Search the Community

@snakekick Thanks, that seems to confirm my findings back a few months ago. Adding a 5ms delay in the test case did not prevent the crash. Though it could be the system load is at play. Maybe adding a delay at the kernel level would do. pcie is tagged on the big CPUs so the SATA disks seem to matter (as the ethernet port). One could try in emergency mode (passing emergency to the kernel (I do it by "setenv extraboardargs emergency" after halting u-boot with a key press then enter "boot"). You will have just the root partition mounted read-only (so no network connection, a serial console is required). Then run the test. Also note that the design of the GPU regulator has the same issue as the CPU b one ... (for my tests I blacklisted panfrost, ie the GPU driver). After looking at the rockchip64 board schematics the design around the CPU b regulator is not similar but exactly the same as the helios64 one (rockchip64 uses a tcs4545 regulator for cpu b and tcs4546 for GPU). I wonder if the easiest fix would not be to pay someone to desolder the syr837 regulator and solder a tcs4545 instead - same for the GPU regulator a tcs4546 instead of the syr838... except that these chips from Torch Chip seem nowhere to be found. Maybe rip them from a rockpro64 board. @aprayoga can you confirm the Helios64 design for the rk3399 big cpu and gpu regulators are the same as the RockPro64 ones? Would it make sense (and would it fix the unstable cpu_b) to desolder the syr837/syr838 to replace them with tcs4545/tcs4546? Ie the tcs4535 datasheet (I am still unable to find the tcs4545 datasheet) I found tells tcs425 has internal pulldown for VSEL and EN which syr837 does not, the syr837 datasheet requires a 22uF capacitor for VIN but the helios64 has a 10uF one like the rockpro64 for the tcs4545. The SW pin of the helios64 has 470uH inductor with 4 x 22uF capacitors like the rockpro64 for the tcs4545 (like the typical application in the tcs4535 datasheet with 470uH inductor with two 22uF capacitors)? Do you know a replacement for the TCS4545/TCS4546 that has closer specs than the syr837/syr838? I cannot seem to find TCS4545/TCS4546 for sale (maybe I could buy a rockproc64 to desolder them at least for a test... or could you check on your side with a helios64 board that the cpufreq-switching-2-b test above crash with syr837 but not with tcs4545 with vanilla rk3399 opp definitions in dts? Sadly the Helios64 filled a market that is left unfilled. People who do not have the know-how to go full low-wattage DIY NAS and who also cannot afford to pay 1K€ for a NAS (and who might need two NASs to make things worse). In the meantime, I spend a lot of time learning about DIY NAS, but it is still hard to get wattage at full load (they tend to give all idle power usage). I probably will end up gambling and buying one build and pray... but with Helios64 I had the metrics before buying. I found that the Rock960 has the same design for the cpu_b and gpu regulators except for the inductor which is 0.240uH on the rock960 and 0.470uH on the Helios64. But hard to tell if the Rock960 is stable with my cpufreq switching test for the big cpus of the rk3399, might be the use of the board does not stress it as much as a raid10 on the helios64 pcie sata which is tagged to the cpu_b ... (initially it was 4 3TB WD Red - the old CMR model WD30EFRX-68EUZN0), from Helios4 setup as advertised by Kobol wiki for the Helios4... the board crashes on first boot after assembly with this raid setup. Mind I found that the Pinebook Pro also has the same design as the Helios64 this time around the syr837/syr838 ... I begin to wonder if either they are all broken (could be the amount of stress of a NAS ethernet or raid10 pcie is not that common) or if this is not the issue at stake.

Hello, as already mentioned in topic USB C port doesn't work after upgrading to the latest kernel 6.6.2 . The previous problem with not working left usb 3 port persist no more. Everything is fine. As I remember , before update the usb c port has worked with the adapter and the devices like mouse, usb flash etc. Now it doesn't work any more, furthermore it gives no signal of life. There is 0 amps current measured, also dmesg -W gives no output at all after plugging in the device. PS: I was unable to upload the report file, also the service paste.armbian.com doesn't work at the moment.

