Release Announcement: TWO New, Community Unofficial Armbian MAINLINE Desktop Images for Khadas VIM3 Pro

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

I just released Armbian Focal Desktop MAINLINE images for Khadas VIM3 Pro. These are individually, pure arm64 and hybrid arm64/armhf variations.

Thanks go to @lanefu for key pointers in understanding how to "re-arm" the firstboot and firstboot-config mechanism in current-state Armbian.

 

Please offer feedback and experiences if you test these. The images are currently hand-built, but if enough interest is generated, and time permitting, I will commit to a git fork for an unsupported standard building process.

 

 

I have more detail on the distribution site at archive.org, and in the corresponding posts to the Khadas forums:

 

armhf Hybrid

LightDM will NOT work as display manager in this configuration, and I've chromed-up lxdm as a replacement. Autologin may be a work still in progress.

• Archive.org: Armbian 21.02.3 MAINLINE Image For Khadas VIM3 Pro - 32-bit Userspace - Ubuntu Focal Xfce Desktop
• Forums.khadas.com: Community Armbian 21.02.3 MAINLINE Image For Khadas VIM3 Pro With 32-bit Userspace

 

arm64 Native

UPDATED INFO

HDMI audio out is non-functional with the 64-bit userspace, which is true for all Debian and Ubuntu systems, including Khadas Fenix builds.
This capability may be a user's deciding factor in chosing between builds.
With further testing, HDMI AUDIO NOW WORKS in arm64 image build!

• Archive.org: Armbian 21.02.3 MAINLINE Image For Khadas VIM3 Pro - arm64 - Ubuntu Focal Xfce Desktop
• Forums.khadas.com: Community Armbian 21.02.3 MAINLINE Image For Khadas VIM3 Pro arm64 Native

 

[tparys]

I'm not familiar with these boards at all, but I suspect there'd be some interest in getting support in the build system.

 

Have you considered seeing trying your hand at putting a PR to make automated builds? It's not too much work.

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

3 minutes ago, tparys said:

I'm not familiar with these boards at all, but I suspect there'd be some interest in getting support in the build system.

 

Have you considered seeing trying your hand at putting a PR to make automated builds? It's not too much work.

Thanks, that's my next step here, I think.
There was a fair amount of dispute in the Khadas forums a while back, about uBoot on the Khadas boards. I need to do more testing with an Armbian mainline uBoot, if nothing else. Right now, I cheat with the Khadas uboot which I built as a .deb with their Fenix tool. I get a second VIM3 in a couple more weeks, and this will be practical then.

 

The VIM3 is a smoking hot SBC. A little pricey, and some storage I/O tradeoffs vs other considerations, but it's a rocket. Not everyone has use for the onboard NPU, which must be a part of the price differential and the Odroid N2+. Because it is so Android-friendly, especially with Khadas uBoot and Amlogic USB imaging, it looks a bit like a TV box on steroids. It's a lot more than that. Until a Rock Quartz shows up, this is many ways the board to beat for desktop use.

I know you probably have seen NicoD's review from a couple years back:

 

[hexdump]

@Jeremiah Cornelius - for your lightdm issue, maybe give the slick greeter for lightdm a try - it fixed my problems with non working lightdm on 32bit arm - might be worth a try

 

best wishes and good luck - hexdump

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

8 hours ago, hexdump said:

@Jeremiah Cornelius - for your lightdm issue, maybe give the slick greeter for lightdm a try - it fixed my problems with non working lightdm on 32bit arm - might be worth a try

 

best wishes and good luck - hexdump

Thanks for the great suggestion. If it means a diff in a config file, versus a fork in the Armbian script library, it's a very good trade-off!

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

22 hours ago, Jeremiah Cornelius said:

arm64 Native

 

UPDATED INFO

HDMI audio out is non-functional with the 64-bit userspace, which is true for all Debian and Ubuntu systems, including Khadas Fenix builds.
This capability may be a user's deciding factor in chosing between builds.
With further testing, HDMI AUDIO NOW WORKS in arm64 image build!

 

 

Heads up! jtremblant of the TwisterOS project, and a great systems guy, just informed me that HDMI audio output now works out-of-the-box for pure arm64 builds!
This was not true of earlier test builds. I suspect that I did not track a change, copying /var/lib/alsa/asound.state from my armhf build. These correct settings for ALSA mixer seem to be a likely solution.

Users of Fenix Ubuntu on VIM3 may want to verify if this solves audio issues, along with my other configuration details found here:
https://forum.khadas.com/t/twister-os-armbian-2-01-on-vim3-gl-acceleration-fan-and-audio-full-howto-and-working-image-dl/11775
 

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— Jeremiah

[rpardini]

Hey @Jeremiah Cornelius great stuff.

I've been working on removing the ODROID-specific cruft from the G12B family in armbian/build.

That is almost done now (some damned patches are still in the way) so I could start work on adding VIM3 officially.

