Board Bring Up Station P1 rk3399, M1 rk3328

[Werner]

34 minutes ago, NicoD said:

legacy

AFAIK OC only works with mainline.

[d00m178]

hello

Im looking for OS like ubuntu/debian with simple DE like XFCE + Kodi for my rock pi 4c.

will it work on rock pi 4с?

if so - how to download latest version for testing?

 

[NicoD]

6 minutes ago, Werner said:

AFAIK OC only works with mainline.

Works with vanilla armbian legacy for rk3399. It even can clock to 2.2Ghz. I've got my M4 overclocked with buster legacy.
But I'm not sure if it works with balbes150's images.

[Werner]

5 minutes ago, d00m178 said:

hello

Im looking for OS like ubuntu/debian with simple DE like XFCE + Kodi for my rock pi 4c.

will it work on rock pi 4с?

if so - how to download latest version for testing?

 

https://www.armbian.com/rock-pi-4/

https://forum.armbian.com/topic/16516-rk3399-legacy-multimedia-framework/

 

[NicoD]

4 minutes ago, d00m178 said:

hello

Im looking for OS like ubuntu/debian with simple DE like XFCE + Kodi for my rock pi 4c.

will it work on rock pi 4с?

if so - how to download latest version for testing?

For the RockPi4C you just need the default armbian buster legacy. https://redirect.armbian.com/region/EU/rockpi-4b/Buster_legacy_xfce
from https://www.armbian.com/rock-pi-4/
To install kodi with addones :
 

sudo apt install media-buster-legacy-rk3399 --install-recommends 

https://forum.armbian.com/topic/16516-rk3399-legacy-multimedia-framework/

[balbes150]

13 часов назад, NicoD сказал:

I added this to armbianEnv.txt but it didn't seem to work. 

This is an outdated startup option (using boot.scr and armbianENV.txt), I use extlinux. conf. You need to use a different configuration mechanism. I don't use this functionality, so I won't tell you what to do.

[d00m178]

On 7/5/2021 at 2:52 PM, JMCC said:

That seems very interesting. I already built patched Kodi packages for Debian Bullseye (available for download here), but they were not too useful without the kernel-side patches. If you can add those patches to Armbian mainline, we could give it a try.

will it work on rock pi 4c with buster or focal/hirsute images based on new kernel from here:

https://armbian.hosthatch.com/dl/rockpi-4c/archive/
or it is only for debian bullseye?

[redjr]

I'm looking for an Linux distro image for the new Station P2.  Will an image for the P1 work as well?  Also, should it boot the Linux image from the SD card automatically if inserted.  I've tried booting the P2 with an M1/P1 image of Armbian, but the Station OS still comes up.  How do you boot from the SD card?

[mo123]

21 minutes ago, redjr said:

I'm looking for an Linux distro image for the new Station P2.  Will an image for the P1 work as well?  Also, should it boot the Linux image from the SD card automatically if inserted.  I've tried booting the P2 with an M1/P1 image of Armbian, but the Station OS still comes up.  How do you boot from the SD card?

You have to wait until Armbian adds support for RK3566/RK3568 processors, only RK3328 & RK3399 are supported at the moment since the new processors are still very new and no one has them except a few people.

They are very different from RK3399 ones used in devices like the Station P1, so won't boot.

Station P2 will get mainline Linux support so in future it should work with most Linux ARM OS's.

Yes, Armbian boots automatically from micro-sd card on Rockchip devices.

[redjr]

Thanks mo for this information.  I'll just have to wait.  Is there anyway to get to the 'root' of the Station P2 OS, or is that locked down.  I'm assuming it's some fork of Linux/Android?  Is there some Firefly, or Armbian watchlist I can sign up for to be notified of any new distri releases?

 

[TRS-80]

1 hour ago, redjr said:

Is there some Firefly, or Armbian watchlist I can sign up for to be notified of any new distri releases?

