dottgonzo

hi peter, you can copy the same fstab on opi, without the boot partition (remember to create the correct partitions for unionfs and copy there the current contents of etc and var). why you are using unionfs for home and media?, i think that is better if your app stop to write on home and use some folder on tmp (but this is only my opinion) the cmdline.txt of the opi is the /boot/boot.cmd on opi, but i'm not sure that works as the opi, the opi bootloader is different, and you have find the correct row. by the way i've some trouble with the opi (i can do it on rpi) if i need to restore the the system (for example to install some other package). It is useful in development stage.

thanks pzw, i can't understand the CE certification for iot (ELV ultra low voltage category) products (not toys, or medical stuffs), when and how is needed to test something if everything is under 50v (ELV) with eventually a CE 220v 1A external standard usb power charger. The law (for me) is unclear about that, (maybe not for an eletrical engineer), and i can't found some article that cover this kind of products specifically

I'm very confused about what is needed to certify a device as CE. As i read the law was changed in 2014, but i can't find something to read that is useful for my burocracy knowledge level (zero). For example i don't understand why i have to certify the psu (the common 5V 2A/3A used by all the boards) with the board, if they are separated from the main device and both certified separately... And i don't understand if a Company/Engineer can self-certify a device (and which test is needed)... someone can share a link about that? Most of the google results are written by company that promote their certifying service, and are unclear

Hi tkaiser, thanks for your answer, do you know if can take a CE board, enclose it in a common case and sell in EU, or i need a CE enclosure, or i need all the package (board + enclosure) certified together??

Hi devs, i'm looking for informations about the needed certifications to be able to sell a board in EU (with enclosure). I know that many board have ce/fcc certifications, and others not, but the question is: 1) when i compose the product with an hypothetical fcc/ce board + an enclosure (let's suppose an fcc/ce enclosure, if it exists) + other CE/FCC modules i need to obtain a new certification!!?? 2) there are enclosure fcc/ce approved for orange pi (or if not) for some boards? 3) is the orangepi fcc/ce certified (seems no...), expecially the zero? 4) if is mandatory that the board and the enclosure must be certified together, there is a board with enclosure included, that is ce certified? thanks

doh! I have never used any NAND SLC? Using an SLC NAND can get a good reliability, with and without, a specific fs as ubifs? with my project, I decided to not store anything others than configuration files, but I am exploring some sort of reasonable alternative to be able to save some data while the device is in operation

Thanks for your answer zador, i know that armbian don't support ntc chip, but i'm looking for something that allow me to use writable partitions with a system that could be switched off randomly. So there is no reliable read andwrite fs for mlc nand???

Hi, while i was trying to work with the NTC C.H.I.P. i've started to take in consideration the ubifs instead of mounting all the system partition as read only. Someone have experience with ubifs? do it is supported by armbian? Someone can help me with some guide?

after some week of uninterrupted working i can say that 3 opizero are working perfectly! And for now is my favorite board I'm just start to use it instead of the orangepiPC and raspberry

Hi, i've received 5 ntc chip boards from 4 days. Build a customized OS without buildroot is partially not documented (and chip is very different from the other boards), but is asked often in many threads on ntc chip community. I hope to find another weekend to spend to obtain a custom image of a debian, then i want to try to see if i can use the armbian stack with ntc kernel. Someone other is trying to do the same? emmc+the ability to easily power the board by a battery, in 9$, is interesting and useful for some scenario, as opilite/opi zero/opi pc or small mcu in others, etc... In addition what do you think about an cortex r8 focused on realtime?

seems that now my 3 opilites are working perfectly (from 2 weeks, but they aren't tested on countries with power issues). Do you plan to change this settings on the future release of armbian for rpilite? or can i send a pull request somewhere? now i'm waiting to receive the rpizero to test it

with unionfs-fuse (look here https://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/1526-armbian-in-read-only-mode/#entry20043)

i can say that is not true. I use 2 opi pc connected with ethernet on 2 places in country, in a place where the power is cut every minimum 4-5 days, and there are many issues, and my opi pc are working 1 from 5 months and 1 from 2 months, with no issues. Your problem, for my opinion, is sd corruption and problems with ethernet connectivity. If you use the sd in read only mode and send the data over internet or to other systems AND use a watchdog to recover the connectivity, you can relax with opi pc (armbian 5.16 i think, don't remember, with original psu from the same manifacturier). And i would to say that the opi pc works better then rpi2-rpi3 (with ethernet), because 1 of that was placed inside a box where the temperature is 50-60 degree (the rpi burn) From some days i'm using the opi lite with the suggestion of tkaiser on my home while i'm trying to simulate several problems (connectivity and power issues) and they are working perfect with a common 3A psu for now (sorry if i've not tested the voltage yet). I think to put the opi lite on one of the worst place where there are rpi working (this week) to see if the voltage adjustment suggested is just enough for my case

as writed before, my boards works with all fs in read only mode, so i can exclude sd corruption. On my tests the opilite freeze on boot (and only on boot, while systemd load the system), but maybe because my applications are not intensive and the system is poorely loaded. So i'm waiting to find the time to conduit tests for this issue

i want to try to use buildroot in the future, for now i use a script that create partitions, add the mbr, copy the file from a previously backupped / partition and from other partitions with all my programs and configurations just installed, and all works in 2-10 minutes, depends on sd speed

maybe is not relevant, but my boards also works with an rs485. This week i try to use the opilite with the modifier at fex/bin file, as suggested by tkaiser

on unionfs rely many projects, relax

so you suggest that is better to stay ever on 1300v? by setting 1300 on fex for every frequencies or by setting only steps from 800mhz to 1200?

