TRS-80

This is the Armbian forum... Armbian is a Linux distro where you don't need a remote control.
 
Go ask on an Android forum or a forum of the product manufacturer. You are at the wrong place here.

Hi! Installed Armbian into emmc, much more fast: 163Mb/s vs 22Mb/s. Thanks for all.

Need to limit the time for regular users to edit messages to 2-3 hours or 1 day.
 
I don't see any reason for regular users to be able to edit messages after 1-2 days.

A few months later, and I have a little more time, so decided to volunteer to help tidy up the forums.
 
I never directly received a reply to this question, but someone must have heard me because I was just looking today at the Donate page, and now I see (in addition to monthly PayPal option from before):
Bitcoin address Amazon wish list (for purchasing hardware) Contact form (for setting up bank transfer, invoice option for companies, etc.) I for one was happy to see additional options and just thought I would share what I discovered.
 
You like Having Nice Things(tm)? Consider supporting Armbian today! 

I started contributing a few dollars per month to help defray server costs. I might like to increase this amount to help out in purchasing hardware, etc. As I stated before, I have almost no time for anything, but happy to contribute few dollars here and there as luckily I am in a position to do so.
 
I couldn't help but wonder however, how much the PayPal fees and exchange rate were eating into my little contribution each month? And if it's significant, maybe we can figure out a better way to transfer funds. I have a strong dislike for middle men taking a cut anyway. Parasites.

I also don't get this. Isn't their goal to sell more chips? Then wouldn't they sell a lot more with good/better software/support?
Seems like they don't want people to use Linux on them. 
 
They do make the most powerful SoC's on cheaper SBC's. I use Amlogic SoC's for video editing. For that you only need a good cpu(multicore+single core), and gpu/vpu is of lesser importance. In power per watt the A311D/S922X are just the best. 
But I'd like to be able to do a lot more than just video editing on them. I loved the Odroid C2 with S905. Was more versatile. But then again they claimed 2Ghz clockspeed.  

I can't wait for the RK3358 to show up on a board. That should be able to outmatch the Amlogic SoC's. It is to see what consumption and how much heat it'll produce.
Rockchip used to be worse than amlogic in their support. But they did make that up. Allwinner is no match in performance. But they are very usable boards for lighter tasks. OPi+ is my MP3 player and NAS with a sata hd and 1.5TB USB2 external HD. No other board does that better.

The RK3399's are my most used SBC's for light desktop tasks/surfing/watching video. But no match for video editing. RK3399 can edit/render 1080p videos well. But A311D does 1440p. The C2 used to do 720p. So it did improve quickly last years.

I'm very happy you make these images. Me with a lot of other people. It makes many boards a lot more useful where otherwise they'd be paperweights. I love your efforts in making more compatible images. One of my next videos will be about that. Nobody else ever came so close to universal images as you have. I take my hat off for that.

I just bought the X96 Air since it's S905X3. Made me nostalgic to my Odroid C2 and it was dirt cheap. If only I had the SMD soldering skills, then I could take the 32GB eMMC and 4GB ram from X96 and solder them onto my 2GB+16GB Khadas VIM3. For the 30euro I payed, the 32gb eMMC and 4GB ram are worth it. I just don't want to risk the VIM3.
Cheers.
 

You can "thank" AML for this.

They broke the u-boot. They put a bunch of crap in it that works exclusively with their old and crappy 4.9 core. For the color to work correctly with the 5.4 kernel, you either need the old u-boot-2015 (from the firmware, before AML broke it) or use u-boot-2019 (removing u-boot-2015 completely).
 
 
Offtopic. The behavior of AML lately has been increasingly frustrating for me. They do not pay any attention to the development of support for their chips in the main core (this work is done by third-party developers). Instead of helping, their new patches create a bunch of problems for the main kernel. I am waiting for the release of new Rockchip chips (or other platform options other than AML), and I hope to completely switch to using them for my development (minimizing support for AML, limiting myself to the chip models I already have).

This will be the Moderator counterpart to the Announcement thread I made about the same issue where I asked for help from regular forum Members. In this thread, I will discuss methodology I developed to deal with these sort of spammers, once someone has Flagged such post(s).
 
Humor
 
But first, some humor. Does anyone remember this guy? Anyway, that old infomercial kept playing over and over in my head today while I was working on this. I think we stumbled across some of his students! OK, carrying on...
 