Description Other devices could be added if whatever the regulator needed for UHS is enabled. Read perf def improved on the gnome disk benchmarks. Jira reference number [AR-9999] let's enable salva's UHS overlay for RK3399 tested on PBP with 2ghz with 64 gig samsung evo select i like using the yabs.sh fio benchmark for mixed r/w tests curl -sL yabs.sh | bash -s -- -i -g -n also did gnome disk utility read benchmark before kernel 6.6.10 yabs # ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## # # Yet-Another-Bench-Script # # v2024-01-01 # # https://github.com/masonr/yet-another-bench-script # # ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## # Sat Jan 6 05:59:38 PM EST 2024 ARM compatibility is considered *experimental* Basic System Information: --------------------------------- Uptime : 0 days, 0 hours, 2 minutes Processor : Cortex-A53 Cortex-A72 CPU cores : 6 @ 1512.0000 2016.0000 MHz AES-NI : ✔ Enabled VM-x/AMD-V : ❌ Disabled RAM : 3.7 GiB Swap : 1.9 GiB Disk : 57.5 GiB Distro : Armbian 23.08.0-trunk sid Armbian 23.08.0-trunk sid Kernel : 6.6.10-edge-rockchip64 VM Type : NONE IPv4/IPv6 : ✔ Online / ❌ Offline fio Disk Speed Tests (Mixed R/W 50/50) (Partition /dev/mmcblk1p1): --------------------------------- Block Size | 4k (IOPS) | 64k (IOPS) ------ | --- ---- | ---- ---- Read | 1.82 MB/s (457) | 8.12 MB/s (126) Write | 1.85 MB/s (463) | 8.51 MB/s (133) Total | 3.68 MB/s (920) | 16.63 MB/s (259) | | Block Size | 512k (IOPS) | 1m (IOPS) ------ | --- ---- | ---- ---- Read | 12.39 MB/s (24) | 12.48 MB/s (12) Write | 13.51 MB/s (26) | 13.74 MB/s (13) Total | 25.90 MB/s (50) | 26.23 MB/s (25) gnome disk utility read benchmark (just defaults) Cool got some tiny gains on everything but 4k block after UHS enabled 6.6.10 yabs # ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## # # Yet-Another-Bench-Script # # v2024-01-01 # # https://github.com/masonr/yet-another-bench-script # # ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## # Sat Jan 6 06:05:48 PM EST 2024 ARM compatibility is considered *experimental* Basic System Information: --------------------------------- Uptime : 0 days, 0 hours, 0 minutes Processor : Cortex-A53 Cortex-A72 CPU cores : 6 @ 1512.0000 2016.0000 MHz AES-NI : ✔ Enabled VM-x/AMD-V : ❌ Disabled RAM : 3.7 GiB Swap : 1.9 GiB Disk : 57.5 GiB Distro : Armbian 23.08.0-trunk sid Armbian 23.08.0-trunk sid Kernel : 6.6.10-edge-rockchip64 VM Type : NONE IPv4/IPv6 : ✔ Online / ❌ Offline fio Disk Speed Tests (Mixed R/W 50/50) (Partition /dev/mmcblk1p1): --------------------------------- Block Size | 4k (IOPS) | 64k (IOPS) ------ | --- ---- | ---- ---- Read | 1.85 MB/s (464) | 8.81 MB/s (137) Write | 1.88 MB/s (471) | 9.32 MB/s (145) Total | 3.74 MB/s (935) | 18.14 MB/s (282) | | Block Size | 512k (IOPS) | 1m (IOPS) ------ | --- ---- | ---- ---- Read | 13.06 MB/s (25) | 13.64 MB/s (13) Write | 14.38 MB/s (28) | 15.23 MB/s (14) Total | 27.44 MB/s (53) | 28.87 MB/s (27) gnome disk utility read benchmark (just defaults) View the full article

