NicoD

That's ok. It's the same, but a bit different configuration. It's 2GB zram. If it works, then let it. Unless you don't want zram. Then you can delete it.

It's just : sudo apt install zram-config

Hi. Maybe you could try to remove and reinstall zram-config. Open another terminal ALT-Fx sudo apt remove zram-config. Reboot and reinstall it. I have no clue why this happened. Please also provide the output of armbianmonitor -u if possible.

Hi all. For my next camping trip I've bought a big USB3 2.4G/5G wifi antenna with the rtl88x2bu chip to have better camping wifi reception. It didn't work out of the box in Armbian. I've installed it on all my images manually. Question is if this driver can be baked into Armbian? It would save me a lot of work. And maybe many others too? For others who need this driver: Go to : sudo armbian-config -> software -> install headers Download the zip file : https://github.com/cilynx/rtl88x2BU_WiFi_linux_v5.3.1_27678.20180430_COEX20180427-5959 Unzip You'll also need to install dkms : sudo apt install dkms Then follow the instructions in the readme file in the rtl88... folder cd rtl88x2BU_WiFi_linux_v5.3.1_27678.20180430_COEX20180427-5959 VER=$(sed -n 's/\PACKAGE_VERSION="\(.*\)"/\1/p' dkms.conf) sudo rsync -rvhP ./ /usr/src/rtl88x2bu-${VER} sudo dkms add -m rtl88x2bu -v ${VER} sudo dkms build -m rtl88x2bu -v ${VER} sudo dkms install -m rtl88x2bu -v ${VER} sudo modprobe 88x2bu

Hi all. I've done a lot of tests with different desktop environments on Armbian. I wanted an as light as possible desktop environment so I'd have enough ram left to do video rendering with the NanoPi M4(2GB) I had to try a lot of things to get things working fine. So I wanted to save others that hassle. Setting up Display Manager First we need a Display Manager. NODM is installed by default. I tried lightdm but couldn't get it to work. So I went for LXDM. With NODM installed I had problems, so I also removed NODM. To be sure lxdm is configured right, I also manually configure it. sudo apt install lxdm sudo apt remove nodm sudo dpkg-reconfigure lxdm Install LXDE Desktop Next step is to install the desktop environment you want. There is a problem with some Desktop Environments and LXDM what makes you can't login to some DE's out of the box. That we will resolve later. Easiest is to install lxdm first to be able to configure the others well. And reboot. sudo apt install lxde sudo reboot Once booted you should be greeted by the Login screen. Here you can choose your different Desktop Environment. Choose LXDE and login. If you'd try xfce4, then you'd see it doesn't work. To fix this we need to change the file /usr/share/xsessions/xfce.desktop. Use your favorite text editor. I use geany. sudo geany /usr/share/xsessions/xfce.desktop Somewhere at the top of the file you'll see "Name=Xfce Session". Replace that space with a hyphen to "Name=Xfce-Session" and save the file. Now you can also login to the default XFCE4 Desktop. With other desktops this can be the same. Go the the same directory and open the file with the desktop name that doesn't work. Again replace the space with a hyphen Installing different Desktop Environments. For the Mate desktop I also needed to install the applets, else I got errors at login because of these missing applets sudo apt install mate-desktop-environment mate-applets For KDE-Plasma sudo apt install kde-full For Gnome. Modify the file sudo geany /usr/share/xsessions/gnome... sudo apt install gnome-session sudo update-alternatives --config gdm3.css I also tried LXQT. But this one didn't work. You can try others too. Remove Desktop Environment To remove a desktop environment you don't want anymore you do the remove instead of install. sudo apt remove kde-full sudo apt remove mate-desktop-environment . . . Please let me know if there's mistakes made, or if you've got advice. Source for changing the name to make them work @IgorS : Greetings, NicoD

Oh, I'm sorry. Is there any reason why you would want another A20 board? It's an old SoC. Support for it is going to dwindle. If you'd like to stay with Allwinner then an H3/H5/H6 board would have a lot longer lifetime/support. I believe you want SATA. I don't know that many boards with sata on-board. The Orange Pi +2 has an H3 and SATA and is supported. You could also go for an SBC with USB3 and connect your drivers over USB3-SATA. Then an H6 might be good. I like the Pine H64 model B the most. But it's still in development fase. The RK3399's are more expensive, but bring a lot more connectivity. The NanoPi M4 for example has PCIe over GPIO's what can fit a 4 x SATA hat. It's hot 2 USB3 controllers for each 2 ports. All I can find that's supported in Armbian with the A20 + SATA is the Olimex Lime 2 and the Cubietruck. I do not know those boards or board makers. Maybe someone else knows more about A20 boards.

