ebin-dev

In order to migrate to bookworm the tests on SD worked fine (after the dwc3 usb issue was solved) but the trouble began after it was transferred from sd to emmc. I used armbian-config for that and I was about to loose my data ... My starting point was the Armbian 23.05 - 6.1.36 Image and I am using linux 6.1.60 now, since the header files were missing in the Armbian Image I had to compile them myself. As far as I understand, this is the new Armbian policy ... Just formatting the emmc partition and to rsync the data from sd to emmc using a backup script worked for me (fstab needs adaptation and some folders have to be recreatad in /var/log with proper access rights i.e. cups, nginx, mysql ...). There are no read/write errors and I am using bookworm on emmc now for about a week now. In fact it is reliable. Also the network operates amazingly fast. The only remaining issue is: while the heartbeat LED starts to operate, the red LEDs on the front panel briefly light up (sata1 to sata5, bus rescan) and the fans spin up for a few seconds , then turn to normal operation. Could this be u-boot related ? Would you have an idea ? (see the parallel thread)

There are other driver versions for the realtek r8152 driver. Just out of curiosity I tried version r8152-v2.16.3 and r8152-v2.17.1. Both drivers crash immediately once a large data transfer is executed at least via the 2.5G interface (r8152 2-1.4:1.0 end1: Tx timeout; xhci-hcd xhci-hcd.0.auto: bad transfer trb length 16741766 in event trb). It would appear that those two driver versions do not patch the firmware during boot like the mainline driver (r8152 2-1.4:1.0: load rtl8156a-2 v2 04/27/23 successfully). The bottom line is, that we have stable bullseye image with linux-6.1.36 (without header files) and a stable kernel 6.1.60 (with header files) both using the mainline r8152 driver (the required r8152 firmware files have to be in /lib/firmware/rtl_nic ; can be downloaded from here). Linux 6.1.60 has a remaining glitch to be solved, since during boot there is an unnecessary rescan of the bus and the fans spin up for a second. If anyone has a hint that helps to solve this, I would be grateful (dmesg output attached). Cheers P.S. The Armbian images on the Helios64 download page (version Aug. 31, 2023) are still broken, no usb support due to the dwc3 regression. P.S.': iperf3 measurements between Helios64 (server) and a client through the 2.5G interface 😀: ./iperf3 -c 192.168.xx.xx -p 5201 Connecting to host 192.168.xx.xx, port 5201 [ 5] local 192.168.xx.xx port 57314 connected to 192.168.xx.xx port 5201 [ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate [ 5] 0.00-1.00 sec 275 MBytes 2.31 Gbits/sec [ 5] 1.00-2.00 sec 280 MBytes 2.35 Gbits/sec [ 5] 2.00-3.00 sec 281 MBytes 2.36 Gbits/sec [ 5] 3.00-4.00 sec 281 MBytes 2.36 Gbits/sec [ 5] 4.00-5.00 sec 281 MBytes 2.36 Gbits/sec [ 5] 5.00-6.00 sec 280 MBytes 2.35 Gbits/sec [ 5] 6.00-7.00 sec 281 MBytes 2.36 Gbits/sec [ 5] 7.00-8.00 sec 278 MBytes 2.34 Gbits/sec [ 5] 8.00-9.00 sec 280 MBytes 2.35 Gbits/sec [ 5] 9.00-10.00 sec 281 MBytes 2.36 Gbits/sec - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate [ 5] 0.00-10.00 sec 2.73 GBytes 2.35 Gbits/sec sender [ 5] 0.00-10.00 sec 2.73 GBytes 2.35 Gbits/sec receiver dmesg.txt

I am on linux kernel 6.1.60 now and both 1G and 2.5G LAN interfaces operate with the maximum expected throughput (about 300 MByte/s on the 2.5G interface) - without any further patches applied. If you like to test them, you can download the debs (kernel, header, dtb) from here ( install with 'dpkg -i linux*'). There is one little glitch: while the heartbeat LED starts to operate, the red LEDs on the front panel briefly light up (sata1 to sata5, bus rescan) and the fans spin up for a few seconds , then turn to normal operation. P.S.: dmesg output attached, 2.5G interface used The usb 2-1.4 interface (Realtek USB 10/100/1G/2.5G LAN) is reset 2 times by the driver during boot and it works flawlessly after that. I consider this normal. bus-scan-delay does not help to get rid of the bus rescan. I tried a delay of 2s: [ 2.832048] rockchip-pcie f8000000.pcie: wait 2000 ms (from device tree) before bus scan dmesg.txt

