Werner

Detailed/full uart logs would probably be helpful

Maybe this helps? https://forum.armbian.com/topic/29427-shrink-backup-a-tool-for-backing-up-sbcs/

Maybe this helps? https://forum.armbian.com/topic/29427-shrink-backup-a-tool-for-backing-up-sbcs/

Yes, DB9 won't work.
But if, as eselarm mentions, a proper chip is on board already a simple usb-a to usb-c or c-to-c cable should do.
Check dmesg when connection to see what pops up.

If nvme is correctly recognized code { font-family: Consolas,"courier new"; color: crimson; background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2); padding: 2px; font-size: 105%; } armbian-install should do.

symptom:
> apt update ... Err:8 https://github.armbian.com/configng stable InRelease The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 93D6889F9F0E78D5 ... W: Failed to fetch https://github.armbian.com/configng/dists/stable/InRelease The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 93D6889F9F0E78D5 observed in Armbian image for Orange pi zero 3 Armbian_community_25.8.0-trunk.90_Orangepizero3_bookworm_current_6.12.30_minimal.img build date May 28, 2025
 
fix:
- run this as root
> su - ^ login as root > wget -O - https://apt.armbian.com/armbian.key | gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/armbian.gpg  
you should find a file /usr/share/keyrings/armbian.gpg about 2 KB in size
 
repeat apt update etc should have resolved the error

that should be 1500000 (one more zero).  Note a lot of uart connectors can't handle this high of a speed.  There are many threads in the forums discussing specific ones that are able to reach that speed.

This reminds me of old issue on rpi forum, back to Debian10 times more or less when RPL did not support initramfs and I have been using Btrfs for RPis since Buster (or for sure Bullseye) timeframe.
 
I loop mounted Armbian rolling rpi4 trixie image and ran it via systemd-nspawn -b -D <mountpoint>
 
Then it turns out what I thought: the installed firmware package includes the script same as on Raspberry Pi OS from RPL themselves to copy/rename standard Debian kernel+modules install patch to the FAT boot partition.
root@localhost:~# apt list | grep raspi raspi-config/trixie,trixie,now 20221214-0ubuntu1 all [installed] raspi-firmware/trixie,trixie,now 1:1.20250430-1 all [installed] raspi-gpio/trixie 0.20231127 arm64 raspi-utils/trixie,trixie 20250314-1 all root@localhost:~# dpkg -L raspi-firmware | grep z50 /etc/initramfs/post-update.d/z50-raspi-firmware /etc/kernel/postinst.d/z50-raspi-firmware /etc/kernel/postrm.d/z50-raspi-firmware And it is this part of z50-raspi-firmware
flavour="$(echo "$initrd_version" | rev | cut -f1 -d- | rev)" case $flavour in v6|v7|v7l|v8|2712) ;; *) echo "ERROR: Unsupported initramfs version ($initrd_version)" exit 0 ;; esac On 1 of my RPi4 I had also the standard Debian kernel 'linux-image-arm64' besides the RPi kernel 'linux-image-rpi-v8' and grub-efi. So when the bootFAT parttition is tagged 0xEF00 (ESP) I could run the image/SD-card unmodified in virt-manager selecting the vanilla Debian kernel in GRUB.
 
I have thought a lot about what to do with those hook scripts in /etc/initramfs, also created various own ones, for Raspberry Pi OS and Raspbian and Armbian. The latter as it is U-Boot (on Rockchip/Allwinner) but just recently I put EDK2-UEFI v1.1 in SPI-flash and that makes all the efforts void as I now use default grub to load Armbian (and Opensuse) on RK3588. For RPi (3, 4, 5) this won't work unless some intermediate efi binary loader is used like is done in Opensuse, for Fedora maybe as well, I don't know. Still this won't work for RPi5 (yet) as its RP1 chip is a bottleneck for upstream support (complex PCI-E DeviceTree handling, see patches efforts done by Suse people AFAIR).
 
With introduction of Bookworm, the RPi firmware can load standard names for initramfs for all RPi HW variants back till 2012. But still no way to select a specific kernel adhoc at boot time via serial console for example (like extlinux.conf for U-Boot). The U-Boot v.s. RPI-firmwarebootloader feels a bit like UNIX pathnames v.s. MS-DOS pathnames, e.g. "/tmp" v.s. "C:\TEMP" or "Image" v.s. "kernel8.img" or "uInitrd" v.s. "initramfs8".
 
Maybe the option is to patch z50-raspi-firmware, maybe remove it from the .deb package. But also it is just a warning, so who cares one could think.
 
