sven-ola

March 26

Found an error in the "use proprietary GPU driver for Spacemit K1" script. Because I cannot edit

here is the corrected install script.

March 25

Hello @lewa_j! Thanks for the explanation. As long as https://docs.mesa3d.org/drivers/powervr.html lists BXE-2-32 as unsupported we stick to the blobs. Of course, you are free to check this for youself, see compiling "getting started" above. HTH // Sven-Ola

March 24

@Łukasz Żywczyk Currently no prebuild nightly images. You are on your own. Grab a Debian Trixie on 64 bit PC (8G RAM, 16G Disk), then

sudo apt-get install docker.io qemu-user git
# add yourself to group docker, logout && login
git clone https://github.com/armbian/build.git
cd build && ./compile.sh BOARD=orangepirv2 BRANCH=current RELEASE=trixie \
  BUILD_MINIMAL=yes KERNEL_CONFIGURE=no KERNEL_BTF=no KERNEL_GIT=shallow

should build your image in output/images/*.img ready to be used...

March 22

vor 11 Stunden schrieb lewa_j:

is it possible to enable CONFIG_DRM_POWERVR for 6.18 and up

Hello @lewa_j, there already is a CONFIG_POWERVR_ROGUE=y in the 6.18 kernel. This was required for Wayland and subsequently for Spacemit-GPU-Binary-Support (see https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/9515). What exactly will work additionally with this option (I am not a GPU expert)?

Hello @1111Windows, doing "apt-get upgrade" on my GPU demo image this will downgrade the kernel from 6.18.18 to 6.6.99. Probably b/c recently the 6.6.99 was changed "current->legacy" and the 6.18 changed "edge->current". Also, OpiRV2 is not a really / full official Armbian image right now. So we probably need to wait until build pipelines catch up. I'll place a "apt-mark hold linux-image*" on my todo for those images.

@maxsub The R2S does not have a NOR flash (or "MTD") that it boots from in the first place? That little project of yours does not look like an Armbian fork ready to be merged in. I may need some time to dig in and understand how it works. Have you considered changing the u-boot enviroment (...that can be save with "env save")?

March 20

vor 3 Stunden schrieb 1111Windows:

U-Boot SPL 2022.10_armbian-2022.10-Sd61c-P155c-H452d-V4161-B61c5-R448a (Mar 17 2026 - 03:52:17 +0000)

Hello @1111Windows, you are booting an unknown u-boot from NVME that does not find any meaningful data stored on the NVME. You may need to re-insert the SD card or swap to a working SD card or so. I attach the (timestamp stripped for better diff) version from you (forum.txt) and the expected UART output on my RV2 (minicom.txt). The latter I have captured after re-downloading and SD-flashing the mentioned trixie-gnome img which has a root file system with UUID=8f6e5f9c-3108-4e4d-8fbd-10a8295d396e. HTH // Sven-Ola

forum.txt minicom.txt

March 16

vor 10 Minuten schrieb maxsub:

How do I get a 6.18 build (Current)?

Download the RV2 image. It's basically the same plus DKMS (including headers) for building the bcmdhd wifi driver. You need to change the "fdt" line in /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf for rv2->r2s (DTB file is there), e.g before uploading with mount -o offset=$(( 512 * 8192 )) Armbian-....img /mnt/

March 16

vor 3 Stunden schrieb c0rnelius:

Not sure its related, but on the MusePi Pro I was getting odd happenings with the PCIe.

PCIe is a rabbit hole for it's own. I have a Wifi card that cannot issue in-line-interrupts ("MSI") for some reason so the firmware upload fails, while working fine with same driver in my PC. I simply don't use it. ASPM quirks also seems not to be too uncommon, a simple grep quirk_disable_aspm drivers/pci/quirks.c|wc -l shows 21...

March 16

@maxsub with a recent kernel, temp and load should be fine. The exiting question is: all 4 Ethernet ports are working?

March 16

vor einer Stunde schrieb Curvy Android:

Seeing that there are differences in behavior between the two M.2 slots, does that mean they're connected differently?

Schematics-wise no - at leasts I don't see a diff in the RV2_SCH.pdf. Electrical-wise probably - other traces, so maybe more or less crosstalk, better or worse gnd and such. From a software perspective: this is PCIE-B and C (while A is unused).

That PCIe active state power management seems to be a source of endless pleasure, maybe the NVME vendors all have digested the wrong specs or so. Anyhow: if it works now, it's fine probably.

