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NanoPi M4 V2 - M4 Image not working

NicoD

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NicoD

NicoD

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Hi guys.
I've received the NanoPi M4 V2 today.
I tried Armbian images for the M4 on SD and eMMC. None boot.
So I tried the RockPi4 images since that's got lpddr4 too. That works. Of course no on-board wifi since another chip.

So my guess is the lpddr4 isn't supported by the uboot for the M4.

It is a nice board. I've got the metal case with NVMe hat too. Looks all very nice. But a bit impractical if you need to acces eMMC.
afbeelding.thumb.png.16f73714093a8614cb9ced70e55d923b.png

Cheers

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NicoD

NicoD

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35 minutes ago, orion said:

What are you going to use the M4 for? If I may ask. I have v1 and waiting for the NvME hat. Was thinking to replace my old ACER Revo as media player

I'll use it as 2nd desktop. My pc is aging and can't handle a 4K display. So this will drive my 4K display. And 2 x 1080p displays for my pc. 
I also have the original NanoPi M4, but with 2GB ram. I love that one, but the 2GB is a real bottleneck. And the NVMe will also be a good boost.
Also have the RockPi4 with 4GB lpddr4 and NVMe. But the M4 always done better for me with the software I use.(kdenlive, blender, watching video, ...)
Things have changed for the RockPi4, but it's still not as good for me as the M4 for my tasks.
I've also got the Khadas VIM3 2GB, that's now my laptop. Super fast, super energy efficient. Consumes less than the M4 while a lot faster.
And I've got so many more boards, I couldn't count them all, or find them all :) (I luckily get them for free)
Greetings.
 

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NicoD

NicoD

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53 minutes ago, djjerdog said:

I ran into the same issue with the M4v2 hardware, none of the Armbian M4 images will boot on the M4v2 hardware.  https://www.armbian.com/nanopi-m4/ :(

 

I still need to research that. It might work with mainline kernel and uboot. I'll see to build an image, otherwise we're going to need smarter people for this :) 

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NicoD

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On 9/30/2019 at 4:34 PM, djjerdog said:

I ran into the same issue with the M4v2 hardware, none of the Armbian M4 images will boot on the M4v2 hardware.  https://www.armbian.com/nanopi-m4/ :(

 

 

On 9/30/2019 at 5:29 PM, NicoD said:

I'll see to build an image, otherwise we're going to need smarter people for this

I tried with mainline 5.3, no luck. UBoot doesn't seem to do anything. 
The RockPi image does boot, and works slightly. But it's is far from good enough to be useable. Many usb devices do not work. No wifi. The FriendlyElec images do work. But they've got many issues.

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NicoD

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14 hours ago, djjerdog said:

 

@NicoD Have you been able to get the NVMe connector working at least?

Yes. NVMe works fine with FriendlyDesktop and Lubuntu. But to my knowledge you can't run it from NVMe. 
I'm using my NVMe hat on my NanoPi M4 with Armbian installed on it. The M4 V2 runs FriendlyDesktop on eMMC. But zram doesn't work in FriendlyDesktop. So my M4 with 2GB ram + 1GB zram + 8GB swap file on NVMe is a lot more useful than the M4V2 with 4GB ram. 
I'll try to look into UBoot. There's a good thread about it on the forum. I suppose with the mainline UBoot it might work since the rockpi4 is mainline. But I've got little knowledge about all that. 

@Igor Do you have info on this? 
I think the lpddr4 isn't recognized in the uboot for the M4. With the RockPi4 image it does boot, but a lot of things don't work of course. 
Is it possible to add lpddr4 support to the M4 image? Or will there need to be a new image for the M4V2? 
If someone could give a tip on what to do, I'd love to learn how to do these things. 

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NicoD

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5 minutes ago, Igor said:

Yes, I know. Waiting for hardware to arrive ... it seems it was sent to a wrong destination :( 

I'll wait in patience and hope it'll arrive at the correct destination.
If there's anything I can test in the meantime, let me know.

