Werner

https://github.com/armbian/config/pull/135
 
In case anyone wants to try and break it.
 

Finally found the problem - HW "issue". My SPI flash is not soldered (no place on motherboard) - it is connected with wires which are (presumably) too long. Workaround is to reduce SPI speed in u-boot and Linux.
 
U-boot:

diff --git a/arch/arm/dts/rk3399-rockpro64.dtsi b/arch/arm/dts/rk3399-rockpro64.dtsi index 9bca258012..797dd80d38 100644 --- a/arch/arm/dts/rk3399-rockpro64.dtsi +++ b/arch/arm/dts/rk3399-rockpro64.dtsi @@ -677,7 +677,7 @@         flash@0 {                 compatible = "jedec,spi-nor";                 reg = <0>; -               spi-max-frequency = <10000000>; +               spi-max-frequency = <1000000>;         };  };
 
Linux:
Recompile your device tree with reduced SPI speed:

        flash@0 {                 compatible = "jedec,spi-nor";                 reg = <0>; -               spi-max-frequency = <10000000>; +               spi-max-frequency = <1000000>;         };

Suspecting media failure / image making trouble. I'll try to reproduce.

I have begun to make some changes to the TV Box 'Club' area.
 
The overall goal is to provide more useful information to users and reduce the support workload of answering the same questions over and over again.
 
To that end there is now a FAQ forum on the menu.  While it is currently empty and just a place holder it should provide a centralized location for TV Box information over time.
 
The second new addition is the forum titled 'TV Boxes running Armbian'.  The idea here is to provide a maintained list of current information with links to the details for boxes reported by the community to be successfully running armbian.
 
Both of the two above forums will likely be strictly moderated to keep the information concise and on topic.  I don't want these to become mega threads (like some of the TV box threads tend to be).  Content that gets posted here that belongs elsewhere will be moved.
 
I'm still trying to figure out how the rest of the area should be organized.  There needs to be a place for newbies to ask questions and it would be nice if there was a place for developers to share information.  The problem is that the current mega threads for the Rockchip CSC builds do that in a single thread, vs using one or more forums for that.  Also I wonder if there should be different forums by CPU family (AML,RK,AW?) by developer build (Balbes vs Jock's CSC builds?).  Any suggestions on how others think things should be organized?
 
  

Mostly because I was bored and for self-educational purpose I desigend a custom fan hat for the Nanopi R4S.
Planned to mill it from 2mm aluminum.
 
As reference I created a heavily simplified version of the board (4GB version) using the provided 2D drawing from Friendlyarm.
 
Fan: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B071JN6HKM?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share
Heat sink: https://www.aliexpress.com/i/4000107291369.html
Bolts and nuts: Whatever fits... M2
 
 


Baugr1.mkv

Mostly because I was bored and for self-educational purpose I desigend a custom fan hat for the Nanopi R4S.
Planned to mill it from 2mm aluminum.
 
As reference I created a heavily simplified version of the board (4GB version) using the provided 2D drawing from Friendlyarm.
 
Fan: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B071JN6HKM?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share
Heat sink: https://www.aliexpress.com/i/4000107291369.html
Bolts and nuts: Whatever fits... M2
 
 


Baugr1.mkv

Might also be worth discovering the idea about an external addon case for further 3,5" harddrives...
@gprovost you heard what we want: Go big or go home

@Werner Hahaha yes we are working at improving the design ;-) More news soon.

I know this topic's already marked solved, however wanted to add something interesting that I found in my travels.
 
If for some reason a software software controlled read-only switch isn't sufficient, it is actually possible to make a MicroSD card read-only.
 
https://github.com/BertoldVdb/sdtool
 
I'll still echo that overlayroot is generally the way to go. But in some applications that may not be sufficient.
 
And the permlock function does work as advertised.