What Not To Do
 
First thing to probably point out, let's not simply edit out these links one by one as we come across them. That doesn't really solve the problem. In fact it makes it worse by eliminating the "trail of bread crumbs" so to speak, the easiest way we have to "get them all" (which is by recursive searching). Allow me to explain...
 
These links seem to be posted in groups, by a small number of spammers. Once you catch on to one part of a cluster of them, it is actually pretty easy to methodically work your way through and find quite a few more, and "get them all" (within a given cluster).
 
Modus Operandi
 
But let me back up even more, for those who are totally unaware of this issue. What these people (we think they are human) are doing, is to register, and then post some at least seemingly relevant information in some topic, at least enough to get their post(s) approved. Then they come back some days or even weeks (!) later, and edit their post(s) to insert spam links. To see some actual examples, have a look at the Announcement post linked in the beginning.
 
1. Check Profile
 
So, once I found one such post / Member, the first thing I would do is look at their profile. Typically they will have from 1-5 posts or so. I would right click, and open each new post in another tab. Sometimes you will have to search then in the thread (using your browser search function, Ctrl-F in Firefox) to find the post. You will quickly be able to determine whether they are a spammer or not (you will see all the spam links in all their few handful of posts).
 
2. Flag as Spammer
 
Once you are certain they are a spammer, there are a couple ways you can "Flag as Spammer." Since you already have their profile open, you can click that button in there. Other way is to mouse over their avatar, and then the gear at bottom right opens another little menu that gives you the same option. This should be the first real action you take, because it does a couple things all at once (which will save you some time):
it Hides (not Deletes) all their posts, and Bans them from the site (permanently)  
Note that the above are subject to Admin settings, and these are the current settings as of this writing.
 
3. Being Thorough
 
Now, if you like to be thorough (I do) I will also kind of go through the threads that contain their spam posts (especially after their post(s)) and look for the following:
did any other user (usually unintentionally, or on accident) quote the spam links? if so, edit out those spam links by hand and leave a note what you did make sure no actually useful content was hidden (I have yet to find this in even one case)  
4. What Must Be Done (at Minimum)
 
However at a very minimum, you should be taking down a list of all these spam links you come across. This is key to the whole process. Methodically complete all of the above for each spammer and each of his posts. When you are done you should have a list of spam links, and one or more Banned spammers, with all their posts Hidden.
 
5. Working our URL List of Spam Links
 
Next step, we do a regular search on the forums for each of the spam links in turn. I like to leave this search window up, and again right click and open each result in a new tab, do whatever I need to do, and then come back to the main search result list, and keep going. Some pointers for this phase:
Some results will be ones you already discovered Other results will lead you to additional spam posts and/or users. Take care of each of them in turn (as above) and continue to add to your URL list. Scratch each spam URL off your list once you have worked your way through all the results for that particular spam URL. Some times you may have to "massage" the URL a bit if it is too close to common search terms shorten to base URL add quotes around it prepend "https://www." etc...  
6. The End
 
Get yourself a cold, tasty, delicious adult beverage of your choosing. You earned it. You have made the world a slightly better place than it was this morning. You have Maintained Civilization. Etc. 
 
I think that just about covers it. Any questions, comments are welcomed.
 
One thing I would like to re-iterate, if you don't have the time / patience for this, just Flag the post(s) and leave it for someone else who does. I think it's better to handle these properly and thoroughly than to half-arse it, deleting few links and then handicapping our ability to "get them all" later on.
 
Thanks!
 
EDIT: As an example, I will include my working list, below. This is what I came up with in a couple of hours this afternoon, all starting from one link that @Igor sent me in IRC (this is a bulleted checklist and table from org-mode; names of non spammers vindicated in my search have been removed):
 
 

Recently we been finding some very clever spammers who register, make some post(s) that sound at least somewhat on topic, and then come back days or even weeks (!) later and edit them in order to insert spam links. Some examples:
 

 
Some times they put them alongside otherwise legitimate links:
 

 
Other times, they sneak them into quotes or lists, etc.:
 

 
Now, above examples have red background from being deleted (which is not how they will look to you normally) but you get the point.
 
There is no way for us currently to detect this kind of spamming, without enacting draconian measures of moderation, which we are certainly not going to do. So instead we ask for your help. The only way to really find these is to happen upon them while browsing the forum. If you see one, please click on the little flag at the bottom and a Moderator will take care of it. It only takes 2 seconds, and you can help out in keeping the forums a nice and useful place.
 
I also want to mention that something does not have to be Spam, or otherwise "bad" for you to Flag it. Anything that you feel deserves Moderator attention, such as off topic, or a diverging thread that needs to be split up into 2 or more separate topics, etc. can be Flagged.
 