 

Did you even spend 10 seconds looking at home page of forums?

 

https://forum.armbian.com/forum/37-announcements/

 

Although, in your case I would suggest spending a little time lurking and reading, as it seems you are asking some very basic questions.

[redjr]

As a matter a fact TRS-80, I have been lurking around, and spending way more than 10secs.  My apologizes for missing the Armbian Announcements page.  I wasn't looking for general announcements, but one more specifically targeted at booting from SD on the P2.  I've been looking much more broadly since the Station P2 is a fairly new SBC.  I asked here because of other Armbian projects I've used.  However, your attitude and sarcasm doesn't lend itself well for me or others to want to participate.  For what it's worth, I'm a nebbie Linux user, and simply want to get the P2 up and running as soon as possible.

 

Thanks so much for your help.

[mo123]

4 minutes ago, redjr said:

As a matter a fact TRS-80, I have been lurking around, and spending way more than 10secs.  My apologizes for missing the Armbian Announcements page.  I wasn't looking for general announcements, but one more specifically targeted at booting from SD on the P2.  I've been looking much more broadly since the Station P2 is a fairly new SBC.  I asked here because of other Armbian projects I've used.  However, your attitude and sarcasm doesn't lend itself well for me or others to want to participate.  For what it's worth, I'm a nebbie Linux user, and simply want to get the P2 up and running as soon as possible.

 

Thanks so much for your help.

 

The Station P1/M1 already has Armbian support but for the Station P2/M2 you will have to wait a couple of weeks until these new devices are more readily available and Armbian developers also get them. Rockchip is also still busy submitting drivers for the RK3566/RK3568 to the mainline kernel.

There should be more info here later.

https://wiki.t-firefly.com/en/ROC-RK3568-PC/started.html

https://www.stationpc.com/

 

The current OS installed I think is Android 11 with a custom launcher and apps.

[TRS-80]

23 minutes ago, redjr said:

I have been lurking around, and spending way more than 10secs.

 

Well you are off to a good start then.  GNU/Linux in general (and SBCs specifically) are more than a bit arcane, you will need to do a lot of reading.  I have been here a few years now and still only know a little.

 

My comments were not meant to offend you, but to make you think.  Self sufficiency is valued in these sort of communities for a reason, it is a self preservation mechanism.  See some of the links in my signature (specifically, How To Ask Questions, beware help vampires) to get a general sense.  Ask yourself honestly, who is more valuable to the long term sustainability of a community: those very few people who take their own personal time to reply and help others, or the hundreds of people who come every day asking questions showing they have not bothered to do fundamental research?

 

I am not trying to pick a fight with you, rather to introduce you to sustainable F/LOSS culture.  You seem like an intelligent person, otherwise I wouldn't bother writing all this.

 

23 minutes ago, redjr said:

I wasn't looking for general announcements, but one more specifically targeted at booting from SD on the P2.

 

I don't think you will find an announcement about something so specific.  You will need to do a little more leg work on your own.  But this is the nature of the beast. 

[redjr]

7 minutes ago, mo123 said:

 

The Station P1/M1 already has Armbian support but for the Station P2/M2 you will have to wait a couple of weeks until these new devices are more readily available and Armbian developers also get them. Rockchip is also still busy submitting drivers for the RK3566/RK3568 to the mainline kernel.

There should be more info here later.

https://wiki.t-firefly.com/en/ROC-RK3568-PC/started.html

https://www.stationpc.com/

 

The current OS installed I think is Android 11 with a custom launcher and apps.

Thanks for these links mo.  I understand that this is new, so will wait for distros to catch-up with the hardware.  User 150balbes is usually out in front of everyone with his builds, so I'll be following him with interest and any of his news.

[TRS-80]

3 minutes ago, redjr said:

I understand that this is new, so will wait for distros to catch-up with the hardware.

 

It can take years!  I was very excited about RK3399 for a long time, it only recently has gotten stable!