Are you on Armbian's Discord? Catch me there in #amlogic as 'rpardini'

We could surely benefit from each other's work (and I from the fact you have a VIM3 to test on ;-) 

Let me know

 

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

2 minutes ago, rpardini said:

Hey @Jeremiah Cornelius great stuff.

I've been working on removing the ODROID-specific cruft from the G12B family in armbian/build.

That is almost done now (some damned patches are still in the way) so I could start work on adding VIM3 officially.

Are you on Armbian's Discord? Catch me there in #amlogic as 'rpardini'

We could surely benefit from each other's work (and I from the fact you have a VIM3 to test on ;-) 

Let me know

 

I'm very glad to help here! It makes me glad to hear of your progress.

I do have TWO VIM3 Pros for testing, LOL.

My current limitation is I will be in UK til Aug 3, and while vacationing, haven't brought any of my boards!

[rpardini]

Yeah, don't bring boards on vacation is a decent policy, though often violated I hear.

 

I realized after posting that we're on a tight schedule (Armbian 21.08 release) so I jumped the gun and sent a very basic PR, but is 100% untested.

It's Armbian's default meson64 kernel, mainline u-boot 2021.04 with vim3 default config, and the a311d DTB from mainline kernel, and that's it.

It could benefit from your work (asound file, any gpu/X11 settings, etc) but should otherwise be very similar to the N2 image I understand you based off.

If it boots, it's a win already.

 

Enjoy your vacations!

 

 

[rpardini]

@Jeremiah Cornelius official RC builds (21.08_1) are up at https://www.armbian.com/khadas-vim3/

 

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

On 8/31/2021 at 9:06 AM, rpardini said:

@Jeremiah Cornelius official RC builds (21.08_1) are up at https://www.armbian.com/khadas-vim3/

 

This is fantastic. I'm coming off sabbatical now, and will be checking this out!

[Oraclefire]

I recently installed the 21.08_1 build and it works fine until an update/upgrade cycle is run, then it will boot and a few minutes after logging into the system the screen will go blank.  No errors seem to be reported prior to the screen blanking and the heartbeat light continues to flash but no signal is present on the HDMI port. Has anyone seen this?

[rvmn]

Same problem here. The display driver seems to be the cause, it is solved by plugging the hdmi cable out and in so its definitely graphics related.

 

Does someone know to go about reverting back the gpu driver, or would freezing the kernel be enough?

[TRS-80]

On 10/11/2021 at 2:20 PM, Oraclefire said:

update/upgrade cycle

 

You mean regular upgrade, or dist-upgrade?  The latter is not supported to my knowledge.

 

Until rpardini or JC re-appear, if you guys find any solution please share it in this thread or even better submit a PR!

[rvmn]

I have found out it's not related directly to the Panfrost driver, but some other display problem. I have tried the latest Panfrost (22.0) on both hirsute and focal and on focal it works perfectly fine but on hirsute it keeps giving refreshes to a low resolution.

 

I now use focal xfce, using a previous Armbian version (21.05) found in the archives: https://armbian.systemonachip.net/archive/khadas-vim3/archive/

 

I upgraded xfce to 4.16 (has fractional scaling) and everyrthing else using the following commands:

 

sudo apt install ca-certificates

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xubuntu-dev/staging

sudo apt upgrade

sudo apt install xfce4-helpers xfce4-settings xfce4-panel

 

The last command was needed because it didnt update the settings panel for some reason which is a bit sorry cause it shows the new scaling options only with the new version.

 

Hope this might help others with problems

[rvmn]

EDIT:

After a few days the focal xfce gave me the blank display bug as well

 

I have tried now extensively tested two other DE's: gnome and Cinnamon.

 

Gnome:  found that the bug is totally not existant on Gnome (3.36), have run it for a week or so without any burp. Only ting I dislike is that is a bit heavy feeling, not a ssmooth running as XFCE or Cinnamon

Cinnamon: the bug does happen here sometimes, BUT it only takes a 1-2 second until it shows the screen again WITH the chosen resolution. Can live with that as it's a smooth experience and has lot of handy features.

Budgie: I haven't tested it because it is not as feature rich as other DE's in my opinion

 

BTW hirsute works fine, it's really the Panfrost driver that causes the issue and the DE that copes with it smartly or not

BTW2 i recommend using the oibaf/graphics-drivers ppa for the newest drivers, they do have less bugginess

BTW3 In case your system does bug to a lower resolution everytime if have found you can try setting the default resolution by setting it in /etc/X11/xorg.conf by copying a mode from cvt:

cvt 1920 1080 60  # specify your width height of resolution and refresh rate (60Hz = usually ok)

 

then copy the output, and paste it into the second last line in the following text blob inside a text editor, then copy all this into the bottom of /etc/X11/xorg.conf (open it in a text editor f.e. sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf )

 

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier "dummy_monitor"
        HorizSync 28.0-80.0
        VertRefresh 48.0-75.0
        Modeline XXX # replace this line here with cvt output
EndSection