Any forum Member can do this, it requires no special permissions whatsoever.
 
Thanks for your help!
 
Note: This post is geared toward every Member / user of the forums. The corresponding post geared more toward Moderators about how to deal with these kind of posts (once Flagged) can now be found here.
 

This will be the Moderator counterpart to the Announcement thread I made about the same issue where I asked for help from regular forum Members. In this thread, I will discuss methodology I developed to deal with these sort of spammers, once someone has Flagged such post(s).
 
Humor
 
But first, some humor. Does anyone remember this guy? Anyway, that old infomercial kept playing over and over in my head today while I was working on this. I think we stumbled across some of his students! OK, carrying on...
 
What Not To Do
 
First thing to probably point out, let's not simply edit out these links one by one as we come across them. That doesn't really solve the problem. In fact it makes it worse by eliminating the "trail of bread crumbs" so to speak, the easiest way we have to "get them all" (which is by recursive searching). Allow me to explain...
 
These links seem to be posted in groups, by a small number of spammers. Once you catch on to one part of a cluster of them, it is actually pretty easy to methodically work your way through and find quite a few more, and "get them all" (within a given cluster).
 
Modus Operandi
 
But let me back up even more, for those who are totally unaware of this issue. What these people (we think they are human) are doing, is to register, and then post some at least seemingly relevant information in some topic, at least enough to get their post(s) approved. Then they come back some days or even weeks (!) later, and edit their post(s) to insert spam links. To see some actual examples, have a look at the Announcement post linked in the beginning.
 
1. Check Profile
 
So, once I found one such post / Member, the first thing I would do is look at their profile. Typically they will have from 1-5 posts or so. I would right click, and open each new post in another tab. Sometimes you will have to search then in the thread (using your browser search function, Ctrl-F in Firefox) to find the post. You will quickly be able to determine whether they are a spammer or not (you will see all the spam links in all their few handful of posts).
 
2. Flag as Spammer
 
Once you are certain they are a spammer, there are a couple ways you can "Flag as Spammer." Since you already have their profile open, you can click that button in there. Other way is to mouse over their avatar, and then the gear at bottom right opens another little menu that gives you the same option. This should be the first real action you take, because it does a couple things all at once (which will save you some time):
it Hides (not Deletes) all their posts, and Bans them from the site (permanently)  
Note that the above are subject to Admin settings, and these are the current settings as of this writing.
 
3. Being Thorough
 
Now, if you like to be thorough (I do) I will also kind of go through the threads that contain their spam posts (especially after their post(s)) and look for the following:
did any other user (usually unintentionally, or on accident) quote the spam links? if so, edit out those spam links by hand and leave a note what you did make sure no actually useful content was hidden (I have yet to find this in even one case)  
4. What Must Be Done (at Minimum)
 
However at a very minimum, you should be taking down a list of all these spam links you come across. This is key to the whole process. Methodically complete all of the above for each spammer and each of his posts. When you are done you should have a list of spam links, and one or more Banned spammers, with all their posts Hidden.
 
5. Working our URL List of Spam Links
 
Next step, we do a regular search on the forums for each of the spam links in turn. I like to leave this search window up, and again right click and open each result in a new tab, do whatever I need to do, and then come back to the main search result list, and keep going. Some pointers for this phase:
Some results will be ones you already discovered Other results will lead you to additional spam posts and/or users. Take care of each of them in turn (as above) and continue to add to your URL list. Scratch each spam URL off your list once you have worked your way through all the results for that particular spam URL. Some times you may have to "massage" the URL a bit if it is too close to common search terms shorten to base URL add quotes around it prepend "https://www." etc...  
6. The End
 
Get yourself a cold, tasty, delicious adult beverage of your choosing. You earned it. You have made the world a slightly better place than it was this morning. You have Maintained Civilization. Etc. 
 
I think that just about covers it. Any questions, comments are welcomed.
 
One thing I would like to re-iterate, if you don't have the time / patience for this, just Flag the post(s) and leave it for someone else who does. I think it's better to handle these properly and thoroughly than to half-arse it, deleting few links and then handicapping our ability to "get them all" later on.
 
Thanks!
 
EDIT: As an example, I will include my working list, below. This is what I came up with in a couple of hours this afternoon, all starting from one link that @Igor sent me in IRC (this is a bulleted checklist and table from org-mode; names of non spammers vindicated in my search have been removed):
 
 

I edited [solved] into the topic.
 