Some day I have to test this ZFS. I'm too attached to the good ol' EXT4 

After checking, /var/log/armbian-hardware-monitor.log 
I detected btrfs did not exist in my build. I went back to lib/configuration.sh and saw btrfs-progs package was not installed if BUILD_MINIMAL = YES. 
 
if [[ "$BUILD_MINIMAL" != "yes"  ]]; then     # Essential packages     PACKAGE_LIST="$PACKAGE_LIST bridge-utils build-essential fbset \         iw wpasupplicant sudo linux-base crda \         wireless-regdb unattended-upgrades \         console-setup unicode-data initramfs-tools \         ca-certificates expect iptables automake html2text \         bison flex libwrap0-dev libssl-dev libnl-3-dev libnl-genl-3-dev keyboard-configuration"     # Non-essential packages     PACKAGE_LIST_ADDITIONAL="$PACKAGE_LIST_ADDITIONAL alsa-utils btrfs-progs dosfstools iotop stress screen \         ntfs-3g vim pciutils evtest pv libfuse2 libdigest-sha-perl \         libproc-processtable-perl aptitude dnsutils f3 haveged hdparm rfkill vlan bash-completion \         hostapd git ethtool unzip ifenslave libpam-systemd iperf3 \         software-properties-common libnss-myhostname f2fs-tools avahi-autoipd iputils-arping qrencode sunxi-tools" fi  
I changed then this from
 
PACKAGE_LIST="bc cpufrequtils device-tree-compiler fping fake-hwclock psmisc chrony parted dialog \         ncurses-term sysfsutils toilet figlet u-boot-tools usbutils openssh-server \         nocache debconf-utils python3-apt"  
to
 
PACKAGE_LIST="bc btrfs-progs cpufrequtils device-tree-compiler fping fake-hwclock psmisc chrony parted dialog \         ncurses-term sysfsutils toilet figlet u-boot-tools usbutils openssh-server \         nocache debconf-utils python3-apt"  
And now it works. I suppose btrfs-progs needs to be added to PACKAGE_LIST (or DEBOOTSTRAP_LIST?) only in the case ROOTFS_TYPE=btrfs and irrespectively of BUILD_MINIMAL.

Shared lines are not uncommon even on x86 mainboards. For example: https://www.asrock.com/mb/intel/fatal1ty z97 killer/#Specification
Take note at Storage and Slots sections:
That is to mention as addition to @tommitytom.
You can try to sell it in forums. I already noticed a few people who did this successfully here. However if I were a potential buyer I'd consider a person with such an attitude not necessarily trustworthy

For TV boxes, there is no official Armbian, so there is no point in wasting time on this, on each TV box, the process will be different and users will be tormented by questions about why they do not find the elements that you will tell about.

That's a good idea. I'll see what tool is best used in Android to burn the image. I've never used android for it, but since people with P1/M1 certainly have Android it is a great idea.
I've got a video planned where I show a full installation of Armbian Buster Legacy. I can start it in Android. I'll make the video when my NVMe hat arrives. Thanks for the idea. I wouldn't have thought about it. 

p.s. I've got a Mecool KM6 with S905X4 to review Android 10 on it. I don't suppose there will be Armbian for this? Just asking so I don't say anything wrong. 
I like the box, but I can't get used to Android. For watching video it's ok, but for productivity tasks it is bad.

Hi all. In this video I show how to install Open Media Vault on your SBC with Armbian Buster.
I've used the Odroid HC4, this is the same for any board you'd like to use. 
Here my video.
Greetings.
NicoD

The interior is 10.5cm wide and 16cm high and 15.5 deep and a commercial ssd disk has a dimension of 10cm x 7cm x 0.6cm with case.
Create a new backplane with 4 x Jmb575 5 Sata ports spaced 1cm each you can plug 20 SDD (up to 80 TB = 20x 4TB) on the Helios64 and put your cache on M.2 Port Sata1 ,
and waiting for new SoC 4-8 line PCIe v.3 (RK3399 have 4 line v2.1) .
 
 

Shared lines are not uncommon even on x86 mainboards. For example: https://www.asrock.com/mb/intel/fatal1ty z97 killer/#Specification
Take note at Storage and Slots sections:
That is to mention as addition to @tommitytom.
You can try to sell it in forums. I already noticed a few people who did this successfully here. However if I were a potential buyer I'd consider a person with such an attitude not necessarily trustworthy

@Joãobt If you're going to follow @SteeMan suggestion, please report here your experience!

https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/lvmcache.7.html
https://linuxhint.com/configuring-zfs-cache/
Here you go... use 4 HDDs and an SSD cache.
Or sell your unit, quite a lot of people wanted to buy one and couldn't in time.
OR, Frankenstein your unit and add in port multipliers to original SATA ports. Can add up to 20 HDDs to the 4 original SATA ports, and up to 5 SSDs to the remaining 1 original SATA port. The hardware controller specs say that it supports port multipliers, not sure about Armbian kernel, might have to modify.
 