March 16

@Curvy Android I don't see meaningful differences in the kernels init msgs for top and bottom PCIe slots - besides that "Buffer I/O error" that leads to the non-working NVME. Besides that, the "faulty power saving mode" line looks familar. I have trouble with my Samsung NVME with that power saving blurb as well. Can you retry with NVME in the top slot and an additional pcie_aspm=off added to your booting SD card in the /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf file behind append kernel params?

March 16

@4A studio You can run the spacemit-gpu-addon.sh on forky. This should install the trixie binaries. If there is something that does not work or wants an unavailable depend, you may try recompiling, the source should be with you: apt-get build-dep somepack and apt-get source -b somepack will get you going. If that works, you can tell me and I'll integrate.

@Uhtred2 No 1080p youtube for you? Maybe not every codec works. I have tried with German TV, such as

Anyhow, the IMG BXE 2-32 GPU is not very fast, only 500 fish with https://webglsamples.org/aquarium/aquarium.html Hopefully, the K3 successor uses something better.

@maxsub You sure use our kernels? Can you post "uname -a" output? I tried the R2S image on my RV2 which shows a zero load with "uptime". Also, why do you need to manually boot USB from uboot? That "kydevtool" together with boot switch does not work either?

March 15

Wrote a script to change an Armbian desktop system for Spacemit GPU drivers and Chromium (attached). Tested with the two pre-installed Gnome images on my site (see https://privat-in.de/ goto Downloads). Some testing results:

Spacemit offers Ubuntu noble and Debian trixie *.deb from their Bianbu site http://archive.spacemit.com/ For us, main diff here is Noble=chromium (Spacemit customized version) and Trixie=chromium-browser-stable (older and not customized).
We need Wayland for the GPU, X11 does not work. With lightdm, each Wayland login freezes. Thus use gdm3.
With gdm3, Xfce4 exits immediately, Kde-plasma shows drawing errors, Cinnamon works to some extend, e.g has video placing and window sizing problems. So the only useable GUI is Gnome.
With Chromium under Gnome we can watch Youtube with 1080p (video / audio sync should stablize after some seconds). When doing this, CPU temperature is up to 75°C from the ususal 65°C, power is 4 Watts from the ususal 3 Watts.

Script should work on other Spacemit K1 boards as well. If you miss some package from Bianbu, write a wishlist or make an PR on https://codeberg.org/sven-ola/spacemit-mirror

spacemit-gpu-addon.sh

March 15

Addon for @maxsub and the bricked R2S: I tested USB boot from u-boot cmdline on my RV2, and it works. Here's how:

usb start
setenv devtype usb
setenv devnum 0:1
setenv prefix boot/
#setenv fdtfile spacemit/x1_orangepi-r2s.dtb
setenv fdtfile spacemit/k1-orangepi-rv2.dtb
setenv bootargs "console=ttyS0,115200 root=/dev/sda1"
ls ${devtype} ${devnum} ${prefix}
load ${devtype} ${devnum} ${ramdisk_addr_r} ${prefix}uInitrd
load ${devtype} ${devnum} ${kernel_addr_r} ${prefix}Image
load ${devtype} ${devnum} ${fdt_addr_r} ${prefix}dtb/${fdtfile}
booti ${kernel_addr_r} ${ramdisk_addr_r} ${fdt_addr_r}

In case you have a blank u-boot-env, here's mine attached // HTH

printenv.cap

March 15

@maxsub You mean the boot.cmd (source for boot.scr) from the Xunlong Ubuntu image for R2S? I'll attach it below // HTH

boot.cmd

March 14

@maxsub I was not even aware, that boot from USB is a thing. The RV2 boots from SD via extlinux, here is the relevant uboot output. HTH

[   3.458] Retrieving file: /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf
[   3.490] 1:   Armbian-unofficial
[   3.490] Retrieving file: /boot/uInitrd
[   4.772] Retrieving file: /boot/Image
[   5.767] append: root=UUID=c79489b6-9fea-4a53-a334-d91a0f30843a earlycon=sbi console=tty1 console=ttyS0,115200 logleve
l=1 rw no_console_suspend consoleblank=0 fsck.fix=yes fsck.repair=yes net.ifnames=0 splash plymouth.ignore-serial-consol
es
[   5.785] Retrieving file: /boot/dtb/spacemit/k1-orangepi-rv2.dtb
[   5.838]    Uncompressing Kernel Image
[   6.218] Moving Image from 0x10000000 to 0x200000, end=2c90000
[   6.245] ## Loading init Ramdisk from Legacy Image at 21000000 ...
[   6.248]    Image Name:   uInitrd
[   6.251]    Image Type:   RISC-V Linux RAMDisk Image (gzip compressed)
[   6.258]    Data Size:    20347839 Bytes = 19.4 MiB
[   6.263]    Load Address: 00000000
[   6.266]    Entry Point:  00000000
   Verifying Checksum ... OK
[   6.363] ## Flattened Device Tree blob at 31000000
[   6.365]    Booting using the fdt blob at 0x31000000
[   6.370]    Loading Ramdisk to 7ca0b000, end 7dd72bbf ... OK
[   6.391]    Loading Device Tree to 000000007c9eb000, end 000000007ca0a097 ... OK

Starting kernel ...