Don't feel bad, this power issue bit even someone as experienced as @lanefu as we witnessed first hand in IRC recently. There is a reason it is harped upon constantly...
 
Back to the issue. I don't want to speak for @Cornelius, but that seems to me like just a diagnostic step (and/or, temporary work-around). Now that you know what the problem is, try and find a better way of powering.
 
Scanning quickly over the issue (so I may have missed it) it seems you were referring to "USB device" earlier and only "drive" later on. Mentioning "drive" earlier on may have helped better grasp the issue at hand (x y problem), as yes they require more power at startup. I'm not picking at you, just saying (and maybe I even missed it).
 
Anyway, quick look at NanoPi M4 (I don't own one) seems to reveal USB type-C power connector, which is better than Micro SD (potentially) but even that can have potential issues as I read some of them are not specced correctly. I have no idea if that is the case here or not.
 
Anyway I think you know where to look now. I would be very surprised if a forum search for "NanoPi M4 power" or similar did not turn up some solutions. But actually I would do (in order):
use some USB to SATA adapter that injects power (especially if 3.5" HDD!) [1] make sure throughput of USB Type C connector is sufficient make sure power supply itself, is sufficient if none of above are sufficient, look into powering through GPIO Note 1: This could be the whole problem, especially if you are dealing with 3.5" HDD, which require much more power. I have several of this one because I found them highly recommended by @tkaiser in this thread.

Thank you.
Here are all of them in a bit better quality.

Number 1 :  Beach Island

Number 2 : Armbian Car

Number 3 : Penguin Clouds

Number 4 : Penguin Clear Background

Number 5 : Armbian Space

Number 6 : Armbian Terracota

Number 7 : Penguin Clear Background

 
Bonus : Rounded Penguin

 

Ah, sorry, haven't checked the last 19 build yet, had some other stuff come in and got busy with that. (I did update the 20.02-RC Google Doc, though, with my results.)
 
Armbian_19.11.6_Orangepizeroplus2-h3_bullseye_current_5.4.8.img is fine. Boots to login prompt, so it's a 20.02-RC issue.

ODROID XU4, HC2, HC1, C2 and N2 does have the same blinking when turned ON. But you can easyli change the LED behavior with different commands put one of these commands in /etc/rc.local 
 
Blue light off:
echo none > /sys/class/leds/blue\:heartbeat/trigger
 
Orignal state of light, it is called heartbeat.
echo heartbeat > /sys/class/leds/blue\:heartbeat/trigger
 
Constant on:
echo deafult-on > /sys/class/leds/blue\:heartbeat/trigger
 
On SD card access:
echo sd >/sys/class/leds/blue\:heartbeat/trigger
 
There is alot of different blue light settings. You can change blue light behavior to track your emmc and cpu load etc.
cat /sys/class/leds/blue\:heartbeat/trigger
 
 

This will be the Moderator counterpart to the Announcement thread I made about the same issue where I asked for help from regular forum Members. In this thread, I will discuss methodology I developed to deal with these sort of spammers, once someone has Flagged such post(s).
 
Humor
 
But first, some humor. Does anyone remember this guy? Anyway, that old infomercial kept playing over and over in my head today while I was working on this. I think we stumbled across some of his students! OK, carrying on...
 
What Not To Do
 
First thing to probably point out, let's not simply edit out these links one by one as we come across them. That doesn't really solve the problem. In fact it makes it worse by eliminating the "trail of bread crumbs" so to speak, the easiest way we have to "get them all" (which is by recursive searching). Allow me to explain...
 
These links seem to be posted in groups, by a small number of spammers. Once you catch on to one part of a cluster of them, it is actually pretty easy to methodically work your way through and find quite a few more, and "get them all" (within a given cluster).
 
Modus Operandi
 
But let me back up even more, for those who are totally unaware of this issue. What these people (we think they are human) are doing, is to register, and then post some at least seemingly relevant information in some topic, at least enough to get their post(s) approved. Then they come back some days or even weeks (!) later, and edit their post(s) to insert spam links. To see some actual examples, have a look at the Announcement post linked in the beginning.
 
1. Check Profile
 
So, once I found one such post / Member, the first thing I would do is look at their profile. Typically they will have from 1-5 posts or so. I would right click, and open each new post in another tab. Sometimes you will have to search then in the thread (using your browser search function, Ctrl-F in Firefox) to find the post. You will quickly be able to determine whether they are a spammer or not (you will see all the spam links in all their few handful of posts).
 