what happen if i start the hardware watchdog on top of the systemd processes, and the board freeze due to power issues? is the hw watchdog able to restart the board?

so every board got it and i can start to work with the hw one. What are the differences between the software watchdog and the hardware one, in addiction to the stability of the hw one? I've enabled only the software one in my project for compatibility, but i've never tested the hw watchdog, and don't know if it is compliant (for example in my app during the initial boot the watchdog first start with a certain configuration, then my application stop it, change the configuration, and then restart it), as i readed (but never tried) i can't stop the hw watchdog.

you can use unionfs-fuse, available on debian, that do the same stuff. I'm using it right now on several boards. You have to search on google how to conf it, but basically you need to unite the static and read-only /etc and /var with a temporary rw /etc /var that is mounted as tempfs file system. unionfs do that for you if you configure /usr/local/bin/mount_unionfs with echo '[ -z "$1" ] && exit 1 || DIR=$1' > /usr/local/bin/mount_unionfs echo 'ROOT_MOUNT=$(grep -v "^#" /etc/fstab | awk '"'"'$2=="/" {print substr($4,1,2)}'"'"')' >> /usr/local/bin/mount_unionfs echo 'if [ "$ROOT_MOUNT" != "ro" ]; then' >> /usr/local/bin/mount_unionfs echo '/bin/mount --bind ${DIR}_org ${DIR}' >> /usr/local/bin/mount_unionfs echo 'else' >> /usr/local/bin/mount_unionfs echo '/bin/mount -t tmpfs ramdisk ${DIR}_rw' >> /usr/local/bin/mount_unionfs echo '/usr/bin/unionfs-fuse -o cow,allow_other,suid,dev,nonempty ${DIR}_rw=RW:${DIR}_org=RO ${DIR}' >> /usr/local/bin/mount_unionfs echo 'fi' >> /usr/local/bin/mount_unionfs chmod +x /usr/local/bin/mount_unionfs and then switch to ro the partitions and add on fstab mount_unionfs /etc fuse defaults 0 0 mount_unionfs /var fuse defaults 0 0 before it you need to create those 2 direcories and copy the static /etc and /var on them, you can do that by: cp -al /etc /etc_org mv /var /var_org mkdir /etc_rw mkdir /var /var_rw

ok for today i stop to test stuff with the opi lite. Next days i will post results as you tell me. I will try with: h3consumption -D 132 -c4 -g off -u off -m 816 as suggested by you, about opi lite, in other topics, plus the -m 816, to use max 1100v and 816mhz, and maintain active all 4 cores for now which speed i can select for dram? 132mhz seems too low, can i set any arbitrary value up to 132? i have to respect a multiplier? I've evaluated the option of a power bank, but i think that if i need a power bank, maybe a better option is to use C.H.I.P. that can be used with a battery (and everything needed for power the device by a battery is just included in the board). Now my goal is to have the same stability of the raspberry/opi pc, on the orange pi lite/zero, and to use the C.H.I.P. only where the device must stay up when there is no power or where i can't use read-only file system and i need to shutdown safely the board. Thanks for your help and sorry to everyone for my english

i've just read many docs after your first answer, included this. As i see, i can specify how many scaling step i want, but i have to choose between only 1100v and 1300v for voltage, so i start with some test in these days. I have to take some power supply in which i can regulate the voltage/power to simulate some crazy power issue to see if the pilite stop to works. Maybe first i've to set the cpu governor to a fixed speed to be sure to test the issues with the chosed frequency. So is a bit hard to test i think, but i have to try. My question is: if i don't need much speed, i don't need a monitor and the clockspeed can stay ever down at minumum (even at boot) is more safer and maybe could be a definitive solution put the board at a minimum clockspeed (500~800mhz) @ 1100v and disable the option to scale up the speed and the voltage (even on boot)? in addition, do you notice if the dram clock could cause problems like that and i have to underclock the ram also? by the way. I don't think that the power supply/cable was wrong when i use the orange on site (because i've tried many, industrial grade power supply also included), but i'm sure that the energetic company that serve the zone have daily issues

ok, i've converted orangepilite.bin from /boot/bin/orangepilite.bin in fex file by bin2fex, then i modified the row you suggested and reconverted it with fex2bin, and finally i've substituted the original orangepilite.bin with this modified one. Setting more secure fex file, for example limiting the clock speed to 816Mhz as max frequency (what here is called max_freq and LV1_freq) disabling the ability to scale up to 1.1V over the LV3_freq and volt could solve the voltage regulation issue?

thanks for your answer. I'm able to measure everything is necessary, but the problem is that those boards must be placed (when they aren't on my desk) on remote rural country, powered by energy that is totally uncontrolled and unstable day by day... So if the lite/zero is affected by power stability errors, i need to fix with something that works in absence of power stability. Can i change the fex file to have everything ever undervolted and underclocked to improve stability over clock and speed? Another solution could be adding some panic countdown on boot phase to force the board to reboot when there is some issue. I've placed kernel.panic = 3 in /etc/sysctl.conf and a watchdog, but it works when the system is just running, not on boot phase in the meanwhile, i'm reading about the sunxi tools to manage the fex file. This is the first time i manage the boot process on an arm device, do it will write the bin file placed on boot/bin or somewhere on boot partition, or it is like a firmware that must be flashed on every device i want to use?