March 13

Success: tested RV2 with GPU on Armbian-noble-nightly. It's a bit hacky but should work. I created a mirror of the relevant packages from Spacmit/Bianbu. Only packages with source, specific to k1x / video / gpu plus chromium. Mirror project is here, in case you want to mirror yourself or miss a package: https://codeberg.org/sven-ola/spacemit-mirror

After getting up Armbian-noble-xfce4-nightly on your Spacemit/K1 board (that includes Ky X1)

Add mirror repo to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/sven-ola.sources (Note: this is experimental)

Types: deb deb-src
URIs: https://privat-in.de/armbian
Suites: noble
Components: main
Signed-By: /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/sven-ola.gpg

Get my repo key with

wget -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/sven-ola.gpg https://privat-in.de/armbian/key.gpg

Give the mirror some weight, add an /etc/apt/preferences.d/sven-ola file
```
Package: *
Pin: release o=Sven-Ola
Pin-Priority: 1000
```
Install GPU support
```
apt-get update
apt-get install img-gpu-powervr
apt-get dist-upgrade
```
Note: this will downgrade mesa-25.x to mesa-24.x from Bianbu/Spacemit
Install a Wayland-enabled GUI (tested: gnome)
```
apt-get install gnome-core
systemctl disable lightdm
```
If asked, select gdm from gnome instead of lightdm from xfce4.
After rebooting, click on your user, then stop and select Gnome with the lower right gearwheel icon.

I also installed glmark2-es2-wayland to check if that runs. It shows 417@800x600 which is faster than software mesa...

March 11

Found the "no Wayland on current kernel" (see new PR https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/9515). glmark2-es2-wayland still reports a 462 score on 800x600. Thus I updated and renamed the image mentioned in previous post with a current 6.18 kernel. You need to switch from 6.6 with /boot/switch-6.18.16-current script, anything else described in the post still is valid.

@maxsub Alternatively install a M2(m)-to-M2(e) adapter in the larger bottom M.2 slot and use a NGFF Wifi card, for example RTL8822CE should run

March 10

@c0rnelius: Thanks for the info, I'll fiddle with the GPU in the meantime.

@Cristian Apas: that hack above is necessary if you use the Xunlong Ubuntu userspace. They have replaced every hint on the OEM, which includes the GPU driver name. Hack not necessary if we simply use the Spacemit Bianbu Ubuntu userspace.

I hacked an image together with this (see my site https://privat-in.de goto Downloads). It has a glmark2 score of 424 (not very fast). This is not for everybody. I compiled a standard OrangepiRv2 Armbian image with a legacy kernel and put in a Bianbu 3.01 minimal userspace as root. Details from my notes:

# Image creation starts with Armbian-Orangepirv2_trixie_legacy_6.6.99_minimal.img
Root from https://archive.spacemit.com/image/k1/version/bianbu/v3.0.1/ -> minimal.img
--
Default LANG=zh_CN.UTF-8, change: dpkg-reconfigure locales -> en_US.UTF-8
Copy from Armbian: /etc/netplan/10-dhcp-all-interfaces.yaml, /etc/fstab, /boot/*,
/lib/modules/*, /etc/modprobe.d/orangepirv2.conf /etc/modules-load.d/orangepirv2.conf
Purge spacemit-flash-dtbs (and thereby remove linux-image-6.6.63*)
Uploaded this image to https://privat-in.de/ (Downloads)

First steps after flashing

UART login as root / bianbu

apt-get install parted
parted /dev/mmcblk0 (or /dev/nvme0n1): resizepart 1 100%
resize2fs /dev/mmcblk0p1 (or /dev/nvme0n1p1)
apt-get install gnome-core glmark2-es2-wayland

adduser a-new-user

adduser a-new-user sudo
Reboot and login

Click on Terminal, run glmark2-es2-wayland

Notes: other Spacemit K1 boards can run Bianbu without any changes, this is exclusively for OpiRV2. Expect oopses at every corner...

