Do you like to see your favorite board supported?

Igor · October 28, 2021

Recently we announced that we are going to drop support for bulk of boards to secure better quality for those that will remain. But which will remain? Those who will have at least one dedicated maintainer - anyone can become one.

Check new "Armbian standard" support policy:

Quote

Benefits provided for a Supported SBC

Armbian will publish and distribute "stable" CLI images through its mirror network

Armbian will publish and distribute "periodic / nightly" CLI and Desktop images

Armbian will work with SBC maintainer to assure compatiblity within the Armbian Build System

Armbian will provide the team's unique expertise to assist maintainer with general challenges

Best-effort compensation will be provided to maintainer from the "Armbian Community Fund"

Criteria for Supported

For an SBC to be considered supported:

A named individual as "maintainer" along with GitHub ID must be clearly identifed in the Board Configuration File

A named individual must commit to providing "Best Effort" support for their SBC on the Armbian forums

Maintainer must participate in the Release Process

Maintainer must sign-off that device has been tested, is stable, and ready for release during release process.

Maintainer must have physical access to the SBC they're supporting

Additional Caveats:

Supported is not applied to a "family" or group of related SBCs. It is per SBC.

A maintainer can support multiple devices, but must satisfy all requirements above, per SBC.

Any individual can be a maintainer for a standard support SBC

Missed released will result in immediate forfeit of "Armbian Supported" status and demotion to CSC status unless Armbian team grants exemption.

Armbian team took over what was possible while the remaining boards, which won't get a maintainer by December 1st, will loose support status and will be removed from the download pages.

https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/3148

Apply and help

Apply for maintainership by contacting @yang or @Werner

seclorum · November 2, 2021

I'd be happy to assist with Pinebook Pro maintenance. github.com/seclorum

yang · November 2, 2021

@seclorum Welcome and thank you. I have added you on the list of maintainers.

Ryse · November 12, 2021

On 10/28/2021 at 2:01 PM, Igor said:

Recently we announced that we are going to drop support for bulk of boards to secure better quality for those that will remain. But which will remain? Those who will have at least one dedicated maintainer - anyone can become one.

Check new "Armbian standard" support policy:

Armbian team took over what was possible while the remaining boards, which won't get a maintainer by December 1st, will loose support status and will be removed from the download pages.

https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/3148

Apply and help

Apply for maintainership by contacting @yang or @Werner

Hi, would it be possible to install Armbian on a zte zxv10 b866v2 device?

Werner · November 12, 2021

22 minutes ago, Ryse said:

Hi, would it be possible to install Armbian on a zte zxv10 b866v2 device?

No.

https://forum.armbian.com/clubs/1-tv-boxes/

catalinii · November 14, 2021

Radxa rock-3a github.com/catalinii

Helmut · December 7, 2021

I understand that boards without maintainer must be dropped. But, the announcement leaves me somewhat puzzled. I would like to learn which boards need new maintainers. The pull request is not really answering this. Do we have a list of boards with current and missing maintainers? Maybe post a link to it here. This could help people to get involved.

Werner · December 7, 2021

At the moment these boards have no maintainer:

Spoiler

bananapim64

cubieboard

cubietruck

khadas-edge

khadas-vim1

khadas-vim2

khadas-vim3l

lime2

nanopi-r1

nanopi-r2s

nanopiair

nanopiduo

nanopiduo2

nanopik1plus

nanopineo

nanopineo2

nanopineo2black

nanopineo3

nanopineo4

nanopineocore2

nanopineoplus2

odroidc4

orangepi-r1

orangepi-r1plus

orangepi-rk3399

orangepi2

orangepi3

orangepilite

orangepilite2

orangepione

orangepioneplus

orangepipc

orangepipc2

orangepipcplus

orangepiplus

orangepiplus2e

orangepizeroplus2-h3

orangepizeroplus2-h5

pineh64-b

raxda-n10

rockpi-4a

rockpi-4b

rockpi-4c

rockpi-e

rockpi-s

rockpro64

teres-a64

tritium-h3

tritium-h5

udoo

LucasM · December 9, 2021

Hi thanks for the excellent job with armbian. I don't have much experience but I want to learn and colaborate as board maintainer.