Hi. You can keep using Armbian on it even when it's EOL. It just isn't updated anymore, and it loses support for it. I do not think you'll find a better supported OS for it. Either you will have to do with an unsupported OS. Or you could upgrade to a newer board. Greetings.

That indeed isn't good at all. I'm from Europe so I haven't got a clue where to buy when you're from South-America. It's this PSU. https://www.cloudmedia.com/?product=rock64-pinebook-pine-h64-5v-3a-switching-power-supply I'm using a different one for it, a 4A EU PSU. But 3A should be sufficient. This is what you need to look for : 5V (at least) 3A Type H 3.5mm OD/1.35mm ID barrel ‘coaxial’ type I'd trow away that PSU you've got before it damages anything(hd/sd-card). I've seen a lot of undervolting in my times but under 4V is very rare. With a good PSU/cable you should never go under 4.8V. (tell that to the raspberry pi foundation) Good luck, greetings.

Hi. Did you try with other devices on your network? Just to be shure it's the N2 and not a router issue. There were simular problems in the beginning with the N2. Those were indeed fixed with the latest uboot. This was also not with all N2's the same. Mine had it, some other didn't have this problem. Ethernet worked when put at 100Mbit, but wat Gb it lost all it's packages and was as slow as B/s. This problem is still not fixed in the Mate image to my knowledge(only after upgrade) Meveric did update his Stretch last week to fix this. Have you tried that image? Here was a fix for that problem. I do not expect you've got the same problem. I do think it could be related. Quote of myself : There's an easy fix for that. Quote from fromport: So powered down my N2, put the SD card in a USB reader connected to my linux desktop. Downloaded new uboot from https://github.com/hardkernel/u-boot/releases I used the odroidn2-22 image. Downloaded and extracted the tgz file (not source) used the supplied script to install it to my uSD card: Code: Select all cd sd_fuse ./sd_fusing.sh /dev/sdb #<- that is where my system detected the uSD card 1664+1 records in 1664+1 records out 852336 bytes (852 kB, 832 KiB) copied, 0.113748 s, 7.5 MB/s Finished. End Quote. I've got the same issue with both Ubuntu and Stretch. But with Ubuntu wifi works out of the box, while in Stetch you need to be able to download a few things to get it to work. And that doesn't work without internet...

Hi. It isn't an Armbian problem, but a problem with the Odroid kernel. More info here. https://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=177&t=34540&p=253295&hilit=n2+zram#p253295 It's the same with Ubuntu Mate from Odroid. With kernel 5.1 from Balbes zram-config works fine. I manually configure it after installing zram-config and all works fine. Meveric uses his own script for zram zram-odroid or odroid-zram. That does work on his Stretch. So that could be a clue. Zram and swap used to not work completely. I'm happy we've found the cause of that. I think this proplem is some crums left that weren't cleaned up.

Good you've found a solution. All tho I can't advice anyone doing this. You could also try to cool the board better. Bigger heatsink, a fan. The H3 isn't that hard to tame. Do you play those games with Armbian? May I ask what you use? RetroArch I guess? Have fun

To be future proof USB 3.0 is better. But all mine are USB2. Transfer rates are a lot higher with USB3, so I expect it to consume a bit more. Dit you try it on the USB2 ports of the Rock64? Did you try other storage devices on the Rock64? Do they mount ok? I should have a 2.5" drive laying around and I've got a usb3 to sata adapter. If I find time I'll try it out. Can't promise anything.

Best was to buy a USB volt meter. Plug it into the used USB port, and plug your hard drive into the (data) port of the voltmeter. Then you'll see the powerdraw + the voltage. With a multimeter you can only check voltage. Do not put the leads into the USB ports. You can short them like that if you do it wrong. Best way to check voltage with a mutlimeter is by measuring the 5V pin and GRND pin on the gpio's when the hard drive is connected, and also when disconnected to see the difference. Again, watch out you don't short it. You may not let the leads touch each other when they're onto the GPIO's. More into on this in this thread. The same problem, just another connector. There's tons of threads about this. Or check here to visually see this happening with another board.

You can buy multimeters very cheap. I've bought my most used one for $4(euro) at Action. I've compared it with my more expensive one. Almost no difference. The same with USB voltage meters. Very cheap, and very handy to have.

Try using a usb voltage meter on the USB3 port of your Rock64 and see what voltage it is. With undervoltage you've got problems with mechanical hard drives.