 

Just trying to set some realistic expectations, and this is not directed at you, personally.  I see a lot of excitement (at Pine64 forums, and elsewhere) as well about RK3566/RK3578[0] but they are essentially brand new SoCs.  Many people have "the new shiny" syndrome (in the broader public), but with hardware in Linux very often "the older the better" as the hardware will have seen more development and become more stable.

 

[0] Or any other SoC for that matter.

[redjr]

1 hour ago, mo123 said:

 

The Station P1/M1 already has Armbian support but for the Station P2/M2 you will have to wait a couple of weeks until these new devices are more readily available and Armbian developers also get them. Rockchip is also still busy submitting drivers for the RK3566/RK3568 to the mainline kernel.

There should be more info here later.

https://wiki.t-firefly.com/en/ROC-RK3568-PC/started.html

https://www.stationpc.com/

 

The current OS installed I think is Android 11 with a custom launcher and apps.

mo,  The first link was very helpful.  I know I was on their wiki at some point, but was focused on a compatible Linux build at the time, and overlooked their manual.  I have just been reviewing and printing parts out that will be useful.  Thanks again for being so patient with me.  I've been messing around SBCs for a few years, just to tinker with them.  I recently retired and now have more time to spend and learn, but alas my memory isn't as sharp as it was when I was in my 30s! 

[redjr]

1 hour ago, TRS-80 said:

 

Well you are off to a good start then.  GNU/Linux in general (and SBCs specifically) are more than a bit arcane, you will need to do a lot of reading.  I have been here a few years now and still only know a little.

 

My comments were not meant to offend you, but to make you think.  Self sufficiency is valued in these sort of communities for a reason, it is a self preservation mechanism.  See some of the links in my signature (specifically, How To Ask Questions, beware help vampires) to get a general sense.  Ask yourself honestly, who is more valuable to the long term sustainability of a community: those very few people who take their own personal time to reply and help others, or the hundreds of people who come every day asking questions showing they have not bothered to do fundamental research?

 

I am not trying to pick a fight with you, rather to introduce you to sustainable F/LOSS culture.  You seem like an intelligent person, otherwise I wouldn't bother writing all this.

 

 

I don't think you will find an announcement about something so specific.  You will need to do a little more leg work on your own.  But this is the nature of the beast. 

 

Just to emphasize... I did spend a fair amount of time looking specifically for an Armbian build for the P2.  I kinda figured that the hardware between the P1 and P2 couldn't be that different.  So, could a Linux build be that far behind?  It was a futile exercise, so rather than beat my brain (and patients) to death, I thought I would simply ask.  A simple 'no it's not available yet' like mo provided would have been sufficient rather than a lecture.  I have a young son who is in IT and is a wizard at this stuff, and more so is a wizard at finding things on the internet - quickly.  I seem to struggle to get at information, but in time, I usually find it.  But, he landed his first professional job this past spring and moved away a couple weeks ago.  So my local resource is gone now. 

 

As far as linux is concerned, I don't have a lot to offer, since I'm still such a rookie.  I did not do this stuff professionally.  It a hobby, and I learn slowly.  It's site like this, and many others that I can learn from someone else who has already been there and discovered it.  I'm sure Google would have found the 'Announcement page'  had there been any posts related to the P2 + Linux builds, but since it didn't, I continued to look elsewhere.

 

BTW, I too get excited about new releases of SBC hardware.   And maybe this leads to frustration down the road, when a young, or new company doesn't have all the pieces in place - including software - when their product is released.  I know this is the nature of the beast with new products, and the nature of upstarts in our fast-moving, technically related world we're all trying to stay up with.

 

In the future, I will do more homework, until I exhaust all other possibilities before posting.  I follow many, many upstarts and tech sites that routinely provide emails of updates to their products, and new firmware releases or updated to the software.  This is not unheard of.  Even Kickstarter and Indiegogo new companies.

 

Thanks for helping.