2. Flag as Spammer
 
Once you are certain they are a spammer, there are a couple ways you can "Flag as Spammer." Since you already have their profile open, you can click that button in there. Other way is to mouse over their avatar, and then the gear at bottom right opens another little menu that gives you the same option. This should be the first real action you take, because it does a couple things all at once (which will save you some time):
it Hides (not Deletes) all their posts, and Bans them from the site (permanently)  
Note that the above are subject to Admin settings, and these are the current settings as of this writing.
 
3. Being Thorough
 
Now, if you like to be thorough (I do) I will also kind of go through the threads that contain their spam posts (especially after their post(s)) and look for the following:
did any other user (usually unintentionally, or on accident) quote the spam links? if so, edit out those spam links by hand and leave a note what you did make sure no actually useful content was hidden (I have yet to find this in even one case)  
4. What Must Be Done (at Minimum)
 
However at a very minimum, you should be taking down a list of all these spam links you come across. This is key to the whole process. Methodically complete all of the above for each spammer and each of his posts. When you are done you should have a list of spam links, and one or more Banned spammers, with all their posts Hidden.
 
5. Working our URL List of Spam Links
 
Next step, we do a regular search on the forums for each of the spam links in turn. I like to leave this search window up, and again right click and open each result in a new tab, do whatever I need to do, and then come back to the main search result list, and keep going. Some pointers for this phase:
Some results will be ones you already discovered Other results will lead you to additional spam posts and/or users. Take care of each of them in turn (as above) and continue to add to your URL list. Scratch each spam URL off your list once you have worked your way through all the results for that particular spam URL. Some times you may have to "massage" the URL a bit if it is too close to common search terms shorten to base URL add quotes around it prepend "https://www." etc...  
6. The End
 
Get yourself a cold, tasty, delicious adult beverage of your choosing. You earned it. You have made the world a slightly better place than it was this morning. You have Maintained Civilization. Etc. 
 
I think that just about covers it. Any questions, comments are welcomed.
 
One thing I would like to re-iterate, if you don't have the time / patience for this, just Flag the post(s) and leave it for someone else who does. I think it's better to handle these properly and thoroughly than to half-arse it, deleting few links and then handicapping our ability to "get them all" later on.
 
Thanks!
 
EDIT: As an example, I will include my working list, below. This is what I came up with in a couple of hours this afternoon, all starting from one link that @Igor sent me in IRC (this is a bulleted checklist and table from org-mode; names of non spammers vindicated in my search have been removed):
 
 

This will be the Moderator counterpart to the Announcement thread I made about the same issue where I asked for help from regular forum Members. In this thread, I will discuss methodology I developed to deal with these sort of spammers, once someone has Flagged such post(s).
 
Humor
 
But first, some humor. Does anyone remember this guy? Anyway, that old infomercial kept playing over and over in my head today while I was working on this. I think we stumbled across some of his students! OK, carrying on...
 
What Not To Do
 
First thing to probably point out, let's not simply edit out these links one by one as we come across them. That doesn't really solve the problem. In fact it makes it worse by eliminating the "trail of bread crumbs" so to speak, the easiest way we have to "get them all" (which is by recursive searching). Allow me to explain...
 
These links seem to be posted in groups, by a small number of spammers. Once you catch on to one part of a cluster of them, it is actually pretty easy to methodically work your way through and find quite a few more, and "get them all" (within a given cluster).
 
Modus Operandi
 
But let me back up even more, for those who are totally unaware of this issue. What these people (we think they are human) are doing, is to register, and then post some at least seemingly relevant information in some topic, at least enough to get their post(s) approved. Then they come back some days or even weeks (!) later, and edit their post(s) to insert spam links. To see some actual examples, have a look at the Announcement post linked in the beginning.
 
1. Check Profile
 
So, once I found one such post / Member, the first thing I would do is look at their profile. Typically they will have from 1-5 posts or so. I would right click, and open each new post in another tab. Sometimes you will have to search then in the thread (using your browser search function, Ctrl-F in Firefox) to find the post. You will quickly be able to determine whether they are a spammer or not (you will see all the spam links in all their few handful of posts).
 
2. Flag as Spammer
 
Once you are certain they are a spammer, there are a couple ways you can "Flag as Spammer." Since you already have their profile open, you can click that button in there. Other way is to mouse over their avatar, and then the gear at bottom right opens another little menu that gives you the same option. This should be the first real action you take, because it does a couple things all at once (which will save you some time):
it Hides (not Deletes) all their posts, and Bans them from the site (permanently)  
Note that the above are subject to Admin settings, and these are the current settings as of this writing.
 