I've got 2 x 26800mAh power banks These, and 2 x 24W solar panels to charge the power banks. These My powerbanks can give up to 2.4A per port and 5.5A over the 3 ports in total. More than enough for my M4 (2A max) + my 13.3" 1080p display (1.2A). The only minor on my power banks is that they can only charge at 2A. So 1 solar panel with great sun is more than enough to charge both at the same time. But I bring 2 solar panels since when it's cloudy they only give between 1-2A. They've now got 26800mAh power banks with quick-charge over USB-C up to 20V/1.5A. And even a 32000mAh power bank. I've asked my contact if they'd like to sponsor my next trip(next week) with such a power bank. Too bad I haven't gotten an answer back, I hope he still works there. I could have used my RockPi4B with 4GB otherwise( QC ) instead of my NanoPi M4 with 2GB. The Odroid N2 would have been better since it's so damn power efficient for such a huge performance(6W with CPU maxed VS 10W of the M4) But I'd also need a powerbank at 12V for it. I'll look into it for a next trip. I'm filming everything at my trips and edit and render everything in the evening, and then put it on Youtube when I find internet. So it's awesome to be able to use such powerful SBC's like those with the RK3399's or S922x. I used to use the Odroid C2. But +10 minutes videos had to be rendered in 720p and took more than an hour. Now everything is going to be 1080p or higher, and it's going to take a lot less time to render. Greetings.

The PineH64 model B is a bit better designed than the OPi3. It's got a lot less problems, and a bit better heat characteristics. The H6 SoC's do need a fan to run maxed out at 1.8Ghz. But you could clock it a bit lower if you'd like to passively cool it. The software isn't ready yet for it. But I expect this to become a well supported board. Here my review and comparison video of the Pine H64 model B with OPi3 I'm in love with the RK3399 boards from FriendlyElec(NEO4/M4/T4). But now the NEO4 is at $50. It was cheaper when released. It only has got 1GB ram, a bit worse cooling than the NanoPi M4(my favorite). But they've got great VPU support in Armbian and in FriendlyElec images. But of course those are more expensive. As they've already said. The Amlogic S905 boards are a good choice since they've got good VPU support. But on higher display resolutions than 1080p my Odroid C2 lags a lot. There's not that much other choises. The Rock64 has problems with the media script. Allwinner H5 SoC's should be well supported for this. But I don't have any H5 board. So I have not seen this working well. ( @mindee I'd love to review the NanoPi K1 Plus)

You can install Armbian from sd-card to eMMC with sudo armbian-config The Rock64 does not support booting from USB only I believe.

I've had something very strange with it when leaving the eMMC in with Ubuntu Mate. And putting SD-card with Meveric's Stretch in. It did boot stretch, but with the kernel of Mate. So best to leave the eMMC disconnected when using an SD-card. See here : https://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=179&t=33865 The post of mine(badpritt) with 2 pictures in it. Then Meverics response that it wasn't his kernel... To make it easier, here the post of Meveric :

Only choose system. And no other options. Then glamour I think. That installs the drivers for Chromium. Streaming is a 32-bit Chromium running in Docker. So that you don't need. Please also tell your experiences with it. I've sometimes got Chromium crashing. I'm not sure if it's with all Rock64's.

Hi. It's best when you run the script the first time not to choose any other things. You also do not need streaming for Chromium to have VPU acc. There's a small bug in the script what makes it that you can't choose the different system choices(can't think of the names)

What model eMMC is it? Is it a pine one? I've had issues with Odroid eMMC working on pine, but Pine eMMC not working on Odroid or RockPi. Always a simular behaviour of showing initial boot and then hanging. If you've got another. Try it. Mine with problems has V 1.0 written on the underside. Works with some, most not.

I feel for you. I hope it's recoverable. You could try rubbing with a toothbrush and some alcohol on the point where it's shorted. Sometimes it works again after the corrosion has been removed. And if a pad has been damaged you can solder a wire. I've watched many videos of Louis Rossmann with very badly water damaged MacBooks. He fixes them all. But when somebody is good at his job, then they make it look easy... I've been using SBC's a lot while traveling in my not rainproof tent. In every kind of weather. Never had issue's. I'll cross my fingers for the next trip. Cause then the NanoPi M4's going to come along.

Wouldn't it be better to disable screensaver and power manager settings by default? Without power manager there's no simple way for the user to disable this him/herself. I've seen this behaviour before where screensaver didn't work because of the sleep mode of the power manager(N2 Mate Desktop). I'll see if this is also the case here.