Dani_RM

Ok, but why does it boots well with Pubuntu, and not with armbian? What's the difference between them that could explain this?

Ragner, my point is: the debate (controversy, etc.) is not ubuntu x debian or whatever, but unusable board x fully usable board with trusted os. Right? Ragner, I think I tried all the available images for the OrangePi 2+e. At least Pubuntu allowed me to verifiy that my Opi hardware is fully working. Igor, maybe the solution: do you know which uboot version Pubuntu uses? This could solve my problems!

Igor, thanks for the overview. Your post looks like is pretty good start to the ARM SOC world. It may also sum up, directly or indirectly, the root cause (well, a good part of it?) of IOT security problems . You write the very obvious basic things everyone should know but that almost no one writes in official news (commercial).. It should be Linux-Gizmos first and foremost headline instead of: http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/orange-pi-sbcs-offer-a-choice-of-32-or-64-bit-socs-for-under-20-170328142025.html http://linuxgizmos.com/orange-pi-sbcs-offer-a-choice-of-32-or-64-bit-socs-for-under-20/ SO, CONSUMERS: DON'T BUY THOSE BOARDS!!!! DON'T BUY THEM UNTIL THE MANUFACTURER OFFERS (READ: FUNDS THE DEVELOPER COMMUNITY) AN OPEN, PEER-REVIEWED, SECURE AND FULL-FLEDGED (IDEALLY: GNU) OS FOR THE MODEL YOU WANT. DON'T BUY A RASPBERRYPI EITHER (excessive hype always sounds suspect to me, even if I've been very happy with a rasp 2 I bought when it was launched, so that I bought another SBC)

Ragner, I stopped using ubuntu (not even mint) on my laptops/desktops some years ago, just use Debian, by far the greatest os I ever used, with its unique democratic community of developpers (and, recently, amazed by Manjaro, an easy to use Arch).

Ok, so how does this happen that the image is still available for download, without any warning? It's just a question, not blaming you for that. Anyway, it won't be the right place to start the subject, but with all the hype around "hacker boards", maybe it is time to list which and how many of them on the marked do have an available os which is known to be really safe, updatable, upgradable? (Besides, I bought the orangepi 2e+ precisely because it results from a community choice, and because there it runs debian, which is a well known, trusted and controlled os community project. I tried a different uboot, bought different sd cards, in vain. With [a confined to LAN and locked] Pubuntu, I could at least use my orangepi. But can't I just update the kernel of this ubuntu version that works very well, and add the eMMc and network drivers?)

Hello Lucas. A week ago, I answer to a message you sent me. Did the answer help you? I thought it would show here, it didn't, so here it is to share it with all the members of the forum: ps: PUbuntu is based on a lobo (Loboris?) kernel: uname -a Linux opi 3.4.39-01-lobo #1 SMP PREEMPT Sun Oct 25 14:46:41 CET 2015 armv7l armv7l armv7l GNU/Linux

Hi Igor and Martin, thanks again. I've chosen the orange-pi-plus-2e precisely because according to a thread by tkaiser this model in particular had been designed taking the developer community into account. And I can see you and other developers of armbian community are doing a lot of job. (I saw Martin has just published the ethernet driver for the orange-pi-plus-2e, allowing access to a headless server) I'll try to read more about,and try to contribute, even if learned enough of computing to know this requires really specialized knowledge, it's not just good will an building an isolated app for fun, you need to understand the foundations. I'll be more helpful as a translator into French or Portuguese (well, translation is about language, programming is use of formal languages, yes), but anyway, I'll try to help, because you do welcome people very well. Daniel

Thanks, Martin. I'll buy one. But while I wait for the dongle to get to Rio de Janeiro, where I live, and see the output, let's get back to the issue of this thread: boot problems. So I can't help asking: does anyone ever saw an orangepi plus 2e actually booting with the armbian image? Why does the wheezy raspbian image boots, and all the other images available for this specific harware at the vendor's site don't? Does the partitioning (raspbian's separated /boot on a vfat partition) can explain this?