My board is an orangepipc.

github: https://github.com/lbmendes

TRS-80 · December 9, 2021

On 12/7/2021 at 5:11 PM, Helmut said:

I would like to learn which boards need new maintainers. The pull request is not really answering this. Do we have a list of boards with current and missing maintainers? Maybe post a link to it here. This could help people to get involved.

You raise a valid point of course. Maybe I can shed some light. We have some internal document we have been updating informally (I assume this is where Werner copied latest update from), as everything is still in flux. I would say that document is authoritative, as opposed to the PR which you found which is also WIP. There have also been some discussions in IRC, private emails and messages, etc...

Anyway, I am not sure if we need to continue to keep this document private or maybe we should just publish it?

In any case, welcome newfrens, we are very glad for the help!

Our IRC is fairly active, please stop by and say hello and we will be happy to get you acclimated to the project! There is even #armbian-onboarding specifically for this purpose (or you may simply stop by main #armbian channel). Cheers!

schwar3kat · December 14, 2021

Is there a tutorial on how to configure and maintain Armbian for a new board. I have been through a large amount of documentation on this site and although I can compile and patch an existing board, I wouldn't have a clue about how to start with a new one.

For example, I have an OrangePi R1 plus LTS on order. It's not supported. In the OrangePi website Shenzhen Xunlong Software resources there is an Ubuntu build with a relatively new Kernel. Looking in the build I see a dedicated dtb overlay.

In the vendors build Rockchip overlay folder, I find a readme with the following: "This document describes overlays provided in the kernel packages
For generic Armbian overlays documentation please see https://docs.armbian.com/User-Guide_Allwinner_overlays/".

This sort of gives me hope that there might be some connection with Armbian.

One question is can I use the vendors dtb in an Armbian build?

What would I need to do to maintain such a build. There is scattered information, but nothing step by step.

Igor · December 16, 2021

On 12/14/2021 at 8:14 AM, Elektrický said:

Is there a tutorial on how to configure and maintain Armbian for a new board. I have been through a large amount of documentation on this site and although I can compile and patch an existing board, I wouldn't have a clue about how to start with a new one.

We never get to the stage to have a good manual for that since things we changing so much and since we have plan to refactor all this. To make it more simple.

Those examples can help (from simple to complex)
https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/3352

https://github.com/armbian/build/commit/f60920a2b776b544c9e37cddec8d495d22e2867c

https://github.com/armbian/build/commit/3c4b69650e9f98edbf7f0a934add1dd19eb14772

On 12/14/2021 at 8:14 AM, Elektrický said:

OrangePi R1 plus LTS

Its almost identical to Nanopi R2S. This can also help.

schwar3kat · December 16, 2021

17 minutes ago, Igor said:

Those examples can help (from simple to complex)

Thanks for the examples. I will have a look at the Nanopi R2S. I can see that I might have a very steep learning curve ahead.
I understand to some degree what the Git merges are about, and the simple one seems okay, but getting to that point to do a merge is not all that clear to me.

I can see that there is some obvious config, but I don't even know enough about the components of a build to make a list of things that need to be configured or checked for compatibility. This is for me the biggest hurdle.

I will see how I go when the board arrives maybe it will be easier than it appears. Perhaps things will become clearer when I have something to test.

schwar3kat · December 16, 2021

1 hour ago, Igor said:

Its almost identical to Nanopi R2S. This can also help.

I had a look at the Nanopi R2S.
I note that it has a different PHY, I wouldn't know whether this significant or not, but I will have a look at the build.

Igor · December 16, 2021

2 minutes ago, Elektrický said:

I note that it has a different PHY, I wouldn't know whether this significant or not, but I will have a look at the build.

I almost forgot. There is also an R2C which has different PHY.
https://github.com/armbian/build/commit/687c3639183e23e06406739af1684fdeb3efa454

schwar3kat · December 16, 2021

6 hours ago, Igor said:

I almost forgot. There is also an R2C which has different PHY.

That's very interesting and very useful. :thumbup: Thank you.

The PHYs seem similar YT8521S vs YT8531C.

I see in the Git patch, a number of instances of rk3328-orangepi-r1-plus which is similar to the Nanopi R2S as if rickliu2000 is treating it as part of a family of boards. How can I find out if rickliu2000 is the maintainer of these boards?