I slowly convinced myself that I wanted a PineBook Pro, some time after the first production run. But then COVID, parts shortages, etc. happened and they were not available again until about mid-2022. But when they were, I decided to snap one up. And since then I have not been able to get it to boot Armbian. It came from the factory with Manjaro, which for me being a Debian guy, might as well be useless. So the PBP sat around collecting dust. Since then I have tried a few times to get it to work. I read many forum posts, tried some things. I won't document all that in detail. In this post, I will continue from where I left off here. However to summarize, that was about comparing DTB/DTS files to Kali, which supposedly works. That may become useful later, but I don't think that's the main problem. I think that the main problem is that this new batch came from the factory with no bootloader flashed to the included SPI flash chip. This is a problem on PineBook Pro because the RK3399 has a kind of weird boot order: SPI, eMMC, SD card. Therefore, if you just put in some SD card you flashed, it still boots from the factory Manjaro from the eMMC. Whatever bootloader they are using also apparently will not recognize an otherwise working Armbian image on an SD card. Now, because of the weird boot situation, there is supposed to be a switch to turn off eMMC. However this did not work for me. Which means one of 2 things: The switch does not work. I read at least one other person saying this. Also on the new revision, it's in a slightly different place than the old revision (may be a clue, maybe not). I simply had a bad Armbian image (which I had burned to sd card) that would not boot for whatever reason.[0] But let's put that aside for a moment. As I still think the main problem is the (empty) SPI. And that will be the easiest/best path forward. I confirmed the 'blank SPI' theory 2 different ways. First, as mentioned in a follow-up to the linked post (4 paragraphs above): As Martijn Braam states here: Of course, I like to beat a horse until it's really dead be thorough in my investigations, so today I wasted a lot of time[1] verifying that this indeed was the case. I did so by dd'ing the /dev/mtd0 block device into a file[2]. When I examined the file, it contained all FF, and also it is about 16 MiB in size. To me this confirms that indeed, the SPI on the new batch comes from the factory empty. So what is next? I keep reading that the only people who had success first had to install something like tow-boot to the SPI. That will be my next step. But before I flashed anything to SPI, I wanted to see what really came from the factory (which I did above). I will continue to document my progress whenever time allows for me to work on this. [0] Once I got the bootloader situation sorted, I later used this same image (on the SD card) to boot and install Armbian, so I do not think this was the case. [1] In the end the solution was simple. But first I wasted a lot of time trying to get rkdeveloptool working in Manjaro on the PBP. Only to realize it's intended to be used from a second machine to read the SPI flash via USB in maskrom mode. Anyway, lesson learned. [2] I tried to attach it but maybe it's too big.

Normally when you have installed a XFCE-Desktop image for the Pinebook A64 you could set the display brigthness with the following pkexec command to a readable higher level - like I did in the past (possible brightness values are 1-10 - on startup this is only set to 2): pkexec /usr/sbin/xfpm-power-backlight-helper --set-brightness 8 read-out command for the current value: pkexec /usr/sbin/xfpm-power-backlight-helper --get-brightness but on standard CLI-install pkexec and xfpm-power-backlight-helper are missing, so to use this command-line (in /etc/rc.local) you have to install these 2 packages: sudo apt install xfce4-power-manager pkexec

Hi all, I have a working Pinebook Pro Focal build with LUKS encryption enabled. The only issue I have is that when booting no progress or password prompt is displayed. As soon as I enter the password and hit enter I see the boot logo or console output depending on what is set in armbianEnv.txt. I will be continuing my research and learning about the boot process in general but wanted to check in here to see if people had any obvious pointers to share or whether maybe this is a known limitation that is going to be hard to resolve. Thanks, Matt

Moved post to unsupported/community maintained. This is not a supported board. My mistake, misread the post. This is pine64 not pinebook a64. That board should be supported but the forum structure isn't up to date. I have added the correct tag for the post, but left it in the original locatation.

