Rock64 official support

[f2hex]

Hi,

I have a simple question: we need to buy some ARM 64 boards and we would like to select the Rock64 (2G and 4G) - I saw that now Rock64 is CSC (community only supported). Being our priority to use Armbian OS on the boards, does this means that we could not see Armbian no more supported (no upgrades) in the next future?

 

Thanks

Franco

[Igor]

3 hours ago, f2he said:

I have a simple question

 

Choose among (supported) boards. We drop support for a reason. 

 

3 hours ago, f2he said:

Being our priority to use Armbian OS on the boards

 

If you want support, consider supporting Armbian not picking up cheap hardware and asking us to sponsor support for you.

[f2hex]

Thanks Igor - I fully understand.
I use Armbian for personal projects and I would like to contribute in some way - as I do not have so much time to spend as a contributor I will subscribe as donator until I can.

[lanefu]

On 10/27/2020 at 9:32 AM, f2he said:

Hi,

I have a simple question: we need to buy some ARM 64 boards and we would like to select the Rock64 (2G and 4G) - I saw that now Rock64 is CSC (community only supported). Being our priority to use Armbian OS on the boards, does this means that we could not see Armbian no more supported (no upgrades) in the next future?

 

Thanks

Franco

 

What's your use case, maybe I can suggest some alternative SBCs

[f2hex]

36 minutes ago, lanefu said:

 

What's your use case, maybe I can suggest some alternative SBCs

 

Today I run a k3s cluster with different boards: 5 Orange Pi PC2, 2 Rock64 (2G and 4G), a NAS  with a Rock64 2G, 1 Jetson TX1, 1 Jetson Nano.

I have also other board in use: 1 Pine64,  1 Rasp Pi4, 1Rasp Pi 3, 4 Orange Pi Zero (H2 and H5) and an old Odroid XU3 Lite and 1 Odroid HC2.

I use Armbian on all of these where it is available. The Rasp Pi boards and the . All those boards were bought over the time from 2011 when I started with a Bifferboard and later the BeagleBoard.

On the cluster I run several services (from flight feeders to meteo station services, home automation and video surveillance and a STORJ node on the HC2.

The experience so far was quite good (thanks also to Armbian) especially with the Odroid HC2, the Rock64 and the Pine64. The Orange Pi (both PC2 and Zero) are more susceptible to HW problems; I had more PC2, 3 of them stopped working and now are broken but I can expect that being very cheap, so the manufacturing quality is quite low.

I would like to replace gradually the Orange Pi PC2 with a board that is more reliable and it seemed so far that the quality/price of the Rock64 has been quite good but it in the end it is more important to have a good OS on top of them. Ideally that "mighty" board should have good performance, low cost and Armbian well integrated with it. Minimum requirement is at least 4 core, 1 USB3 or SATA port and 2G of RAM. I do not like the Rasp Pi (due mainly to the software). 

I do not know the reason of change of support for the Rock64 and so I asked about that.; considering the situation myself and another colleague were looking also to alternatives like the Odroid C4.

[Igor]

1 hour ago, f2he said:

I do not know the reason of change of support for the Rock64

 

We dropped Rock64 for quality / stability issues. You can do some forum search to find original topics that lead to that decision. Its pointless to waste so much time for the board that is made poor, three different variants are floating out in the wild which are impossible to support all at the same time. You have to tell users - "your version is X, throw it away" ... why should we take the burden of telling you bad news. Why? They also use different power connector which is yet another annoying problem. Vendor provides no backing for the time we waste in bulk - for its constantly complaining clients. We can't sort out this situation and why should we? There are other boards and vendors that makes better hardware, have better attitude and helps us killing the costs. We have too many problems without trying to do the impossible - fix design failures / cheap design with software fixes and 100% on our costs.  Rock64 looks nice on paper and if you are lucky - we don't need to play in such game - you have variant that works reasonable well. But it is certainly not better then any H5 board in term of stability. According to my experiences, contrary.

 

It is strange that you have troubles with PC2. H5 boards are in general pretty robust and reliable and Orangepi vendor has production on respectable level - its a serious company and ODM for other hw vendor / resellers. Also we - as community - have very good coverage Allwinner hardware.

 

2 hours ago, f2he said:

alternatives like the Odroid C4.

 

Too recent and known to be critically unstable at this point.

 

17 hours ago, f2he said:

I use Armbian for personal projects and I would like to contribute in some way - as I do not have so much time to spend as a contributor I will subscribe as donator until I can.

Thank you! I wish everyone would give something, proper attitude at extreme minimum, when asking for help! We - in everyday life - also have to pay or give something back if we asks for help, don't we?

