armfan

@sven-olaTrying the latest RC2 and RC3 7.1 bundles at https://sven-ola.commando.de/privat-in/ by flashing it to a MicroSD card and booting from it, I get the following boot failure. Booting your 6.18 image works though. Any idea how make it work? By the way, is the U-Boot binary inside Armbian the same in your 7.1 and 6.18 versions? Perhaps I could boot the 6.18 from MicroSD card, use it to flash the SPI, and then try to boot the 7.1 from the SPI? Update: I booted the RV2 off MicroSD card via the old 6.18 version. From inside this 6.18, I did "dd if=the-7.1-version of=/dev/nvme0n1 bs=1M status=progress", powered off, took out the MicroSD, and booted, and it worked! Now a question back to you: @sven-ola Now that the boot process works, do I still need to install the latest Armbian-bundled u-boot on the SPI chip via "armbian-install"?

Ah right, the OrangePI RV2 WIKI page http://www.orangepi.org/orangepiwiki/index.php/Orange_Pi_RV2#Method_for_burning_Linux_images_to_SPIFlash.2BUSB_storage_devices says the RV2 can be booted from USB directly, via SPI flash. The WIKI is not very clear though - does RV2 come with the SPI pre-flashed? It kind of sounds like that from this YouTube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzajoWMJgKI which does not mention flashing the SPI at all. The WIKI does not say clearly, but it says, if you need to flash the SPI, then just boot Linux off MicroSD card. But it does not say which Linux. They must most likely mean their own Ubuntu distribution downloable on http://www.orangepi.org/html/hardWare/computerAndMicrocontrollers/service-and-support/Orange-Pi-RV2.html , right? Then do "sudo nand-sata-install" which is expected to exist, and it will install UBoot to the SPI flash chip. After this is done, when booting, UBoot will load from the SPI flash, and it will auto-detect that there is a bootable OS on an USB device, and just boot it, right? @sven-ola

@sven-ola Hi Sven-Ola, thanks a lot for your response. About boot medium, can I easily put a /boot volume on the SD memory card and have it mount / from USB? If so do you have some cues for what I should change inside your Armbian image for it to do that. Regarding build my own PCI device drivers yes of course. Thanks a lot for providing the image!

@Werner Do you think Armbian Edge with Linux 7.1 is available and works on OrangePI RV2 already? If so I'd love to get that image. As I understand it the SoC's support has been fully mainlined in Linux 7. (By the way request to admin to lift my messaging quota. Will edit this request away in a few hours.) I just checked inside Armbian Imager, and Armbian Edge is not available there - the same two images as are on https://armbian.com/boards/orangepirv2 are in there, that's all.

@sven-ola Hi sven-ola! Thanks a ton for making RV2 work on Armbian! I'll go about trying to make an RV2 start for the first time shortly. Interfacing it via the serial port is fine, and equally fine is connecting it via HDMI and USB to screen and keyboard, right? As for boot media, will booting the Armbian Debian image from a USB storage device work out of the box or must I install some image on an onboard flash chip first, if so what's the URL to that? And then: Do you think it makes any sense for me to use the Armbian Edge which has kernel 6.19 right now, does it seem stable? If so can you provide an URL to it (upload it on armbian.org or mega.nz etc.) On SpaceMIT's mainlining page https://github.com/spacemit-com/linux/wiki#user-content-K1_SoC I see that the PCI support got an update in 6.19, would this be a reason to use Armbian Edge. This URL is linked: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20251013153526.2276556-1-elder@riscstar.com/ . I have no idea if this update has been backported to the 6.18 kernel used. The 6.19 and 6.18 kernels used, where are they taken from actually? At least for 6.18 I think the repo is https://github.com/jmontleon/linux-spacemit/ or https://github.com/spacemit-com/linux-k1x , do you use it? And for clarity, there is no Armbian with Linux 7.1 yet right? Otherwise just downloading the Armbian with 6.18 from https://armbian.com/boards/orangepirv2 . For CLI and packages and no desktop, the Debian flavour is preferable I guess. At this point do you think PCI and USB interfaces are stable in Armbian or Armbian Edge? Thanks!