Armbian on BananaPro with Mali-Support for Kodi

[musicPi]

Hello there,

I'm new to this Forum, so please

I been trying to run Kodi as standalone music station with Buster minimal and Kodi 17 on it.
This system boots very quick and I've been quite happy when I got kodi starting successfully, but it's very slow.

It takes several seconds to switch from one menu item to the next.

Next I tried to speed up the graphics using this instructions
https://forum.armbian.com/topic/1420-opengl-on-mali-gpu-bananapi-orangepi-pc-etc/

http://wiki.lemaker.org/BananaPro/Pi:GPU
But failed with xorg saying:

Quote

modprobe: FATAL: Module g2d_23 not found in directory /lib/modules/5.4.35-sunxi
modprobe: FATAL: Module mali not found in directory /lib/modules/5.4.35-sunxi
modprobe: FATAL: Module mali_drm not found in directory /lib/modules/5.4.35-sunxi
modprobe: FATAL: Module sunxi_cedar_mod not found in directory /lib/modules/5.4.35-sunxi
SunxiMaliDRI2_Init: drmOpen failed!
xf86: found device 0
xinit: connection to X server lost

 

/etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Quote

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier      "Monitor0"
        Option          "DPMS" "false"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
        Option          "Blanktime" "0"
        Option          "StandbyTime" "0"
        Option          "SuspendTime" "0"
        Option          "Offtime" "0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "Mali-400"
        Driver          "fbturbo"
        Option          "fbdev" "/dev/fb0"
        Option          "SwapbuffersWait" "true"
        Option          "AccelMethod" "G2D"
        Option          "DRI2" "true"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier      "Screen0"
        Device          "Mali-400"
        Monitor         "Monitor0"
EndSection

 

There is no /dev/mali, /dev/ump or /dev/disp device available.

Modules ump, mali, mali_drm are not loaded, but I saw lima drivers were active:

Quote

$ lsmod

...

lima                   36864  1
brcmfmac              167936  0
gpu_sched              24576  1 lima

...

 

I hope we can get this working either via mali or using lima driver.
Thanks in advance für your help!

regards

Edited May 25, 2020 by musicPi

[Igor]

1 hour ago, musicPi said:

Next I tried to speed up the graphics using this instructions
https://forum.armbian.com/topic/1420-opengl-on-mali-gpu-bananapi-orangepi-pc-etc/

http://wiki.lemaker.org/BananaPro/Pi:GPU

 

I am not familiar with how to make this work - just few tips - 4 years old instructions from Lemaker for kernel 3.4.y will probably not work on a kernel 5.4.y. They have little in common.

 

Lima driver is integrated in Armbian kernel for about 1-2 years, starting with 4.19.y ... how to make it work. Do some forum searching - you are probably not the only one.

[Igor]

We also tried to integrate Mali https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/1409 but falied due to lack of time / resources.

[ning]

I don't think integrate mali is a good choice, mali kernel driver is difficult to integrate, due to nowadays there is completely different display driver in mainline linux, and mali userspace binary driver only provides opengl_es2, lack of opengl, that means only gles programs can use mali gpu, desktop UI rendering still software.

 

if not build a special OS like lakka, desktop OS good to choose lima/panfrost for gpu driver.