[f2hex]

6 hours ago, Igor said:

 

We dropped Rock64 for quality / stability issues. You can do some forum search to find original topics that lead to that decision. Its pointless to waste so much time for the board that is made poor, three different variants are floating out in the wild which are impossible to support all at the same time. You have to tell users - "your version is X, throw it away" ... why should we take the burden of telling you bad news. Why? They also use different power connector which is yet another annoying problem. Vendor provides no backing for the time we waste in bulk - for its constantly complaining clients. We can't sort out this situation and why should we? There are other boards and vendors that makes better hardware, have better attitude and helps us killing the costs. We have too many problems without trying to do the impossible - fix design failures / cheap design with software fixes and 100% on our costs.  Rock64 looks nice on paper and if you are lucky - we don't need to play in such game - you have variant that works reasonable well. But it is certainly not better then any H5 board in term of stability. According to my experiences, contrary.

 

It is strange that you have troubles with PC2. H5 boards are in general pretty robust and reliable and Orangepi vendor has production on respectable level - its a serious company and ODM for other hw vendor / resellers. Also we - as community - have very good coverage Allwinner hardware.

 

 

Too recent and known to be critically unstable at this point.

 

Thank you! I wish everyone would give something, proper attitude at extreme minimum, when asking for help! We - in everyday life - also have to pay or give something back if we asks for help, don't we?

Absolutely, I respect and praise you Igor for the incredible work you have done together with the Armbian team.

[kehrnal]

I'm afraid I'm coming to this rather late, but I have had a Rock64 for about 2.5 years running Stretch and I want to upgrade.  After seeing that this board is listed as CSC, I found this thread and was wondering what exactly CSC means?  When did the board become CSC?  Is there a particular build I should stick to for upgrade (such as just doing a modest upgrade to Buster)?

 

As I write this, I'm wondering if the reason that I haven't been able to update some software recently via CL is because it is listed as CSC?  This is the first time I've had hardware become unsupported, so I'm not certain what to do.

 

Thanks kindly.

[Werner]

3 hours ago, kehrnal said:

what exactly CSC means?

Community Supported Chip. Armbian does not do active development for this board nor does it assist if users run into issues. Depending on kernel branch it might or might not receive updates here and there but they are untested and if they break something, bad luck. Enhancements from the community via PR surely will be accepted.

You can also volunteer to take over maintainership for your board: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/19172-do-you-like-to-see-your-favorite-board-supported/#comment-130484

 

3 hours ago, kehrnal said:

I haven't been able to update some software recently via CL

Maybe Debian simply ended support for Stretch? Which is now old-old-stable?

[kehrnal]

Thanks for the help here.  I'd love to assist with being a maintainer, but I'm afraid I'm more of a user/hobbyist than a problem solver in this field.

[qm3ster]

One thing I found particularly concerning is that https://armbian.hosthatch.com/archive/rock64/archive/ goes up to `Armbian_21.02.3_Rock64_buster_current_5.10.21.i..> 09-Mar-2021 11:32`

while I previously, on `26-Aug-2021` downloaded `Armbian_21.08.1_Rock64_buster_current_5.10.60.img.xz`

Are the newer images gone?

[Igor]

4 hours ago, qm3ster said:

Are the newer images gone?

No, they are here:

 

https://imola.armbian.com/dl/rock64/archive/

All changes regarding new support rules are WIP since we lack people, time and better organisation. There are mistakes here and there. Also we haven't been able to speak with all people that want to help. And after they join, we need to work overtime on overtime to support them.  Even we try to keep this project under control its still huge. And expensive - end users wishes and demands (which creates stress and just more damages with negative effect on help) never stops  

 

If you can't find image you need - build one. https://docs.armbian.com/Developer-Guide_Build-Preparation/

 

@kehrnal Maintainer is not a technical demanding role:

 

[qm3ster]

For anyone reading this in the future, https://imola.armbian.com/dl/archive/rock64/ is the url.
Everything up to and including the version I had was also added to https://armbian.hosthatch.com/archive/rock64/archive/.
But the new place even has Armbian_21.08.1_Rock64_bullseye_current_5.10.60 !!!
Truly we are living in the blessedest of times!

[NicoD]

2 hours ago, qm3ster said:

For anyone reading this in the future, https://imola.armbian.com/dl/rock64/archive/ is 404 and that is intentional.

https://imola.armbian.com/archive/rock64/  ???

[qm3ster]

Damn, that's crazy! There's Armbian_21.08.1_Rock64_bullseye_current_5.10.60 in there!
Who coulda thunk this?!