Frequency scaling on Orange Pi One in Armbian

aegrotatio · May 30, 2016

[This is a repost of my own post at orangepi.org.]

Hi, I'm very excited to use the Armbian on Orange Pi One.

Without rebuilding a kernel or fex file, here is how to configure the Orange Pi One governor so the "[ 150.135554] [cpu_freq] ERR:set cpu frequency to 648MHz failed!" and "[ARISC ERROR] messages no longer appear in dmesg. We will set it to 912MHz on the low end and 1200MHz on the higher end which scale up and down properly on the Orange Pi One. This is until you update your fex file and/or kernel config to use different values for the CPU frequency scaling that are a little different on the Orange Pi One than they are on the Orange Pi PC.

Put it in your /etc/rc.local just after the line "/usr/local/bin/sun8i-corekeeper.sh &".

/usr/bin/cpufreq-set -d 912MHz -u 1200MHz -g ondemand

You can change "ondemand" parameter to conservative, ondemand, userspace, powersave, interactive, or performance.

Also, edit /etc/default/cpufrequtils to read:
ENABLE=true
MIN_SPEED=912000
MAX_SPEED=1200000
GOVERNOR=ondemand

tkaiser · May 30, 2016

Hmm... since this is here the Armbian forum I really don't understand these 'instructions' being posted now since we introduced a mistake with 5.10 release that prevented voltage switching on Orange Pi One a while ago but this has been fixed with 5.11 as far as I know. And 5.11 has been released a week ago and all that's needed is an

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Also ondemand is not the governor of choice for most use cases.

elkrisi · May 30, 2016

Hi!

This is my first post so let me begin by saying thank you for bringing up Armbian!

I've just received 3 Orange Pis (one PC which is dead on arrival, one Pi One and one Pi Lite) this morning and spent the whole day finding distros to boot.

I had the exact freq fail error and I found this post by searching for this in the forum, so thanks also to aegrotatio for opening up this thread.

I tried sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade and I have resolved the issue.

However, the freq fail is an ongoing loop and it was impossible to do it via a keyboard as the screen was filled with the [ERR] lines.

I used putty over ethernet and there things were quiet, so I entered the command there.

Even then, the first attempt failed with the system giving me an error like "can't write to directory ... because I am not logged in as root" (didn't ommit sudo!).

I attributed this to the [ERR] that must be going on in the background, so I tried it a second time and this time everything went smoothly.

May I suggest, since 5.11 is available, to update the downloads in this site to allow users get the 5.11 by first try?

It will save a lot, like really a LOT of frustrating hours because the first thing it comes to mind when confronted with something like this on a $10 chinese SBC is to fear for hardware failure!

Best wishes for the Armbian effort, it is high time we get serious with the Arm platform.

Igor · May 31, 2016

May I suggest, since 5.11 is available, to update the downloads in this site to allow users get the 5.11 by first try?

We are aware that this experience is not cool, but there are more things to fix before issuing a image rebuild.

Our core team is small and rebuilding is done (semi automatic) only by me. Scripts to fully automatize this process are almost done, but testing still must be done manually.

aegrotatio · May 31, 2016

Hmm... since this is here the Armbian forum I really don't understand these 'instructions' being posted now since we introduced a mistake with 5.10 release that prevented voltage switching on Orange Pi One a while ago but this has been fixed with 5.11 as far as I know. And 5.11 has been released a week ago and all that's needed is an
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
Also ondemand is not the governor of choice for most use cases.

When I run apt-get update && apt-get upgrade my Orange Pi One does not boot anymore. That's why I've posted this advice.

Something's up with the bootloader that causes my Orange Pi One (and Orange Pi PC for that matter) to sit and do nothing forever after I power them on after I update the kernel.

tkaiser · May 31, 2016

When I run apt-get update && apt-get upgrade my Orange Pi One does not boot anymore.

You are the very same person claiming he stops the upgrade process right in the middle (which might brick the board!), correct? http://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/1302-running-apt-get-dist-upgrade-installs-the-new-kernel-but-takes-the-orange-pi-pc-a-really-long-time/

And if you read above another user said upgrading solved the issues for him. So if I were you I would slow down on complaining, get a fast SD card (see recommended thread already suggested to you) and enjoy Armbian from then on after upgrading to 5.11.

Edited May 31, 2016 by wildcat_paris
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