Hello all, I got a problem after new update of armbian firmware through your own module (script). The left USB port on pinebook pro has stoped working at all. Before that was occasionaly after 6 -7 boot ups only one time not working (it is used for mouse). Now after x rebooting it doesnt work at all. The right USB port works without problems. On the left, also USB flash drive doesn't work. No idea, what could it be? Before, as already said, it has worked in 90%. Before firmware upgrade.

I know for sure that booting from an sd card and then using dd to write the uncompressed image to the emmc device isn't what works. I'm talking about Armbian_22.02.1_Pinebook-pro_focal_current_5.15.25_xfce_desktop.img here. Because that essentially bricked my PBP. I have the little adapter to connect the emmc to a usd slot, and using balena etcher to write to that isn't it either. the uboot in that image prevents booting from sd automatically as well, and i didn't find any uboot documentation that made it clear how to manually boot from sd, though i did hook up a serial console. This is what it said. The LED never turned green, the display flashes once but displays no images or text.

Hello, I flashed the Armbian_22.11.1_Pinebook-pro_jammy_edge_6.0.10_gnome_desktop.img file on the 64GB eMMC card of my Pinebook Pro (PBP) laptop but although the eMMC recognizes the image (the ARM logo appears on the screen for a few seconds), booting stalls at (initramfs). I proceeded as follows: 1) First copied the image file from my PC on a 64GB SD card which I inserted into PBP, booted it from the SD card and installed Armbian-Ubuntu without any problem. 2) Downloaded the Armbian*.xz file a second time - this time from the SD card installation -, uncompressed it and flashed it to the eMMC with a USB-to-eMMC adapter after having formatted and partitioned the eMMC. 3) Removed the SD card and rebooted. Installation of Armbian-Ubuntu began but stalled after a few seconds at the (initramfs) prompt. Couldn't type any command (such as exit) after it. PBP only boots from the SD card, but not from eMMC. Nor does it find the SSD card which I inserted with an eNVME adapter on the laptop. Any hint or advice helping me to solve this issue would be very much appreciated.

I bought a Pinebook Pro two weeks ago. It came with Manjaro KDE preinstalled on EMMC. I wanted to try out Armbian, so I downloaded the Bookworm XFCE image from May 27th. In order to get the SD booted, I first flashed Tow-Boot for Pinebook Pro (pine64-pinebookPro-2021.10-005.tar.xz) from github Tow-Boot to the SPI. Then during boot after pressing ESC the menu lets you select the SD card for boot. The first boot to Armbian worked well. I could set up user, timezone and everything. The XFCE desktop looks very clean with a reasonable selection of software. Well done, team! But after I upgrade the system with apt update & upgrade, the next time the machine is booted and SD card is selected, armbian won't boot anymore 😞 The upgrade seem to have broken something. I tried it twice, the second time freezed the kernel-upgrades in the armbian-config tool prior to upgrading it. Didn't help. Manjaro from EMMC still boots ok. Attached is a screenshot of the failed boot process, after I selected SD card to boot on the Tow Boot menu.

!!! Warning !!!: Think twice before you upgrade kernel on your PineBook Pro. After years unfortunately I decided to unlock upgrades Armbian Kernels and upgraded kernel to the newest one (current) - 5.15.93. After reboot Armbian couldn't find my encrypted root disk and booting ended every time in (initramfs). I installed again kernel 5.10.60 #21.08.1 and Armbian finds my encrypted disk again. Of course still there is no information that I have to enter the password to unlock disk but only black screen. Happily I know that I have to enter the password when the screen is black. Every upgrade of Armbian is connected with a dose of stress that I'll have to fix my computer. I thought that every following kernel should fix errors not create them.