Btw, you can take a look at the new version of Odroid H2+ with port multipliers (up to 10 SATA disks, + PCI-e Nvme) if you are into more tinkering. Also you get two 2.5G network ports instead of one. Hardkernel team has a blog post about its setup and benchmarks. https://wiki.odroid.com/odroid-h2/application_note/10_sata_drives
I am planning to expand my network infra with the H2+ soon. You can even plug a $45 4 port 2.5g switch into the Nvme slot now. I'm going crazy about this unit. If only it didn't have a shintel (r/AyyMD) cpu in.
 
Anyhow-
Just doing a bit of research shows that this was not a 'decision' made by Kobol, not exactly. There are just two reliable PCI-e to SATA controllers I could find that support multiple SATA ports(+4), with the limitation of RK3399 which has 4 PCI-e lanes. It would be a different story if RK had 8 lanes, but that is another can of worms that includes cpu arch, form factor, etc. Not gonna open that can while I'm barely qualified to open this one.
 
What we have here in Helios64 is JMB585, and then the other option was Marvel 88SE9215. Marvel only supports 4 ports, while JMB supports 5. There are no controllers that work reliably with 4 PCI-e 2.1 lanes and have more than 5 ports that I could find.
There is the quite new Asmedia ASM1166 which actually supports 6 ports, but that was probably not available during design of Helios64 as it is quite new. Not only that, there is a weird thread about its log output on Unraid forums.
 
At the end, this '5 ports only' was not exactly a decision for Kobol. But a rather uninformed decision made by you. You don't see people here complaining about this. You are the second one who even mentioned it, and the only one who is complaining so far with CAPS no less. Which means that the specs were clear to pretty much everyone that this was the case.
 
My suggestion is to replace one of the drives with a Samsung 860 pro, make it a SLOG/L2ARC, or in my case a LVM cache (write back mode, make sure you have a proper UPS, or the battery in the unit is connected properly) and call it a day. SATA port is faster than the 2.5G ethernet or the USB DAS mode anyhow so your cache SSD will mostly perform ok.

Shared lines are not uncommon even on x86 mainboards. For example: https://www.asrock.com/mb/intel/fatal1ty z97 killer/#Specification
Take note at Storage and Slots sections:
That is to mention as addition to @tommitytom.
You can try to sell it in forums. I already noticed a few people who did this successfully here. However if I were a potential buyer I'd consider a person with such an attitude not necessarily trustworthy

Hello! We have sent second version of patches for A3720 which should make 1 GHz mode finally stable:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-arm-kernel/20210114124032.12765-1-pali@kernel.org/

Seems like the mistake is yours.  It's made pretty clear that the port is shared (it's even mentioned twice on the front page of kobol.io), it's not exactly a secret.

I would have loved to have the PBP. But it's a bit too expensive.
I've got my self made SBC "laptops". Either my first with a 7" 1024x600 display and Odroid C2 or RPi2b to save energy. All together -1A 5V.
And my 13.3" 1080p display either with M4V2 or Khadas VIM3. The display alone is 1.2A. I then clock my RK3399 to all cores 1Ghz for watching movies or internet. Uses less than 1A then. Still powerful enough.
Also got speakers in my display. So having this already I didn't see the sense in buying the PBP. Too bad they don't want to work with me. I'd love to have reviewed the PBP, the PinePhone, PineCube... 
I was the first to have a video about all those products since I filmed their stand at FOSDEM in 2019.
I now ordered a 60 000mAh power bank. I'll be able to use it for a week without charging. And it can charge with quickcharge. So in a rather short time I'll be able to charge it enough to last a long time. I can't wait for the lockdowns to be done so I can travel again. It's awesome to be able to use my desktop PC in my tent on solar power. 
Here a picture of my first box almost 5 years ago now. Doesn't look as good as PBP. But functions as I need it. 

I've got the NVMe hat on the way. I asked the people of Firefly. I only needed to pay for the hat, so I'm happy. The extra $30 for shipping was a bit too much for me. It's more than the device is worth. 
I don't know if I mentioned it already. I replaced the thick thermal pad with copper shims. It doesn't overheat anymore. I'll show it in my review video. I needed 2 copper shims on top of each other to reach the height of the thermal pad. With copper shims of double the height would probably perform a bit better.

Now the case does get very hot when used maxed out.
The CPU used to go over 85C and start throttling. Now maximum temperature is 79C and no throttling. Tho this is with 1.5Ghz/2Ghz overclock. With default clocks it didn't overheat.

Mine is 000048.