deb2016

Thanks for all these useful links. I began to investigate them. In the same time, I was curious about the performance native SATA you do not seem to trust. With the command : sudo hdparm -t /dev/sda I get : /dev/sda: Timing buffered disk reads: 208 MB in 3.00 seconds = 69.32 MB/sec WIth the bananapipro, I experienced that the ethernet is the bottleneck. Raw data transfer goes up to 20 Mo/s. This becomes less if I use encrypted transfer (ssh, scp) because in this case, I noticed that the CPU rises up to 50/60 %. I will continue reading the links you provided, nevertheless in your experience, do you think about one solution as competitive as this one (and still cheap) ? Thanks again for your help. Regards

Hello, I am looking for one board in order to build one NAS. I already have one bananapi pro, I am happy with it, the hardware used to be quite better than raspi boards, but it does not seem to still be marketed. It is just a matter of plugging a 2.5" hard drive on it (usb or sata). So the board would require : - be cheap - credit card format - not interested in video performances - the usb and ethernet not built on the same bus (this is why I say bananapi pro is way better than raspi boards) - can be cooled silently - one sata port - good support from armbian (not talking about video) Which board should I select now to build a simple nas ? Thanks in advance for your attention Regards deb2016

Hi, thanks for your answeer. I went with the Jessie server. I prefer to start from this CLI image and then add just what I need to launch X applications. I managed to do it like this before : log from ssh, launch an X server and any X application by redirecting the display. But it was a bit hard to get the video acceleration because one had to do it from scratch. Nevertheless, I noticed that there were several packages like xserver-xorg-video-fbturbo, libvdpau-sunxi1, libump, libcedrus1, vdpau-driver, vdpau-va-driver. Do theses packages include latest developments that enable video acceleration ? Also, the "mpv" video player is available as a package, but is it compiled with video acceleration for sunxi ? (I had to compile it from scratch last time) Thanks for your attention and your kind help. Best regards. deb75

Hello, With a bananapi pro, which legacy image is better to use ? ubuntu xenial or debian jessie ? I intend to use it mainly as a server and occasionally to watch movie on a hdmi screen. I do not want to install a full desktop, I prefer to log through ssh and launch an X server remotely. Also, I need an mpv (mplayer) with acceleration enabled. thanks for your help Regards

Hello, For the darker image, I use the latest sunxi-vdpau library, but anyway it is easily fixed with -brightness=30 option of mpv. As for the lightweight desktop : how can I control it from my distant laptop ?

Hello, I finally managed to make hardware video acceleration work on latest debian jessie (headless) armbian image. In short, steps were : 0) prepare the bananapro and the jessie image for video. 1) get a working Xorg saver using fbturbo driver with g2d enabled. 2) install libvdpau-sunxi from its source and its dependencies, from some repositories. 3) compile from source the latest mpv. Here is what I do : An hdmi screen is plugged to the bananapro which is itself connected directly to my laptop. The test console is visible on the screen. I log into the bananapro from my laptop through ssh. I run startx from there. You need to reconfigure x11-common because access to the X11 service is only accessible to console users. I then chose to grant access to everyone which is probably not good for security : better ideas are welcome ! The hdmi screen gets filled by the X11 server with a default application, builtin xterm I guess. Could be something else more useful, I do not know where to configure that. Check in the Xorg.0.log that fbturbo works with GED enabled. Then, login again through ssh into the bananapi, modify the DISPLAY variable to point to the local display (should be "export DISPLAY=:0"), then run "mpv --vo=vdpau --hwdec=vdpau --hwdec-codecs=all big_buck_bunny_1080p_H264_AAC_25fps_7200K.MP4 (put all these options in ~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf) it should run smoothly on the hdmi screen. you can control the video (backward forward pause) from your laptop with the keyboard shortcut. when displaying the video : mpv takes 15-20% of the cpu power and X11 about the same. I do not know if this is good or bad ??? if it should be more or less. Want to adjust the sound ? Just login again through ssh, do not touch the DISPLAY for that time and launch your sound control application, e.g. pavucontrol for pulseaudio. As you did not touch the DISPLAY for that ssh session, the application window will be forwarded to your local laptop screen. For the moment, the only issue is that video are displayed a bit too darker . It is quite visible with the aformentioned test video. It is not a screen problem, the problem seems to be in mpv and/or libvdpau-sunxi although I cannot confirm it, I hope there is an mpv option to fix this (not investigated yet). As stated several times in many different places : no need to use the mali sunxi driver. I will try later if it compiles and if it brings something. When you start X11, the mouse is screen centered, there are some options in mpv to hide it, you may also use xdotool (on command line) to put it in one corner. Hopes this helps. I did not mention all steps in details, feel free to ask and comments are welcome. Best regards

Thanks for your reply. Is there really no option with armbian ? So far, I do not want a complete desktop, I just want to be able to launch mplayer or vlc or another video player without X. On my laptop, in a virtual terminal, I can do it like this : "mplayer -vo fbdev2 file.avi"

Hello, I have just bought a bananaPro. I would like to learn a little by installing armbian and enabling the video acceleration. Currently, I have no LCD display, so I would start to install Debian Wheezy or Debian Jessie (legacy) so that to be able to log in through ssh. Nevertheless, on the download page for bananaPro it is said that "Mali drivers fails to compile". Is this driver mandatory for video acceleration to work ? I figured out it was rather related to cedarX. Then, which armbian image is best suited ? Thanks in advance for some piece of advice. Best regards deb2016