Also on 1st class hardware it does not go without issues: https://www.google.com/search?q=why+kernel+upgrades+breaks+features On trash ultra cheap and forgotten hardware, where Armbian is trying to make a difference, breakage % is significantly bigger. Every kernel, that is work of thousands of people (some forget to test changes), breaks features even we invest tens of thousands of hours into stabilizing it. There is virtually no support from industry and no support from end users, but we still managed to build automated monitor for upgrades on many boards in automated way: https://github.com/armbian/os?tab=readme-ov-file#latest-smoke-tests-results Sadly, we don't test Pinebook, not complex functions as this and not all possible upgrades. Expanding testing to that and patching would cost additional few millions which is simply not possible to secure from this. In past year, nobody applied to serve as test engineer to develop this further. Other Linux distributions are far far away even from this. Install Armbian on a desktop PC.

Description Debian sid desktops have been failing to build for a while due to a dependency issue with ghostscript-x this package has been abandoned... or mostly abandoned.. see Debian Bug #1022718 Removed package from base desktop package lists... Resolves error message below The following packages have unmet dependencies: ghostscript-x : Depends: ghostscript (= 10.01.2~dfsg-1) but 10.02.1~dfsg-1 is to be installed E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages. tested with ./compile.sh build BOARD=pinebook-pro BRANCH=edge BUILD_DESKTOP=yes \ DESKTOP_APPGROUPS_SELECTED='3dsupport browsers internet multimedia' DESKTOP_ENVIRONMENT=cinnamon \ DESKTOP_ENVIRONMENT_CONFIG_NAME=config_base RELEASE=sid View the full article

hi, make sure you have all the kernel modules in your initramfs as listed here: https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-hardware/blob/master/pine64/pinebook-pro/default.nix i had the same issue with my archilnux installation until i included all of them

Hi, I put the image on an SD card, but the machine fails to boot. Looking at the serial console, it just sits in a loop with the CPU constantly resetting after an exception. Serial console log is attached. Regards, Dianne. bootloop.txt

Hello! I don't really have a question, but just wanted to report I tried out the generic UEFI arm64 image on a Pinebook Pro, and it installed emmc and booted just fine! This was possible because I had installed Tow-Boot to the SPI flash, which supports UEFI booting. I had tried using the Pinebook Pro build of armbian, which worked fine when booting off the sdcard, but installing it to the emmc wasn't working. I'm using Tow-Boot 2021.10 then arbmian image Armbian_22.08.7_Uefi-arm64_jammy_current_5.15.74 . There's a few rough edges in the grub menu, but it boots the OS off the emmc just fine. Should the be mentioned on the Pinebook Pro page? Personally, having Tow-Boot installed to SPI is all around a much more "normal" laptop experience, so it seems like a good idea in general.

Hi al. I've finished my review of the PineBook Pro. I just love this thing. Runs great with Armbian. Here my video. Here all my gathered information:

I found a way to boot after having deleted the U-boot partition, which prevents any useful boot to allow repair. I could then complete the armbian install. This applies to my Pinebook A64, 14" (not the pro pinebook - i cant test that) After removing the U-boot partition, it would only boot to a "busybox" with limited features, not enough to do a repair. I had a copy of armbian jammy on an sd-card, and this had booted OK before my stupid error. But with the SD card inserted, it stilll only booted to the busybox . The trick was to start the boot, and then insert the SD-card mid-boot, and it then booted the working system from the SD-card. During the defective boot, there is a pause with a few lines of text on the screen before it then proceeds with more error messages and into the busybox. I inserted the SD-card during that pause and it completed the boot from the SD-card. (you may need to time this carefully, but it worked on first try for me) Then you have a complete working system and can use armbian-config, > install system to eMMC and it copies the system to the eMMC and fixes the u-boot issue. It will now boot direct from the eMMC. Took me a while to find this trick which I have not seen documented anywhere, but is essential to get a system running to effect a repair.