Bookworm (with linux 6.1.58 (patched) incl. header files) is now booting from emmc and it is indeed absolutely stable using the standard settings. To do that I just formatted the emmc partition and transferred the files from sd to emmc using a backup script. /etc/fstab needs the correct UUID of the emmc (displayed by 'blkid') and some folders (i.e. cups, mysql, redis, nginx, ...) may have to be manually created in /var/log with proper access rights. Make a copy of your sd card before, if you prefer armbian-config to do that (boot from emmc - system on emmc) as the bootloader on SD may be negatively affected after that. Will now test different rtl8156 drivers and see if there is any effect on performance and stability of the 2.5G LAN interface for current kernels (>= 6.1.59).

@alchemist USB ports are back - but the 2.5G interface is now unstable: transferring a 2GB file (Speed: 2500Mb/s) is interrupted (r8152 Tx timeout) and the interface is restarted by the watchdog process. Could you test transferring large files through the 2.5G interface set to speed 2500Mb/s ? I switched back to the previous kernel 6.1.58 (patched) - no TX timeouts ...

dwc3 was patched In the current linux kernel 6.1.59 and the dwc3 error disappeared. All USB devices are accessible again. Now a new Armbian build based on linux 6.1.59 should be pushed to the Helios64 download page.

If you intend to switch to bookworm, the image Armbian_23.5.4_Helios64_bookworm_current_6.1.36.img is indeed a good starting point: I have tested the 1G and 2.5G LAN interfaces and they perform well out of the box. On my Helios64, I could not obtain any stability issues with this system using kernel 6.1.36 (I have soldered the cable to the motherboard as suggested on the kobol.io website). As mentioned above, the dwc3 usb regression ist not jet present in that kernel. So I would advise to use that image if you intend to upgrade to bookworm. However, I could not obtain any matching header files for that kernel version which are necessary if the dkms is needed (on my system by some home automation software). Therefore, I had to compile the current linux kernel 6.1.58 (linux-image, linux-headers, linux-dtb) while applying a patch to solve the dwc3 usb issue (patch is discussed here). Welcome to Armbian 23.08.0-trunk Bookworm with Linux 6.1.58-current-rockchip64 No end-user support: community creations System load: 2% Up time: 2:48 Memory usage: 30% of 3.77G IP: xx.xx.xx.xx CPU temp: 47°C Usage of /: 14% of 58G storage/: 61% of 3.6T storage temp: 25°C All USB devices are working now - also with the current kernel (patched). The driver for the realtek 2.5G interface (mainline version v1.12.13 - 'modinfo r8152') performs well if all the following firmware files are present in /lib/firmware/rtl_nic/ (can be downloaded from here): # ls -la /lib/firmware/rtl_nic/ drwxrwxr-x 2 root root 4096 Oct 18 16:56 . drwxr-xr-x 27 root root 12288 Oct 16 15:46 .. -rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 3328 Oct 16 15:32 rtl8125b-2.fw -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1768 Oct 16 15:32 rtl8153a-2.fw -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1440 Oct 16 15:32 rtl8153a-3.fw -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 712 Oct 16 15:32 rtl8153a-4.fw -rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 1880 Oct 16 15:32 rtl8153b-2.fw -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 832 Oct 16 15:32 rtl8153c-1.fw -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4024 Oct 16 15:32 rtl8156a-2.fw -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 7256 Oct 16 15:32 rtl8156b-2.fw -rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 976 Oct 16 15:32 rtl8168h-2.fw # cat /var/log/syslog | grep r8152 2023-10-19T07:01:02.167978+02:00 helios64 kernel: [ 6.672719] r8152 2-1.4:1.0: load rtl8156a-2 v2 04/27/23 successfully 2023-10-19T07:01:02.167981+02:00 helios64 kernel: [ 6.715222] r8152 2-1.4:1.0 (unnamed net_device) (uninitialized): netif_napi_add_weight() called with weight 256 2023-10-19T07:01:02.167984+02:00 helios64 kernel: [ 6.730968] r8152 2-1.4:1.0 eth0: v1.12.13 2023-10-19T07:01:02.167986+02:00 helios64 kernel: [ 6.731167] usbcore: registered new interface driver r8152 In order to avoid surprises I have disabled Armbian updates for the time being (debian updates still arrive): cat /etc/apt/sources.list.d/armbian.list # deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/armbian.gpg] http://apt.armbian.com bookworm main bookworm-utils bookworm-desktop After a few days of testing I am using this now 'in production' 🙂