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chwe

chwe

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On 10/2/2019 at 5:31 PM, NicoD said:

@Igor Do you have info on this? 
I think the lpddr4 isn't recognized in the uboot for the M4. With the RockPi4 image it does boot, but a lot of things don't work of course. 

not Igor but I can help here.. :D

 

https://github.com/armbian/build/blob/259a0bf5fe3bc9a20709597e43f18421aa3ae4ed/config/sources/rockchip64.conf#L8-L9

 

The Rockpi uses ayufans u-boot which is not upstream (it's based on rockchips u-boot). The former nanopis are supported by upstream u-boot (DDR3 or normal DDR4 should be supported for RK3399 iirc). There were a few attempts so that upstream u-boot can handle lpddr4 but the last I heard is that it's not stable yet (someone from the forum was involved but I don't remember the name.. :( ).

 

Patch in the defconfig and the DT into ayufans u-boot should be an easy task (I'm confident that friendlyarms is based on the same one.. so not much to patch around).

 

On 10/2/2019 at 6:06 PM, Igor said:

Yes, I know. Waiting for hardware to arrive ... it seems it was sent to a wrong destination :( 

unfortunate I would happily dive in (if there's still a spare one).. :P

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NicoD

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5 hours ago, chwe said:

Patch in the defconfig and the DT into ayufans u-boot should be an easy task (I'm confident that friendlyarms is based on the same one.. so not much to patch around).

I hope they'll run at full lpddr4 speed. I'm not convinced if that's the fact with friendyDeskop. Marginally worse performance. Couldn't do the righ tests yet, zram ain't working. The M4 lpddr3 zram runs at 1.9GB, the lpddr4 of the rockpi at 2.1GB. 
So it'll be easy to know once armbian runs well. Thanks.

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Stuart

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8 hours ago, balbes150 said:

@NicoD  can you try running on M4v2 and on PockPi4 image for rk3399-tv ?

 

I'm primarily interested in running the DEV and NEXT variants (with kernel 5.x).

 

https://yadi.sk/d/HLVJ8FlLHEQpUQ

I dont have a RockPi4, but I have run the 5.98 NEXT (debian w/o desktop) version on my M4v2.  It connects to the network, but there's no SSH running.  There is also no video via HDMI.  No SSH + no video = useless...

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11 hours ago, balbes150 said:

@NicoD  can you try running on M4v2 and on PockPi4 image for rk3399-tv ?

 

I'm primarily interested in running the DEV and NEXT variants (with kernel 5.x).

 

https://yadi.sk/d/HLVJ8FlLHEQpUQ

I tried both DEV and NEXT on the M4V2. Both boot after a while. Both don't have wifi working. No on-board, and none of my usb wifi dongles work. Also my 7" display doesn't work, so I can't connect it to ethernet.
USB ports do work. I tried an ssd and it mounted normally.  I've used the nanopi m4.dtb. I'll see if another dtb's gives more succes.

With the RockPi NEXT everything seems to work well. Wifi works. Even 5Ghz. Can't see anything wrong. 
On my own dev 5.3 RC4(also 5.4) it also takes that long to boot. But I can choose to clock to 1.5Ghz/2Ghz while yours only goes to 1.4Ghz/1.8Ghz. (with armbian-config cpu tool)
I'd like to see 1.5/2Ghz back as an option. It's stable, better performance, but leave 1.4Ghz/1.8Ghz as default so people can choose to clock higher. 

Now burning DEV for the rockPi. I guess it'll work well, I'll see if other dtb files can make usb wifi work for the m4v2. 

EDIT:

DEV indeed works as well on the RockPi4. 
I tried different dtb files on the m4v2. Only neo4 boots with display. T4 boots without display. rockpi didn't boot, khadas v didn't boot...
EDIT 2:
ZRam ain't working on rockpi4. I guess it'll be the same on the others? 

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NicoD

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57 minutes ago, Stuart said:

I dont have a RockPi4, but I have run the 5.98 NEXT (debian w/o desktop) version on my M4v2.  It connects to the network, but there's no SSH running.  There is also no video via HDMI.  No SSH + no video = useless...

What dtb file did you use? There's a folder with all the available dtb files. And in extlinux you change the line in the .conf file that points to the deb file. 