Other option is to use the vanilla Debian variant of raspi-firmware
root@localhost:/etc/apt/sources.list.d# apt list -a raspi-firmware raspi-firmware/trixie,trixie,now 1:1.20250430-1 all [installed] raspi-firmware/testing 1.20240424+ds-6 all That older version has other script implementation (very different), also uses upstream_kernel=1 in config.txt, which selects other firmware DTB names for Pi3.
 
Now writing this, I think 'vendor' could be downstream RPL based, so new firmware package and 'current' and 'edge' could be upstream mainline. But that also would mean almost no RPi5 functionality as long as that RP1 I/O chip functionality is not upstreamed. I don't know what status is, latest I know is that the wired ethernet still does not work, workaround is to use a RJ45 USB2 dongle on the USB-C connector.

Hi @Werner,
Not to pick nits, but 7 is the highest level (lowest priority) you can give a printk() statement. To make them appear however, the loglevel of the printk() needs to be smaller than the loglevel of the console, meaning the [console] loglevel needs to be 7+1:
loglevel= [KNL,EARLY] All Kernel Messages with a loglevel **smaller** than the console loglevel will be printed to the console. It can also be changed with klogd or other programs. The loglevels are defined as follows: Also, the following text also steers into the direction of using 8 instead of 7 to show all printk() messages:
To change the current console_loglevel simply write the desired level to ``/proc/sys/kernel/printk``. For example, to print all messages to the console:: # echo 8 > /proc/sys/kernel/printk (Taken from https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/core-api/printk-basics.rst.)
Grt,

Since you are on current you cannot expect a major bump until the next LTS kernel is released. current will receive security fixes only.
If you want something more recent you need to switch to edge kernels which follow non-LTS mainline kernel releases.

fixed

This mode needs 80MHz pixel clock which is not in the table for clk-rk3568.c driver. You need a patch similar to https://lkml.org/lkml/2025/3/18/1337 to add this rate.
 
FWIW 1280x800@63.59Hz isn't a very common mode

If nvme is correctly recognized code { font-family: Consolas,"courier new"; color: crimson; background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2); padding: 2px; font-size: 105%; } armbian-install should do.

Between days and month. Depending on time, issues, regressions,... 
Refrain from asking for ETA. Putting pressure on developers who give you something for free is abusive.

This kernel does not come from radxa but from Rockchip themselves as BSP. However we put lots of work on top of that:https://github.com/armbian/linux-rockchip
This will basically be a thing until mainline catches up. Though there will be a few years to go in that matter.

Same answer as above. Without serial logs impossible to debug.
It leaves to mention that this board is not officially supported but configuration has been provided by a community effort. Board status is unknown to the core Armbian team.

As long as the board isn't dead it is starting to boot.  That is why Werner directed you to how to capture the uboot booting messages via a uart connection to the board.

No worries. Everyone here started small
edge and vendor are Armbian terms for kernel branches just like current.
You guessed correct, edge is bleeding edge and usually follows latest mainline kernel (6.14.y today).
vendor is based on Rockchip BSP kernel which is 6.1.y at the moment. While a bit out of date most hw functions work here.
current usually follows latest available LTS mainline kernel.
 
As you're a beginner and most likely just want things to work I suggest to try a vendor kernel based image first.

I think it is this script: https://github.com/armbian/build/blob/main/packages/bsp/common/usr/lib/armbian/armbian-resize-filesystem
 
There might be a switch or option to prevent resize, need to check documentation.
 
Or do manually after expansion:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/656836/how-do-i-shrink-a-partition-right-after-shrinking-its-filesystem-with-resize2fs
 

After years of thinking, wishing and tinkering - Armbian automated WiFi performance benchmark system:
https://docs.armbian.com/WifiPerformance/
From latest WiFi 7 down to (in)famous xradio XR819.

Then you are using a fork of Armbian which we don't support here. Ask at the place where you got the image from.

The correct way to modify a kernel with patches is to use
- ./compile kernel-patch BOARD=... BRANCH=...
- review your patches and if you are satisfied move them to patch/ or the equivalent directory under userpatches/
- ./compile.sh kernel BOARD=... BRANCH=...
 

The correct way to modify a kernel with patches is to use
- ./compile kernel-patch BOARD=... BRANCH=...
- review your patches and if you are satisfied move them to patch/ or the equivalent directory under userpatches/
- ./compile.sh kernel BOARD=... BRANCH=...
 

Correct. Glad you made a backup beforehand.

A few days ago jammy and bullseye were moved to eol.
While upstream may support these userspaces a few more years, Armbian does not have the resources to support more than the most current stable releases of Debian and Ubuntu, which are Bookworm and Noble at this time.
 
You can still select them to build when passing EXPERT=yes switch to ./compile.sh but do not ask for support if something breaks. You are on your own.