Perhaps there may be an opportunity for collaborating to include the rk3328-orangepi-r1-plus-LTS in the family.

Igor · December 16, 2021

7 minutes ago, Elektrický said:

How can I find out if rickliu2000 is the maintainer of these boards?

@yang is maintaining a list of people that stands up as official board maintainer. AFAIK he is not on the list. He probably don't know that we have change policy of board support since we are just starting to enforce this policy.

schwar3kat · December 16, 2021

51 minutes ago, Igor said:

@yang is maintaining a list of people that stands up as official board maintainer. AFAIK he is not on the list. He probably don't know that we have change policy of board support since we are just starting to enforce this policy.

Thanks for the info. I may try to make contact with him.

teknoid · January 21, 2022

Hi community,

I successfully set up 22.02 on a nanopineoplus2. Building and installation went fine. Some minor things I noticed:

- zram on /var/log was full at some time

- installing kernel headers failed in step "Compiling headers" with a segfault:

scripts/dtc/livetree.c:809:13: internal compiler error: Segmentation fault
809 | static bool any_label_tree(struct dt_info *dti, struct node *node)
| ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~

manually running "make" in /lib/modules/5.15.15-sunxi64/build also failed, but at least I got the dtc compiler compiled.

| \ | |  _ \(_) | \ | | ___  ___   |  _ \| |_   _ ___  |___ \ 
|  \| | |_) | | |  \| |/ _ \/ _ \  | |_) | | | | / __|   __) |
| |\  |  __/| | | |\  |  __/ (_) | |  __/| | |_| \__ \  / __/ 
|_| \_|_|   |_| |_| \_|\___|\___/  |_|   |_|\__,_|___/ |_____|
                                                              
Welcome to Armbian 22.02.0-trunk  with bleeding edge Linux 5.15.15-sunxi64

No end-user support: built from trunk

System load:   2%           	Up time:       5:55	
Memory usage:  12% of 985M   	Zram usage:    1% of 492M   	IP:	       192.168.1.206 192.168.1.207
CPU temp:      37°C           	Usage of /:    79% of 2.0G   	
storage/:      99% of 458G   	storage temp:  22°C           	

Last login: Fri Jan 21 11:05:05 2022 from 192.168.1.253

I would kindly ask you to put the nanopineoplus2 back onto the list of supported boards. You may enter me as maintainer if necessary.

Best regards

Heiko

Werner · January 21, 2022

8 minutes ago, teknoid said:

You may enter me as maintainer if necessary.

Dedicated maintainer with physical access to hardware is mandatory for a board to become supported again. Check https://forum.armbian.com/staffapplications/application/8-single-board-computer-maintainer/

teknoid · January 21, 2022

vor 53 Minuten schrieb Werner:

Dedicated maintainer with physical access to hardware is mandatory for a board to become supported again. Check https://forum.armbian.com/staffapplications/application/8-single-board-computer-maintainer/

Hi Werner,

oh yes, I definitively have access. I run two of these boards in my DACs for several years now:

https://github.com/teknoid/dac/blob/master/pics/sabre18-top.jpg

yang · January 23, 2022

Hello@teknoid, I have sent you a message, regarding your maintainership.

TRS-80 · January 29, 2022

Sorry for short notice, but if any of you guys see this in time please join release meeting in a few hours:

You are welcome to come and just see how things work.

Besides that, I would encourage to idle in IRC and help each other out, ask questions, solve problems together, etc. And/or on the forums.

TRS-80 · February 1, 2022

@teknoid I have added you for nanopineoplus2.

@Helmut (and anyone else interested) I have now moved our (formerly internal, temporary, WIP) Google Docs spreadsheet into Markdown, in our documentation. The result is now live here: Board Maintainers and will continue to live and be updated at that location.

As you can see, there are still a few blanks.

I also modified the structure to more readily accept a 'primary' as well as one (or more) co- maintainer / helpers. Because I believe that 'many hands make light work.' One person must still step up for primary responsibility, however.

schwar3kat · February 5, 2022

On 12/17/2021 at 12:38 AM, Igor said:

I almost forgot. There is also an R2C which has different PHY.
https://github.com/armbian/build/commit/687c3639183e23e06406739af1684fdeb3efa454

I have a working Armbian Orangepi-r1plus-lts !!!!
I now have it working for current. I'm pretty sure that I can probably get it going for edge.