3. Being Thorough
 
Now, if you like to be thorough (I do) I will also kind of go through the threads that contain their spam posts (especially after their post(s)) and look for the following:
did any other user (usually unintentionally, or on accident) quote the spam links? if so, edit out those spam links by hand and leave a note what you did make sure no actually useful content was hidden (I have yet to find this in even one case)  
4. What Must Be Done (at Minimum)
 
However at a very minimum, you should be taking down a list of all these spam links you come across. This is key to the whole process. Methodically complete all of the above for each spammer and each of his posts. When you are done you should have a list of spam links, and one or more Banned spammers, with all their posts Hidden.
 
5. Working our URL List of Spam Links
 
Next step, we do a regular search on the forums for each of the spam links in turn. I like to leave this search window up, and again right click and open each result in a new tab, do whatever I need to do, and then come back to the main search result list, and keep going. Some pointers for this phase:
Some results will be ones you already discovered Other results will lead you to additional spam posts and/or users. Take care of each of them in turn (as above) and continue to add to your URL list. Scratch each spam URL off your list once you have worked your way through all the results for that particular spam URL. Some times you may have to "massage" the URL a bit if it is too close to common search terms shorten to base URL add quotes around it prepend "https://www." etc...  
6. The End
 
Get yourself a cold, tasty, delicious adult beverage of your choosing. You earned it. You have made the world a slightly better place than it was this morning. You have Maintained Civilization. Etc. 
 
I think that just about covers it. Any questions, comments are welcomed.
 
One thing I would like to re-iterate, if you don't have the time / patience for this, just Flag the post(s) and leave it for someone else who does. I think it's better to handle these properly and thoroughly than to half-arse it, deleting few links and then handicapping our ability to "get them all" later on.
 
Thanks!
 
EDIT: As an example, I will include my working list, below. This is what I came up with in a couple of hours this afternoon, all starting from one link that @Igor sent me in IRC (this is a bulleted checklist and table from org-mode; names of non spammers vindicated in my search have been removed):
 
 

I have added SPI workaround to the radxa eMMC install wiki page:
https://wiki.radxa.com/Rockpi4/install/eMMC
 
Btw: I am wondering why Armbian isn't using GUID partition table. Was GUID partition table not working on older Radxa ?

As I am a new Moderator and I am unfamiliar with this particular board software (apparently called "Invision Community"), I went looking for some docs...
 
Came across https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invision_Community.
 
The first thing I noticed is that it is proprietary software. Which I think is very out of character for a F/LOSS project at least alluding to the name Debian. Which carries a number of connotations, at least in my mind... Which is a whole another discussion, however...
 
Secondly, a quick read through that Wikipedia article quickly reveals a number of documented cases of changing things on their users, going back on their word, etc. I see red flags all over the place. Not the sort of software I feel inclined to invest a lot of time into learning. But I am the new guy here, so...
 
Has there ever been any discussion of perhaps changing forum software? Or why this one was even picked in the first place (familiarity, Jira or other integration, or...)? I did a few different searches (internally and externally) but couldn't come up with anything.

The 768MB arc_max was for a vmalloc of 1024MB and I was using zfs 0.7.12 when I wrote that, but since then I have switched to 0.8 (with Thumb2 patches from github). I have looked at this again (now with 0.8), and it seems the situation has indeed changed. When looking at vmalloc of zfs (spl actually) via /proc/vmallocinfo it seems to hover around 100-150MB with about 220MB being the highest I've seen and also the total address space occupied by all allocations has always been under 300MB and usually far below. So it seems rather compact with only little fragmentation happening. So zfs appears to use less vmalloc than I assumed and more lowmem, so I will have to revise my settings, because they clearly don't make sense anymore.

@NanoP
 
I don't own a M4, but I do have a T4 and whilst testing on that my drive came up as it should. My own personal experience with Rockchip and USB3 ports hasn't really been a good one and because of that, I do not use them as a NAS. Which is and I'm just guessing here, what ur trying to do.
 
If it is power related, may i suggest getting a small USB powered hub?

I gotta be honest with you, I do like the finicking! Plus I'm tight on money. So I'll play around with uboot and its commands any day. I just found out that USB Mass Storage emulation works fine for playing around with the emmc from a PC!
 
I never mentioned Armbian in my post. Armbian is very important and I'm thankful it exists. As far as I'm aware armbian is the only ready out-of-the-box experience for this board (the ones from Firefly are old and they crash a lot)
I'm using an Armbian U-Boot with Archlinux on this board for months now.
 