You can install cinnamon-core and use that. Make sure to run cinnamon under gdm3 b/c starting via lightdm does not work well (e.g. menu open freezes). Also, KDE plasma only with screen artifacts and xfce4-wayland simply exits immediately. No other wayland DE tested...

March 9

vor 12 Stunden schrieb maxsub:

I will try the newer brcm driver today.

So the GPU change is now in main?

Hi @maxsub, two annotations. Firstly, it's not the Wifi driver but the firmware. Thus echo "options bcmdhd firmware_path=brcm/ nvram_path=brcm/" > /etc/modprobe.d/orangepirv2.conf will get you going. And secondly no, there is no GPU change currently. GPU not working in "current" but may work with dirty tricks using "legacy". That's why it may pay to do some maintenance on the ancient 6.6 kernel.

March 8

Status Update: There is already a suitable FW file for Wifi AP mode. It's located in the /lib/firmware/brcm subdir: the newer fw_bcm43456c5_ag.bin can be used by adding firmware_path=brcm/ nvram_path=brcm/ when loading the bcmdhd.ko kernel module. The necessary change is now in Armbian::main.

Also, the RV2 legacy 6.6.99 kernel has an advantage: with the Xunlong Ubuntu userspace (from Xunlong image downloads) it supports Wayland and thus GPU when applying the following hack:

diff --git a/drivers/gpu/drm/spacemit/spacemit_drm.c b/drivers/gpu/drm/spacemit/spacemit_drm.c
index da25ec8b3f..073de3c7ca 100644
--- a/drivers/gpu/drm/spacemit/spacemit_drm.c
+++ b/drivers/gpu/drm/spacemit/spacemit_drm.c
@@ -23,7 +23,7 @@
 #include "spacemit_dmmu.h"
 #include "spacemit_gem.h"
 
-#define DRIVER_NAME	"spacemit"
+#define DRIVER_NAME	"rvdisplay"
 #define DRIVER_DESC	"Spacemit SoCs' DRM Driver"
 #define DRIVER_DATE	"20231115"
 #define DRIVER_MAJOR	1

For that reason, we added the LOAD fix also to the legacy/6.6 kernel (thus the uptime output shows a reassuring 0.00). Wayland support for current/6.18 kernel is still under investigation. Also, the edge/7.0 kernel does not boot on the RV2 currently.

March 6

Am 26.2.2026 um 19:21 schrieb c0rnelius:

Looks like the same adjustment that was made for EDGE needs to be done so for CURRENT.

Added the respective PR: https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/9496

February 24

@maxsub: the sad truth is: nearly any non-primitive hardware component needs some sort of firmware these days, you should live with that... Anyhow, as I told earlier, just replace the FW for the bcmdhd. Here's how (make sure do disabled any /etc/netplan/wifi-this-and-that.yaml, my device has inet via eth)

apt-get install hostapd
cat > /etc/hostapd.conf << EOF
interface=wlan0
driver=nl80211
ssid=test
channel=1
EOF
wget -O /lib/firmware/fw_bcm43456c5_ag.bin https://github.com/orangepi-xunlong/firmware/raw/refs/heads/master/fw_bcm43456c5_ag.bin
hostapd -d /etc/hostapd.conf

This works, tested on the Forky-minimal linked above. HTH // Sven-Ola

February 24

Hello @maxsub! The RV2 is a bit overpowered CPU-wise for an access point while underpowered Wifi-wise. I am pretty sure, that AP mode works with 6.6 if you overwrite fw_bcm43456c5_ag.bin from https://github.com/orangepi-xunlong/firmware

As a note: to build a Wifi-Router/AP, you can use OpenWrt which is available for the RV2 and may be better up to the task...

HTH // Sven-Ola

February 23

vor 21 Stunden schrieb Igor:

Auto generated images:

https://dl.armbian.com/nightly/orangepirv2/Forky_current_minimal

https://dl.armbian.com/nightly/orangepirv2/Noble_current_xfce

Thank you: I've downloaded both images. Both images boot, work, and seems to grab the correct updates.

February 20

Good news: this is merged in Armbian main now, many thanks to @c0rnelius and @Igor for reviewing this. So no more need to grab my fork, just clone Armbian/build:main. I was able to build and quick-test orangepirv2/edge-kernel and this looks fine including Wifi.

There are of course unsolved quirks currently. With edge-kernel, Wayland does not work, we need to use Xorg. And with the current bcmdhd Wifi driver, AP mode is not possible. This is caused by outdated file in armbian-firmware for bcmdhd and may be the same on OrangePi5. There is a mechanism to load a different fw_bcm43456c5_ag.bin (the one downloadable from github/xunlong seems to work).

LG // Sven-Ola

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