> Hardware support > Debian 11 comes with Mesa 20.3 which supports the Mali 400 and 450 GPUs via the Lima driver, and various Mali G-series and T-series GPUs via the Panfrost driver. This will cover most modern ARM SoCs, including those found in the Pinebook and Pinebook Pro devices. Panfrost supports the Mali T720 (only up to OpenGL 2.1 and OpenGL ES 2.0), Mali T760, Mali T820, Mali T860, Mali G72, Mali G31, and Mali G52. PanfrostLima - Debian Wiki https://wiki.debian.org/PanfrostLima Can I just switch to Armbian Debian 11 and install Panfrost driver to enable GPU on nano pi r4s?

the system does not start with emms, the red light lights up and that's it, I tried to record another version of the uboot, the armbian icon appears and the wheel spins does not respond to pressing the keys. I couldn't write the issue to the bugtracker....

I've just installed armbian to Pinebook Pro's eMCC using the full-disk encryption helper script from https://github.com/mmgen/mmgen-geek-tools The said script was executed inside an armbian installation in an sd card with official Pinebook Pro image. The eMCC installation almost worked - it boots to graphical desktop, however there's no wifi and bluetooth. I don't have any other way to connect the laptop to internet. I guess the way to fix this is to boot the sd card again because it has internet, then open the encrypted disk manually and chroot to its root, then run some command - but I don't know which one! Please help.

Description This brings early support for Linux kernel v6.5 for allwinner boards. Following patches are changed Megous patches: disabled patches.megous/video-fbdev-eInk-display-driver-for-A13-based-PocketBooks.patch to prevent build failure. Will work on re-enabling the same Fixes patches: disabled Fix-depends-only-ARM-eInk-display-FB.patch as it changes code introduce by patch disabled above Armbian patches: disabled drv-clk-sunxi-ng-ccu-sun50i-a64-revert-ccu-Pinebook-A64.patch due to patch application failure. Will check if its still needed. Need help from someone who has a PInebook A64 for the same. removed drv-pmic-add-axp313a.patch as it is upstreamed reworked the overlay support patches to reuse the upstream dtbo support. Due to this rework, overlay patches are updated to use dtso as the file extension Config change: Enabled CW1200 wireless driver as this might bring support for xradio xr819 due to patches from megous kernel How Has This Been Tested? Please describe the tests that you ran to verify your changes. Please also note any relevant details for your test configuration. [X] Build succeeds Checklist: [ ] My code follows the style guidelines of this project [ ] I have performed a self-review of my own code [ ] I have commented my code, particularly in hard-to-understand areas [ ] I have made corresponding changes to the documentation [X] My changes generate no new warnings [ ] Any dependent changes have been merged and published in downstream modules View the full article

Hi, i got a Pinebook and install the latest Armbian Image. All is working fine, only the sound output make problems. It isn't matter if i play a mp3 file or a play a YT Video. The sound is just strechted, drawned, like in slow motion. What can i do to solve this issue? Any ideas? Thank you for your help.

Hi, on my Pinebook Pro with Armbian, I would like to use AesCrypt like on all my other Linux and Windows and Android systems, but here on Armbian, I need some support... - AesCrypt seems not to be available as deb package in Armbian and also Debian repos, right? - install AesCrypt directly from AesCrypt website as deb package with gdebi doesn"t work, guess because it is for x86 only - so I would like to make use of pyAesCryt as module in my Python script - the way as I know it from Archlinux and Manjaro, pip install pyAesCrypt does not work, get a message "environment is externally managed, not Debian-packaged software has to be installed via pipx" (I don't know what "externally managed environment" means, seems to special in Debian / Armbian. Is there a good documentation?) - now, pipx install pyAesCryt installs pyAesCryt sucessfully, and I also did the recommended pipx ensurepath - but, pyAesCrypt is not listed as installed module and - with adapted calls in my methods (aescrypt to pyaescrypt) and an module import import pyAesCrypt after starting the script, when it comes to the call, an error message says " no such module" Any help would be much appreciated!