I was talking about Rockchip specifically. Armbian is a community distro

A few of us have been experimenting with this the last week or so, seems to work well. But I wanted to bring this to the attention of all the rest of longer term Mods like @chwe @balbes150 @NicoD @TonyMac32 @JMCC (please tag any others I may have forgot) as well as site level Admin like @lanefu and of course @Igor.
 
As a new Mod I often feel like a Level 1 Tech Support. Or perhaps better stated, "triage." Which I figure is our purpose, to "take care of" as many low hanging fruit as possible (or at least sort to correct place, maybe adjust title, tag, ask OP for further info, etc.), in order to free up time/attention of Devs and more experienced users. I try to take on as much as I can, but there are simply things I am unsure about (and from private discussions, I know other new Mods feel same). As our knowledge grows over time, we will be able to take on more and more. But I think we can slightly better use the tools this software already provides to help with this (IMO, some times necessary) mentoring process. I realize you guys are busy (hence need for Mods in first place) however...
 
Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day,
Teach a man to fish, and ...
 
So I request to the more experienced Mods and Admins, please take few moments here and there to help teach us newer guys (when we need help) how to fish...
 
But this post will also be for my fellow new Mods, as well ( @soerenderfor @Vanitarium @_r9 @jsfrederick , I went through Mod sign up thread already, but please tag any others I may have missed) so please, read on...
 
Newer Mod (or even regular user) can click on little Flag at bottom of any post:

 
And then enter some question what they need guidance about:
 

 
Now this will show up to all other Moderators and site level Admin as little triangle in upper right corner:
 

 
So far pretty simple, I am sure most of you are aware of this functionality already. Now this is what I propose to codify into some kind SOP:
 
If we still require attention / advice of someone "higher up" then we leave Status as "New Report" (Flag logo):
 

 
Once someone "higher up" replies, then they/we can change Status to "Under Review" (Triangle ! logo):
 

 
Where we leave it until person originally raising the flag either:
gets their answer, at which point they can Close the Report, requires further clarification, in which case they can change back to Flag to raise more attention  
I think this is a good way of fast, easy triage and sorting, because:
it does not pollute IRC or forum threads (and less airing of potentially "dirty laundry") relevant discussion is attached directly to the thread in question "higher experience level" (Mods, site level Admin) can immediately see filtered view of what might need their attention (Flag logo), without having to read all of forums, or even pay attention to Moderation discussions, where they are not needed. However at same time should they want, can also get quick overview of moderation advice being given by Mods to each other, and could add their 2 cents if disagree. "medium experience level" Mods can help mentor lower level, to extent they are able, already relieving some load off "higher level" people, while still asking some questions themselves "lower experience level" Mods (and even regular users for that matter, although unable to see discussion on the Mod side) can get their questions answered, receive mentoring from "medium and higher" level people, and thereby eventually progress upward Over time, this will also build a body of knowledge which new Mods can look through when they have time to get up to speed (similar to reviewing past Bans, etc.)  
Do note that this entire proposal is only for the meta of Moderation questions themselves, i.e.:
should this be moved to x sub-forum I am not sure this qualifies as violating rule # x etc.  
If you think this is a good idea, please say so here, and/or just start fulfilling one of the roles "low, medium, high" as outlined above, befitting your experience level.
 
I encourage any and all Mods to communicate with each other in this way, adding your $0.02 to whatever Mod discussion, where you feel it adds some value.
 
Feedback on this idea also welcomed, of course.

Check out the attached screenshots of commits.  I believe you may need all three of these patches.  One is modifying the simple panel driver to include our specific panel, one changes timing ,   one is to force recognition of the panel, I believe.    I sent the screenshots becuase I couldn't figure out how to get the patches off of gitlab,  but I imagine you will know how to do that.   There have been many patches over the past 3 months,  but I think these are the ones that enabled the display.    There are more for bluetooth, wifi, sound, usb-c , etc.
 
WE now have a mainline u-boot that will, when flashed to SPI , boot an NVME.   If you get a build that displays ,  I'd like to try to get it to boot with the new u-boot.   My poblem right now is that everytime I start making build system changes --I tend to get a headache   .  I did much better with the older ( from a few months ago) build system.  The problem is me, of course, not the build system.  
 
At least serial is working well now.Schramm_panel_commits.zip

Really looking forward to running armbian one day on my S905x3 device but ran into difficulty from the get go running aml_autoscript.
I was initially posting here with a cry for help but managed to sort the problem and thought I'd share my solution as this alternative method doesn't appear to be documented anywhere.
 