[CryBaby]

The wiki vaguely describes a procedure for installing Ubuntu, the images are provided here:

http://en.t-firefly.com/doc/download/94.html

 

My P2 arrived today. Unfortunately I am in another country entirely and will be for about a month, or longer if Covid has its way. So let us know how you get on with it.

[redjr]

2 hours ago, CryBaby said:

The wiki vaguely describes a procedure for installing Ubuntu, the images are provided here:

http://en.t-firefly.com/doc/download/94.html

 

My P2 arrived today. Unfortunately I am in another country entirely and will be for about a month, or longer if Covid has its way. So let us know how you get on with it.

Hi cry,

 

I saw this earlier today when reviewing the Firefly docs on their wiki. (mo provided a link)  I haven't delved into the contents yet, but some other links I found over the weekend, were even more cryptic on getting the SD to boot.  One thing that puzzled me when playing with the P2, was that at a minimum, I thought that if I inserted an SD card without a correct boot image, that the board would just not recognize and basically not boot at all.  Instead, it continued to boot into Station OS, so the user is left to infer that the SD wasn't even recognized!  Interesting.  Other Rock-based boards I have, simply don't boot when a non-recognized distro(or boot info) is inserted.  That signals to me that at least the SD is being read on boot-up, just not recognized.  I guess the P2 is different in it's design characteristics.

 

I did however discover a lot of good information in the P2 user guide with respect to booting from various media.  I still need to investigate further.

 

I'll keep the thread updated as I learn new information.  Good luck getting back to your home country.

[balbes150]

15 часов назад, redjr сказал:

I understand that this is new, so will wait for distros to catch-up with the hardware.  User 150balbes is usually out in front of everyone with his builds, so I'll be following him with interest and any of his news.

To add M2 and P2 support to Armbian,  need to have this equipment available. To date, I do not have this equipment. A Firefly representative promised to send it, but I do not know when this will happen.

 

 

[CryBaby]

Perusing the wiki again I get the impression that booting from the SD card is not something they expect people to do. The instructions are for using it to upgrade the firmware, ie. overwrite the eMMC with a new OS. The images they provide may therefore not be bootable.

 

On the other hand I just noticed an "SD Boot" option in their firmware upgrade tool. You might experiment with that, if you manage to download it.

[redjr]

On 7/13/2021 at 3:14 AM, balbes150 said:

To add M2 and P2 support to Armbian,  need to have this equipment available. To date, I do not have this equipment. A Firefly representative promised to send it, but I do not know when this will happen.

 

 

Many thanks balbes.  Hope Firefly with send you an P2 soon for you to work with.

[redjr]

20 hours ago, CryBaby said:

Perusing the wiki again I get the impression that booting from the SD card is not something they expect people to do. The instructions are for using it to upgrade the firmware, ie. overwrite the eMMC with a new OS. The images they provide may therefore not be bootable.

 

On the other hand I just noticed an "SD Boot" option in their firmware upgrade tool. You might experiment with that, if you manage to download it.

Like you said, according to their documentation, it would seem there;s a way to build an SD card image and have it boot.  However, I do find their docs rather vague, or just vague enough for someone like myself as to add to confusion rather than clarifying it.  In my mind, the firmware on an SBC is something different than the OS.  To upgrade the firmware you generally use a .bin file.  To upgrade/replace the OS, you generally use a .img file.  There is also another component used on SBCs called U-Boot.  I've been reading a bit about u-boot, but it is not clear(to me), how you easily access it via the P2.

 

Per the Firefly's vague instructions, I did use their SD Firmware Tool to burn a Ubuntu image to an SD card.  I don't think this does anything more than simply using Balena Etcher to do the same thing.  I then inserted the SD and it was not read.  Station OS started to boot and initialize like normal.  As was stated in an earlier post in this thread, it seems the P2 boot process is 'problematic'.  Stating it should be CPU > SD > eMMC.  If there's a way to clear the eMMC of Station OS(which I'm sure there is), then perhaps the SD card would be read and boot into Linux/Ubuntu 18.04.  But in so doing are you also clearing out parts of the firmware, drivers, etc?  I don't want to be too adventurous of fear of bricking this thing!