Hi Martin, could you please send me a link at aliexpress or amazon to a model of dongle known to work (I know there are a lot of different voltages.... already tried to debrick a tp-link router and gave up)

Login as root on console or via SSH and use password [=senha] 1234. [ https://docs.armbian.com/User-Guide_Getting-Started/ ] Nilton, could you tell me what is the model of your pi?

Hi, At last I found an image that works with my orangepi 2+E, some Raspbian image "made in orange pi". But it is a whezzy, not a jessie, as it is suggested by the "8" in the name of the decompressed file (Raspbian_For_OrangePi2_mini2_v0_8_0.img). The obvious difference, compared to all the other images I tried, is that this one has two partitions, a fat one and an ext4 one. There's a single file in the fat partition, named uImage (4.8Mb, md5: ab769dfcff09fcfa7aa74b4e73d6e061). I'm sure that you specialists with this clue you'll spot the problem. Here are more details about the wheezy raspbian. The hdmi works perfectly (both dvi-dvi and dvi-vga), the little board is quite fast. But: it only allows to login as root; only one/3 usb port works (ok, I used a usb hub); ethernet and wifi do not work; emmc is not supported; I couldn't make the sound work. I still could access Internet using an old usb wifi dongle (rtl8187), that worked flawlessly once configured with the provided tool "wpa_gui". Then I could install some updated packages like Firefox-esr, which runs perfecly, displays perfectly youtube videos. Still: if you do a full apt-upgrade, it installs some raspberry pi stuff that apparently break the system (the system does not boot anymore). So, the board remains mainly unusable, with an old debian version that can' be fully updated (security problems...), unless I find a repo that does not install all the specific raspberry pi stuff in raspbian. Bottom-line: it was not a hardware problem (even I still didn't make the ethernet and wireless board work) neither a sd-card problem (i tried the raspbian image with both ultra and extreme pro sandisk, both work perfectly). I installed lshw and here's its output (the network 0 is the rtl dongle I added): root@orangepi:~# lshw orangepi description: Computer width: 32 bits *-core description: Motherboard physical id: 0 *-memory description: System memory physical id: 0 size: 2018MiB *-cpu physical id: 1 bus info: cpu@0 size: 1200MHz capacity: 1200MHz capabilities: cpufreq *-network:0 description: Wireless interface physical id: 1 bus info: usb@2:1.3 logical name: wlan0 serial: 00:06:4f:4c:c4:9c capabilities: ethernet physical wireless configuration: broadcast=yes driver=rtl8187 driverversion=3.4.39 firmware=N/A ip=192.168.0.17 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bg *-network:1 description: Ethernet interface physical id: 2 logical name: eth0 serial: a2:63:82:0e:b8:1d size: 10Mbit/s capacity: 100Mbit/s capabilities: ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=sunxi_geth driverversion=SUNXI Gbgit driver V1.1 duplex=half link=no multicast=yes port=MII speed=10Mbit/s Still, I'd rather run a fully working and fully updatable armbian on my orangepi.

Oh well, again, thanks for your quick answers and help. I really love debian, and I'm glad to see how active is this community. Even if i'm not a pure developer (my stuff is more computational linguistics), It is really encouraging for people who'd like to participate. Still, I don't have a USB-TTL cable at hand. I saw some at aliexpress a while ago, costing some 5 boxes, and if I buy it today I'll have to wait more than a months to get it. I really feel frustrated. The point is: if this board is not working with any of the OSes available at its vendor site, it should not be sold. This is a commercial matter, whatever the price I paid for, and it is orangepi's fault or at least responsibility, not community's. I sent an e-mail to Steven, from orangepi's "consulting service", who already answered, asking for more information, so I gave the description above. I'll wait to see what he says, I'll let you know (I also noticed the "OrangeOS", i.e. the apparently crippled pre-installed android on the OrangePi Plus 2e, is registered on a "Steven"'s behalf.) Anyway, glad to meet you, nice and skilled people to speak to. Daniel

Hi, Thanks so much for your very fast answer. I followed the steps (I could extract u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin from the deb package with a simple file archiver) but it still didn't work. I also tried mounting the Armbian_5.20_Orangepiplus2e_Debian_jessie_3.4.112_desktop.img image as rw and then replacing the original /usr/lib/linux-u-boot-orangepiplus2e_5.20_armhf/u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin (md5sum: d429bbf896fa5e8aec5eac1bb370687d) with yours (md5sum: 35809bfb3c969288eb53aaf94dcefea4), umounted and remounted it to check if the change was effective, then unplugged the orange pi 2e power supply, inserted the sd, plugged the power but got the same green led always on.

