[NanoPi NEO 3] Stuck at Locales genarate - Armbian Focal 5.9.10

[JustHmmmm]

Hi I try ro install and use Armbian on my NanoPi NEO 3. But when I do a first boot, I stuck at Generate Locale step. How can I fix it? Thank you very much.

 

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[Igor]

1 hour ago, JustHmmmm said:

I think my problem is  auto locales generate shell script.

Indeed. Fixed https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/2407

Coming out with a bug fix release 

 

[Igor]

2 hours ago, JustHmmmm said:

I stuck at Generate Locale step. How can I fix it? Thank you very much.

- how long did you wait?

- was this the one and only boot?
- how old / fast is your SD card? In case its some old one, this "generating locales" takes time.

[JustHmmmm]

21 hours ago, Igor said:

- how long did you wait?

- was this the one and only boot?
- how old / fast is your SD card? In case its some old one, this "generating locales" takes time.

- I wait over 1 hour.

- It my first boot with armbian

- My SD card is new one. I used DietPi and FriendlyElecWRT before move to armbian.

 

I think my problem is  auto locales generate shell script.

[lam96pt]

I think, i have a sulution. I do not connect ethernet at first boot and it work

 

[Werner]

3 minutes ago, lam96pt said:

I think, i have a sulution. I do not connect ethernet at first boot and it work

 

This shall not happen either with or without having ethernet present at first boot

[HANAX]

On 12/3/2020 at 5:58 PM, Igor said:

Indeed. Fixed https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/2407

Coming out with a bug fix release 

 

Still have same problem, nothing after 90 minutes.

It is a first boot and connecting via ssh. I set a new root password and then stuck.

Is there any other workaround? Obviously when using ssh disconnecting ethernet is not an option for me. Maybe editing some config file on sdcard?

Thanks.

[Igor]

27 minutes ago, HANAX said:

Still have same problem, nothing after 90 minutes.

Have you check if board perhaps hanged? Or is your SD card some old and slow? That would explain. Generating locales takes some time - several minutes on slow sd card - several seconds on a modern / decent hardware. If your SD card is (partially) broken, it's better that it hangs here.

 

We are redesigning this, but lack of resources/help means that it will take some time

https://github.com/armbian/build/issues/2398

[HANAX]

Thanks for response. In fact that was my third attempt reflashing and rebooting, so with high probability I have eliminated the HW cause.

Based on that issue 2398 I commented out some lines regarding locale settings in /usr/lib/armbian/armbian-firstlogin and now it finished OK.

Maybe the problem is that "Genrating locales" needs variable ${LOCALES}, however in my instance it is empty (as you can see in the screenshot)

[Igor]

This line should mitigate this problem - is it present?

https://github.com/armbian/build/blob/master/packages/bsp/common/usr/lib/armbian/armbian-firstlogin#L88

Perhaps we should add another IF to skip creation if LOCALES are undetermined. Or they need to be determined in some other way. If you have some know-how, welcome to research what we should do here. Try steps one by one and see which one doesn't provide expected data ... 

[HANAX]

14 minutes ago, Igor said:

This line should mitigate this problem - is it present?

 

Yes, that line was in file at first run and also I left it uncommented. So there is another problem. I will try to figure out what is expected and what my system returns. If you have some hints feel free to write them 

[Igor]

https://github.com/armbian/build/blob/master/packages/bsp/common/usr/lib/armbian/armbian-firstlogin#L70-L109

Run those things by hand and see which VARIABLE is not getting expected data. Locales are determined from here /usr/share/i18n/locales/ and perhaps in that files we have an error or solved differently for your country. Don't know. Best is to resolve it for your location, to understand why it returns empty and also to mitigate this problem - skip locales creation if we have an empty value.

[HANAX]

OK, I found the problem. The territory in /usr/share/i18n/locales/sk_SK is "Slovakia", but the state (variable $STATE) from ipwhois.app service is "Slovak Republic". So no match.

I think that this may be a problem for several other countries as well.

I wonder if this is the good approach. For example I like to set my machines in slovak language but with US keyboard. At least this should be optional, or guided. Maybe not automatic but after password change print message something like: "If you want to automatically set locale based on your IP address, run [command]". Also I really do not like the idea of call some web service without prior notice to user...

 

Anyway it seems that that "IF to skip creation if LOCALES are undetermined" is something that will help and I would definitely add it if it was up to me.

[Igor]

1 hour ago, HANAX said:

OK, I found the problem. The territory in /usr/share/i18n/locales/sk_SK is "Slovakia", but the state (variable $STATE) from ipwhois.app service is "Slovak Republic". So no match.

I think that this may be a problem for several other countries as well.

I wonder if this is the good approach.

Agree. Lets try this way https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/2561/files

 

1 hour ago, HANAX said:

Maybe not automatic but after password change print message something like: "If you want to automatically set locale based on your IP address, run [command]". Also I really do not like the idea of call some web service without prior notice to user...

 

I also don't like that device is calling somewhere for no reason. Well, here is a practical reason and lets assume no bad thing is happening. We can perhaps build a proxy for that some day. But that would be yet another infrastructure costs ...

 

1 hour ago, HANAX said:

if LOCALES are undetermined

This should also be covered now and proposed implementation works for me, you and @JustHmmmm