 

They also show screen shots of a tool labeled, RKDevTool, but it is not shown on their site as an available download.  They then go on to describe how to use it to upgrade a .img file.  Sigh.

 

WIth Station OS running you simply can't SSH into the system and get to the /root of Linux. And I don't see a way within Station OS, to drop down to the LInux level.  All the other instructions in their 'user manual' assume you can get to Linux and run instructions.  I can't see a way to do that yet, or have not yet discovered how to access and use u-boot.

 

 

Edited July 14, 2021 by redjr
clarity

[CryBaby]

23 hours ago, redjr said:

I've been reading a bit about u-boot, but it is not clear(to me), how you easily access it via the P2.

Usually u-boot will pause briefly to allow you to interrupt it by hitting Enter or Ctrl-C (either on the console or serial terminal). You then get a command line. The boot order will be set in an 'environment variable' which you can view, edit and save. Useful commands are printenv, setenv, saveenv and help. The most interesting environment variable is bootcmd which you probably want to change to 'sdcard'. I think you are specifying a function here rather than a device so it will depend on what functions are available.

 

On 7/14/2021 at 8:25 AM, redjr said:

If there's a way to clear the eMMC of Station OS(which I'm sure there is), then perhaps the SD card would be read and boot into Linux/Ubuntu 18.04.  But in so doing are you also clearing out parts of the firmware, drivers, etc?  I don't want to be too adventurous of fear of bricking this thing!

I would not assume that there is a boot order by default. If not then an empty eMMC might just mean no boot. It might even mean no u-boot.

 

On 7/14/2021 at 8:25 AM, redjr said:

WIth Station OS running you simply can't SSH into the system and get to the /root of Linux. And I don't see a way within Station OS, to drop down to the LInux level.

I believe Station OS is a version of Android. If there is an app store maybe you can install an ssh server or terminal program from there. Alternatively, you may be able to get a shell using ADB from your PC.

[redjr]

6 hours ago, CryBaby said:

Usually u-boot will pause briefly to allow you to interrupt it by hitting Enter or Ctrl-C (either on the console or serial terminal). You then get a command line. The boot order will be set in an 'environment variable' which you can view, edit and save. Useful commands are printenv, setenv, saveenv and help. The most interesting environment variable is bootcmd which you probably want to change to 'sdcard'. I think you are specifying a function here rather than a device so it will depend on what functions are available.

 

I would not assume that there is a boot order by default. If not then an empty eMMC might just mean no boot. It might even mean no u-boot.

 

I believe Station OS is a version of Android. If there is an app store maybe you can install an ssh server or terminal program from there. Alternatively, you may be able to get a shell using ADB from your PC.

Thanks for these tips.  At some point, I'm going to try using the serial terminal access and interrupting the normal boot process as you say - and see what I can do.  This may require the assistance of my son. 

[redjr]

I've had some degree of success.  I've been able to see the normal boot via a serial connection.  Not sure what I'm looking at, but first things first!  It's late here tonight, so will try again tomorrow and see if I can interrupt the boot process and get to U-Boot.  Since it booted all the way tonight, I was left at $ console prompt.  No Linux commands worked, so I'm not sure if I was sitting at the root of Station OS, or in U-Boot.

[balbes150]

ver 20210721 kernel 5.10.52 \ 5.12.19

[Winguo]

Hey friends,

We recommend you all to boot other systems from SD card.

We will publish tutorials continuously.

Please stay tuned!

Thank you for all your support!

[redjr]

3 hours ago, Winguo said:

Hey friends,

We recommend you all to boot other systems from SD card.

We will publish tutorials continuously.

Please stay tuned!

Thank you for all your support!

Thanks for the update.