I've just got an orange pi plus 2e that I bought at aliexpress (+ Case + Power Supply). I did not manage to boot the sd card in order to install any of the orange pi plus 2e OSes available for download at http://www.orangepi.org/downloadresources/. I've chosen armbian, considered the most reliable (Armbian_5.20_Orangepiplus2e_Debian_jessie_3.4.112_desktop.7z). Following armbian websites advices, I bought the SD cards supposed to work with it (Sandisk extreme pro SDSDQXP-016G-X4 but did not check if it is fake), and repeated many times the steps here, and/or here, it still does not work. This makes the orange pi unusable, since there is a pre-installed Android, but it seems totally crippled as a describe below. Let me try to detail the whole story. When I switch on the product (previously connected to a monitor via a dvi-dvi cable, a Keyboard, and plugged to my router via Ethernet), I see a screen with an image "Allwinner H3 quad-core", then it starts up an Android OS (pre-installed on the emmc I suppose). When booting from the pre-installed Android on the emmc, first the orange pi red led lights up, then the green one, then the red led keeps lit up when the system is up. The orange led of the Ethernet port keeps lit up, and the green one seems to light up when there is some traffic. Then a screen appears with [facebook], [gmail], [netflix], , [+] and some other icons. There's a menu bar at the bottom of the screen, with the following buttons: [Home], [Kodi], [Local], [Apps], [settings] and [WEB]. The only thing I could do with this pre-installed OS is change the language settings from Chinese to English, and set-up the wireless/Ethernet. I could not add a user account or install any app. When Ethernet or wireless are active their corresponding network icon with a green V appears on the top right corner of the screen, suggesting I have access to the network or Internet. But when I click on the [web] button of the menu bar at the bottom of the screen, nothing happens, it just takes me back to the Home screen over and over again. The same for the [Kodi] button. I also tried to clock on every icon of the [Home] screen, nothing happens. In the Apps screen, the FileManager and the “stability test†worked (I have not the hardware to test the camera or the sound record apps). The stability test displays correctly a little 3D movie, informing the framerate. The MiracastReceiver hangs forever. When I click on the System update icon, it takes me to a window with two buttons, [Online Update] and [Local update]. When I click on [Online Update] it says “Your system is up to date†(“current versionHomlet 4.4.2-Qin2-v1.0releaseâ€). Ok. But I could not add any app. When I insert a sd card, it mounts correctly and shows up in the FileManager, which is also directly accessible via the [Local] menu bar button. I can browse and see its contents, even if I cannot read none of them because I lack the necessary app. In short, this pre-installed OS does not allow to do anything useful with the Orange pi: I cannot browse the Internet, I cannot watch movies, I cannot add accounts, read mail... To use actually this hardware I must install a full-fledged OS. So I downloaded the correct armbian image (Armbian_5.20_Orangepiplus2e_Debian_jessie_3.4.112_desktop.7z), checked its sum and signature, and installed it on an SD card exactly according to the instructions on armbian or orange pi site (I'm not a total newbie linux user, I have been using it for some 15 years). Trying with both the dd command and the Etcher package, I copied the verified image to the recommended sd card (SanDisk extreme Pro, I bought it on purpose), without error notifications, on two different machines (desktop and laptop) and different flavours of Linux (Mint and Debian). I COULD NEVER BOOT THE ORANGE PI WITH THE SD CARD TO INSTALL A FULL OS AND USE IT NORMALLY. The green led lights up and keeps lit forever, but nothing happens. I tried this more than a dozen times, waiting for more than 15minutes, with both ultra, extreme pro sandisk and even with a simple sd card, trying to copy the image again and again. And in the present state, the pre-installed OS is unusable. My orange pi is useless. Someone could help? Thanks, Daniel.