Rock 3A no longer bootable -- current development status?

[Nexus]

Hi.

Around a month ago, my Rock 3A arrived and I got to playing with it. I noticed that there was a community build configuration for it, so I set up an Armbian build environment and got to building it. The image built without error and before I knew it my device had booted.

However, since then, a few changes have been made to the Rock 3A (including receiving a proper Armbian maintainer), and now it seems to be completely broken. This issue seems to be reproducible, with people both being able to boot the board with old images as well as not being able to boot with fresh images.

There seems to be some work happening towards fixing u-boot (which seems to be the issue) on GitHub, but it has been completely silent for almost two weeks.
 

I realize that stuff like this takes time, as well as the fact that all of this work is community-driven. My main goal for asking this is so that I can contribute to the development for this board myself. I can't tell why booting this board isn't working from boot logs (available throughout this thread on the Radxa forum), so I'm largely at the mercy of those more knowledgeable about this part of Armbian and Linux than I am.

Any and all info would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Edited December 3, 2021 by Nexus
Forgot to insert links

[Igor]

14 hours ago, Nexus said:

I can contribute to the development for this board myself

 

We have hundreds of tasks waiting for someone. I bet it's possible to find something you can contribute to.

 

14 hours ago, Nexus said:

I can't tell why

Ahaa, this.  Welcome to the club.

 

Percentage of people that knows how to deal with this complexity (on their expense!) is notoriously low since ever. New boards are coming out with at higher and higher rate, which means there is more and more pressure on people that knows stuff. Learning is very slow and expensive on the other hand. I understand you would like that your shiny new and good looking board function perfectly, but that will not happen just like that. And certainly not "now". It takes months to year(s), before they are functioning so-so (outside their proprietary kernel) and they need constant investments and love. They are like children with special needs ...

 

14 hours ago, Nexus said:

including receiving a proper Armbian maintainer

 

I bet you didn't read requirements?  If we would require that maintainers knows how to bring board up and fix bugs, nobody would apply! This is an assistance, to relieve those that knows something. They need help first, consumers of their time (you) optional.

 

There are other roles that can help in a problems you have. A lot more is needed that you can get what you are asking for:

https://forum.armbian.com/staffapplications/
All those things also need to be done, welcome to pick up. All roles can be from a few hours per week to full-time. And none will directly answer any of questions you have. Those roles are related with hard cash investment and since you expect all this for free ...

 

15 hours ago, Nexus said:

so I'm largely at the mercy of those more knowledgeable

Like we all do and we have many other problems nobody helps to solve. But has to be done in order that project function.

If providing your time and expertise for common R&D work is not possible (your time is a lot more valuable, you have no time for this, ...), perhaps covering expenses of what has been asked? It is one click away. To answer some questions, people that understand things, can easily blow a week or more to provide an answer. 

You can also hire people to jump on problems you have at any time:

https://www.debian.org/consultants/ 

https://www.fiverr.com/share/67vQ7B

Much better than begging us to do more for you. Then person you are paying sends a fix to the problem:

https://docs.armbian.com/Process_Contribute/

 

15 hours ago, Nexus said:

about this part of Armbian

 

Another difference between people that sold you some hardware and us. If Armbian solves problems you have, it support competition that in most cases in this area contributes close to nothing. With which problem I believe you have no problems with, but perhaps Armbian maintainers have? Just a rhetorical question.

 

Before asking for support, it's worth reading this.

https://docs.armbian.com/User-Guide_FAQ/

This is not hardware sellers forum.