The problem:
 
Downloaded and burned Armbian_20.02.0-rc1.037_Aml-s9xxx_buster_current_5.5.0-rc6_20200205.img to sdcard.
Using the update app that was preinstalled on the android device, I tried loading aml_autoscript from external sd card, usb ports and internal storage but got the same error every time.
E:Block map file is too short: 3 E:Map of '@/cache/recovery/block.map' failed E:failed to map file Installation aborted I tried all the above with different sdcards and usb sticks but still no luck. Running aml_autoscript from stock recovery gave a different error:
E:mmap(0, R, PRIVATE, 6, 0) failed: Invalid argument E:Map of 'udisk/aml_autoscript.zip' failed E:failed to map file Installation aborted The solution:
 
I didn't want to go down the uart/uboot route as I don't know where the tx/rx points are on this box and my eyesight isn't that great anymore. Plus my soldering days were over many years ago. I was able to boot into a twrp.zip via stock recovery, but there was no setenv command in the twrp console to enter the info manually. Perhaps there is a command I could enter to run the aml_autoscript from here, I have no idea. I decided the way forward was to extract the env partition with twrp (you can just as easily do it with dd or fastboot) and hack it before flashing it back. I opened the file up with a hex editor and could see what looked like a uboot environment with fatload commands etc, a 4 byte header at the start of the file then each command separated by a null byte. I'm looking at yet another brick if I bork it, so I'm not doing this with a hex editor. Convert it to a text file, make the changes and convert the text file back to the original 8mb image format was the plan. All I had to do was trim the trailing zeros and replace the remaining null bytes with a newline. I copied the file to my PC to do the job but it can all be done from a rooted box with busybox installed.
cp env.emmc.win env.emmc.bak; cat env.emmc.win | sed '$ s/\x00*$//' | sed "s/\x00/\n/g" > env.txt That one-liner seemed to do the the trick (note backup). The resulting file gave me:
 
 
So, I delete the 1st 4 characters as it turns out this is a checksum and if it isn't right then everything goes back to default values and it's back to square one. Then amended the exsisting variables (bootcmd and upgrade_step) and added the start_* variables. Note each variable has an '=' before the definition and there are no quotes, so not exactly copy and paste from the aml_autoscript file. I also observed that the environment variables were sort of in alphabetical order and thought it cautious to keep it that way and inserted the new variables between the 'serverip' and 'storeargs' variables. Now it was just a case of saving env.txt and converting the file back. As the 4 byte checksum needs to be there, I had to install uboot-tools as only the mkenvimage command can do this and build the env image.
mkenvimage -s 8388608 -p 0x00 -o env.emmc.win env.txt Check the file with;
cat env.emmc.win | od -tx1 Burn the file back to the /dev/block/env or $(find /dev/block/platform | grep by-name/env) partition. Remember the file is now modded so the original twrp backup checksum won't work. Recreate it with;
md5sum env.emmc.win > env.emmc.win.md5  

If you want to jump on the bandwaggon of dumb hardware decisions (sharing USB and ethernet, etc.) and firmware level RTOS / bootloader / GPU blobs that really run the show (instead of your installed OS) then go right ahead.
 
Look I get the frustration. But there are lots of (much!) better boards than RPi to function as a NAS. If you really do want to join the masses and go buy an RPi then you can stop reading now. Otherwise, your options are:
Do more research before purchasing, and make sure you get something that is stable and all the bugs are worked out. OR Buy whatever unknown hardware and then perhaps consider contributing in one way or another, in order to bring it up to full speed / support. Personally, I am only low to mid level (at best) wizard, so I chose to do the former. I started with Cubietruck a few years ago, and it has run absolutely flawless as a NAS and running numerous services.
 
The situation with these SBC is a crap shoot. There are lots of holes you can step in (as you found out). But there are also hidden gems. Thus is the nature of the thing.
 
I for one am very happy that we have Armbian, otherwise we would have no (good) options whatsoever on all of this other hardware that are not RPi. So much in fact that I started supporting (financially (only a little)) and even helping out around here (Moderation most recently). But I am lucky to have the resources (time, money) to be able to do so (in other words I am not judging anyone who cannot, in today's difficult economy).
 
Just my $0.02. Anyway, rant over. I'm sorry but something about your comment I found dismissive to the efforts of all these people and Devs who have already put so much time, effort (and their own money) since years, just so regular people like us can Have Nice Things.