I would like to contribute to Armbian, and become a maintainer, but I am a beginner and I haven't been able to find a collaborator/mentor who knows what they are doing, and I am not confident that what I have done is acceptable.

Is there anyone who is willing to peer review what I have done so far?

I tried to reverse engineer the Shenzhen Xunlong OEM Ubuntu build (very different to the Armbian build) .
From the build I was able to extract a series of dts's for uBoot, and a kernal boot dtb (which I decompiled, because I couldn't find the associated dts series, and it was very different compared to the uBoot version).

This also yielded some YT8531C driver stuff in the uBoot source in phy.c.

I tried to create a patched working Armbian image, including the extra dts series but did not succeed in getting the YT8531C to work because I couldn't figure out what other driver changes were required and I couldn't find the OEM driver fix in the build.

There is a net-phy-Add-driver-for-Motorcomm-YT85xx-PHYs patch in the Armbian build, but it doesn't contain the YT8531C.

I googled for information and drivers for YT8531C and discovered
https://github.com/coolsnowwolf/lede/blob/master/target/linux/rockchip/patches-5.4/601-net-phy-Add-driver-for-Motorcomm-YT8531-PHYs.patch

I was able to patch the very slightly different linux-5.10.y files and combined with the OEM based stuff, I compiled a working image.

BTW - I'm using a new display name schwar3kat (old display name Elektrický caused unnecesarry issues).

Kalobok · February 20, 2022

Hi @yang and @TRS-80,

If it's not too late, I'd like to pick up OrangePi Zero Plus2 H3 as a maintainer.

I have two Plus2 boards with expansion boards, and can to test for releases and troubleshooting.

Don't have much experience in SW development, but have some as Linux basic admin.

As an experiment built an image for "BRANCH=current KERNEL_ONLY=no BUILD_DESKTOP=yes RELEASE=bullseye", all seems to work: http://ix.io/3Qdm.

I like the board and would like to keep it in the game.

TRS-80 · February 26, 2022

On 2/5/2022 at 3:10 AM, schwar3kat said:

I would like to contribute to Armbian, and become a maintainer, but I am a beginner and I haven't been able to find a collaborator/mentor who knows what they are doing, and I am not confident that what I have done is acceptable.

I think a lot of us are in this boat. I am even in that boat.

I can't speak for Igor and the other guys, but my sense is that, for people who step up and try to help out, I think they do try and make a little time. I would not expect a lot, they are still very busy, etc. However, the needle may move from 'no time for anything' to 'maybe I can make a few minutes here and there.'

I would encourage everyone who is around the periphery like this to hang around on the forums and/or IRC. Come say hello and just idle when you are at your battle station. There are also a few guys who are active on IRC in particular. You can ask questions in there and some times get answers. And some times not, but don't take it to heart. And it may take time, some times people answer hours later in IRC. There are also the forums, where you may have better luck.

Even at my low level of knowledge, I have been able to answer some people's questions some times. So please, do not be afraid to try and help out.

I would encourage more experienced members of the community to also help in answering questions, on the forums as well as IRC. Every single question answered takes a little bit of burden off developers.

Ideally we foster a community where power users and other interested parties can help each other learn and figure things out. I do have some more resources I would like to add to the docs as well about a few things.

On 2/20/2022 at 10:24 PM, Kalobok said:

If it's not too late, I'd like to pick up OrangePi Zero Plus2 H3 as a maintainer.

It's never too late, newfriend. Welcome aboard, and thanks! I will add you to the list. Some of above can apply to you, too it sounds like (and many others).

---

@everyone,

I have been thinking, just because new names are on the list does not necessarily mean that everything will be OK. Several people are new to the project, I have not seen them in IRC (in fairness, I'm not always on lately), who knows if things work out or not in the end. So please, if you are considering it, please throw your hat in the ring. Worst case is we have 2-3 maintainers for a given board. In which case the work can be done in a collaborative manner. If someone disappears due to life for some weeks, it would not be the end of the world. You get the picture.

Thanks again to everyone who is stepping up, it is greatly appreciated!

:beer: :thumbup: :love: