for RV2 for testing. This time, wifi works. "current" image is the same. If you want to test, go to https://privat-in.de and grab Downloads. If you want to compile, clone https://github.com/sven-ola/armbian-build/tree/orangepi-rv2 and run Edit: forget to activate Mediatek wifi drivers as well. Also merged current Armbian/main. Uploaded again. LG // Sven-Ola

Thanks for the feedback. This is welcome 👾 I'm currently fiddling with Wifi for the 6.18 kernel. No good karma: the adapted bcmdhd sdio wifi from the Spacemit kernel 6.6 was removed from 6.18. So I'm using the bcmdhd extension instead, as it's done with OrangePi 5, based on the github/armbian/bcmdhd-dkms repo. That one has ALLWINNER changes under the #ifdef CUSTOMER_HW_RK (probably Rockchip origin). I need to re-add SPACEMIT changes. Also, I need to revert a Wake-on-WLAN change submitted by Spacemit to RFKILL in order to get the necessary Interrupt init called. Bonus: OPi5-edge also uses that extension driver but does not compile b/c a PR for 6.17 on bcmdhd-dkms from October was ignored. Will need time 🤪 LG // Sven-Ola

I operate an Odroid HC4, that has 4 x A55@1.8 and the board discussed here has 8 x X60@1.?. A fast sysbench says: single thread on OpiRv2 is slower (792 vs 1034) , multithreaded is faster (6342 vs 4151). Compiling a current kernel on RV2 needs 3 hours, nothing one would do do regularly. If you really need speed buy a Radxa Rock 5 (see platinum support devices on this site). Edit1: NPU -> Opi Wiki, USB and SPI yes, for MIPI DSI/CSI you need to test yourself. Edit2: Just remembered that I have a H618 (Opiz3). Single=708, Multi=2828 with the same Trixie sysbench. HTH + LG // Sven-Ola

If inserted, SD is booted first. If not inserted or SD read err, NOR flash is booted. NOR flash in turn boots from lower 2280 NVME. I have added boot-from-upper 2230 NVME to uboot. To install Boot via SD. Log in as root. Start armbian-install Select 7 Install to MTD Put fresh image to NVME via dd of=/dev/nvme... Eject SD, press [reset] If anything is wrong, start over with 1. Boot via SD. I am not sure wich NVME (upper or lower?) is used first. Note: If you put the same image to both NVMEs and insert SD, you may have up to three ext4 partitions with the same UUID in the box. So on reboot it is very unclear which of the three ext4 is used as root. Check with df -h /. If necessary, you can use uuidgen from uuid-runtime package and tune2fs -U as well as nano to change extlinux.conf for a different ID. HTH // Sven-Ola

Hello @brunorro. That "current.txt" from above: the UART output shows you are booting an older KY-Uboot from NOR flash. Probably SD card not fully inserted. "edge.txt" shows a correct SD card boot sequence. Best // Sven-Ola