@prahal Thank you for the hints ! The helios64 bookworm image 23.05.4 with kernel 6.1.36 includes the mainline driver r8152 and I have tested it with both LAN interfaces 1G and 2.5G - it is stable and performs nicely. However, I could not find any matching header files for download for that kernel version: they are necessary for the dkms used on my system. Would you know a source for them (version 6.1.36) ? Unfortunately later linux versions include a regression (dwc3 usb issue) so we lose access to our USB devices i.e. using linux 6.1.50 ... Compiling current kernels and temporarily patching them to get rid of the dwc3 usb issue works, but I have the impression that I am using the wrong branch, since there are so many issues with the existing patches for rockchip64 (armbian VERSION file: 23.08.1-trunk): 74 patches to be rebased etc. Is there any better starting point than "23.08.1-trunk-6.1.xx" for building helios64 kernels ?

You could try the above and let us know if it solves the issue (should work for linux up to 6.4.10+).

A stable Armbian Bookworm configuration for your Helios64 is provided here (solved). ************************************************************************* Recently a new Armbian 23.08.1 Bookworm image with linux-6.1.50 was made available for Helios64 on its download page (see here) - which is as such great 😀. Everything starts up nicely, but unlike the previous Bookworm 23.05 image, the current one has an issue with accessing USB devices. In the boot process the following error occurs: # cat /var/log/syslog | grep error 2023-09-07T12:31:05.671598+02:00 helios64 kernel: [ 2.537009] dwc3 fe900000.usb: error -ETIMEDOUT: failed to initialize core 2023-09-07T12:31:05.671602+02:00 helios64 kernel: [ 2.537107] dwc3: probe of fe900000.usb failed with error -110 No USB device could be accessed. As this seems to be related to the realtek driver r8152, I compiled and installed the current version of that driver (see below) and after that the USB devices were accessible. # compile and install the current realtek driver git clone https://github.com/wget/realtek-r8152-linux.git cd realtek-r8152-linux... make sudo make install

Upgrading Helios64 from Armbian Buster to Bullseye (see below) works as expected on my system. However, I am using systemd-networkd and just a few services (nextcloud, netatalk, etc. and not ZFS) EDIT: Upgrading Buster installations to Bullseye also works fine if you use network-manager, even if you have a bridge configured (using bridge-slave; binutils-bridge). # cat /etc/os-release PRETTY_NAME="Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye)" NAME="Debian GNU/Linux" VERSION_ID="11" VERSION="11 (bullseye)" VERSION_CODENAME=bullseye ID=debian HOME_URL="https://www.debian.org/" SUPPORT_URL="https://www.debian.org/support" BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.debian.org/" _ _ _ _ __ _ _ | | | | ___| (_) ___ ___ / /_ | || | | |_| |/ _ \ | |/ _ \/ __| '_ \| || |_ | _ | __/ | | (_) \__ \ (_) |__ _| |_| |_|\___|_|_|\___/|___/\___/ |_| Welcome to Armbian 21.08.1 Bullseye with Linux 5.10.43-rockchip64 System load: 2% Up time: 12:29 Memory usage: 19% of 3.77G IP: xx.xx.xx.xx CPU temp: 42°C Usage of /: 41% of 15G storage/: 57% of 3.6T Edit: Attention - if you upgrade your Buster or Bullseye installation on emmc to Armbian 21.08.1 it will not be writable anymore. You will then have to downgrade linux on emmc from 5.10.60 to 5.10.43 as described in this thread. Edit: There is a temporary fix for the problem. See this message from @piter75 To upgrade Armbian Buster to Bullseye, first disable Armbian updates in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/Armbian.list for the time being. Then fully upgrade Buster (sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y) , then change the apt sources (see below) followed by 'sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade'. I kept all the configuration files by confirming 'N' in the following dialogue. # cat /etc/apt/sources.list deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bullseye main deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bullseye-updates main deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security bullseye-security main deb-src http://security.debian.org/debian-security bullseye-security main deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian bullseye-backports main