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1 hour ago, NicoD said:

What dtb file did you use? There's a folder with all the available dtb files. And in extlinux you change the line in the .conf file that points to the deb file. 

I didnt configure anything specific, I was unaware of the dtb config changes.  either way, I still cant SSH or get video...I can ping it, that's about it.

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Stuart

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when this board is finally supported, hopefully soon :), will back port version like Bionic and Stretch be available??  I have the SATA hat and am looking to build an OMV NAS device, however Buster isn't supported yet...

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balbes150

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12 hours ago, NicoD said:

On my own dev 5.3 RC4(also 5.4) it also takes that long to boot. But I can choose to clock to 1.5Ghz/2Ghz while yours only goes to 1.4Ghz/1.8Ghz. (with armbian-config cpu tool)
I'd like to see 1.5/2Ghz back as an option. It's stable, better performance, but leave 1.4Ghz/1.8Ghz as default so people can choose to clock higher. 

DEV and NEXT are versions with kernel 5 (this is a test kernel in development). The DEFAULT version has the old kernel 4.

 

In this case, I was interested in the overall startup (the work of u-boot and the overall work of the kernel). For the correct operation of all elements,  need to deal with specific DTB and settings (configuration), but I do not have this equipment for detailed debugging and tests.

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chwe

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On 10/9/2019 at 3:15 AM, chwe said:

Patch in the defconfig and the DT into ayufans u-boot should be an easy task (I'm confident that friendlyarms is based on the same one.. so not much to patch around).

confidence got denied by looking into sources.. :-/

 

especially the android related stuff (https://gitlab.com/friendlyelec/rk3399-android-8.1) cause it seems to be the only repositories which are open around m4 v2... U-boot seems to be some 2014.x version (don't know it this is part of the normal rockchip u-boot package for an android build or just some random mess I don't understand - I assume it's a rockchip sourcedrop from the commit history - e.g. none except the few ones from friendlyelec added on top of it). Honestly I'm surprised (and not the good way).

 

I guess (since rockpi images boot), we can base an u-boot defconfig based on rockpi. @mindee are the sources for more recent u-boot versions (newer than 2014 based one from the android 8.1 package) not available for the board yet? Did I do a mistake and not find it? Or is it not planed to release? For those running friendly core on it, can you provide a uart boot dump? I would be interested which version of u-boot they use for everything except the android they provide.

 

Never the less I'm (still) confident that we can provide initial support to the board soon for a 4.4 legacy and recent mainline-ish kernel as well. I just didn't feel as comfortable to create those patches to the buildscript without having the hardware to test if it boots at least. :)

 

 

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pkfox

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On 10/2/2019 at 4:31 PM, NicoD said:

Yes. NVMe works fine with FriendlyDesktop and Lubuntu. But to my knowledge you can't run it from NVMe. 
I'm using my NVMe hat on my NanoPi M4 with Armbian installed on it. The M4 V2 runs FriendlyDesktop on eMMC. But zram doesn't work in FriendlyDesktop. So my M4 with 2GB ram + 1GB zram + 8GB swap file on NVMe is a lot more useful than the M4V2 with 4GB ram. 
I'll try to look into UBoot. There's a good thread about it on the forum. I suppose with the mainline UBoot it might work since the rockpi4 is mainline. But I've got little knowledge about all that. 

@Igor Do you have info on this? 
I think the lpddr4 isn't recognized in the uboot for the M4. With the RockPi4 image it does boot, but a lot of things don't work of course. 
Is it possible to add lpddr4 support to the M4 image? Or will there need to be a new image for the M4V2? 
If someone could give a tip on what to do, I'd love to learn how to do these things. 

Hi Nico, I fitted the NVME hat to my original M4 today and used armbian-config to install to NVME and all is working fine

 

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pask

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On 10/13/2019 at 8:04 PM, chwe said:

confidence got denied by looking into sources.. :-/

 

especially the android related stuff (https://gitlab.com/friendlyelec/rk3399-android-8.1) cause it seems to be the only repositories which are open around m4 v2... U-boot seems to be some 2014.x version (don't know it this is part of the normal rockchip u-boot package for an android build or just some random mess I don't understand - I assume it's a rockchip sourcedrop from the commit history - e.g. none except the few ones from friendlyelec added on top of it). Honestly I'm surprised (and not the good way).

 

I guess (since rockpi images boot), we can base an u-boot defconfig based on rockpi. @mindee are the sources for more recent u-boot versions (newer than 2014 based one from the android 8.1 package) not available for the board yet? Did I do a mistake and not find it? Or is it not planed to release? For those running friendly core on it, can you provide a uart boot dump? I would be interested which version of u-boot they use for everything except the android they provide.

 

Never the less I'm (still) confident that we can provide initial support to the board soon for a 4.4 legacy and recent mainline-ish kernel as well. I just didn't feel as comfortable to create those patches to the buildscript without having the hardware to test if it boots at least. :)

 

 

I have successfully compiled and run http://wiki.friendlyarm.com/wiki/index.php/Buildroot_for_RK3399 on a nanopi m4 v2.  I can confirm that uboot's makefile from these sources reports "version=2014".

My question is: how do I use the  working compiled uboot 2014 version with an armbian image? Is it possible to simply substitute some (compiled) file of the armbian image to do a first very raw try and see if the nanopi m4 v2 board boots and works?

 

Thank you and sorry for my very noob question

 

 

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NicoD

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Can anyone else verify a RockPi image booting on the M4 V1?  If it does, we can probably move on consolidating u-boots.

As the quote says, could anyone try the RockPi image on the normal M4 please.

 

ps. 

My findings...

Quote

Yes. It boots. Seems to work, except there is a problem with USB(3).
I just tried it, no wifi of course, so I plugged my USB3 rtl88x2bu in (before boot). And it worked. Wifi worked on the device. But when I plug out the wifi adapter the whole thing crashes. 
I tried this 2 times. 2 times the same behaviour. So my guess is there's another usb3 controller for the M4 vs RockPi4. (after crash lost default armbian desktop and went to default xfce4 desktop)

 

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chwe

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On 10/31/2019 at 10:00 PM, pask said:

My question is: how do I use the  working compiled uboot 2014 version with an armbian image? Is it possible to simply substitute some (compiled) file of the armbian image to do a first very raw try and see if the nanopi m4 v2 board boots and works?

Possible? Probably, but it doesn't make sense. The main "work" for this board will be u-boot support (from kernel-side there's not much lifting needed to get it working). We will not add a third bootsource for rk3399. Especially not a outdated 2014 version. So if you really want to do something useful.. just get at least the 2017 uboot working. I don't think this is worth it otherwise (if they didn't mess up something hard, and I don't think they did the rest will just run fine so not much 'testing' needed).

 

I would base one on the RockPi4b defconfig and see if you need to fix things here and there to get it working.

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pkfox

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On 9/24/2019 at 11:51 AM, NicoD said:

Hi guys.
I've received the NanoPi M4 V2 today.
I tried Armbian images for the M4 on SD and eMMC. None boot.
So I tried the RockPi4 images since that's got lpddr4 too. That works. Of course no on-board wifi since another chip.

So my guess is the lpddr4 isn't supported by the uboot for the M4.

It is a nice board. I've got the metal case with NVMe hat too. Looks all very nice. But a bit impractical if you need to acces eMMC.
afbeelding.thumb.png.16f73714093a8614cb9ced70e55d923b.png

Cheers

Hi Nico have you had any luck finding an image that works with this board - received mine today and am in the same boat as you :-(

 

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martinayotte

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1 hour ago, pkfox said:

Hi Nico have you had any luck finding an image that works with this board - received mine today and am in the same boat as you :-(

As mentioned in this thread and in another one, use RockPi image, it should boot ...

Then, after initial setup, root password and user creation, add this line "fdtfile=rockchip/rk3399-nanopi-m4.dtb" in /boot/armbianEnv.txt to get proper hardware setting.

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9 minutes ago, martinayotte said:

As mentioned in this thread and in another one, use RockPi image, it should boot ...

Then, after initial setup, root password and user creation, add this line "fdtfile=rockchip/rk3399-nanopi-m4.dtb" in /boot/armbianEnv.txt to get proper hardware setting.

Do you mean the RockPi 4 from this site ? thanks for replying

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