Orange Pi3 lts

[igorh]

Hi!

Is the Orange Pi3 image suitable for the Orange Pi3 LTs? Or where to find it?

[Werner]

Moved to P2P help.

It should work. Ethernet may or may not work since this is the only thing that has changed  in comparison to normal OPi3

[mumrau]

Hello, I got my hands on an Orange Pi 3 LTS. 
I really want to get into the armbian world which looks fabulous. I am usually a higher level engineer and kinda struggle with low level issues.

I could not get the Orange Pi 3 LTS to get a network access using the provided images from the officially supporter Orange Pi 3 board, neither with a manually built image.
Only one led (green) shows up on the ethernet port, and the eth0 interface cannot get any IP through DHCP, neither with a manually set up interface.
No sign of the wlan interface.

If I may add, the debian image provided in http://www.orangepi.org/downloadresources/ works.

I can provide help in order to make it work, but don't really know where to start.
I'm browsing around to try and find a way to enable module/build them into a kernel, but maybe further guidance could be provided.

Thank you for the great project, can't wait to jump in!

[Igor]

2 hours ago, mumrau said:

Thank you for the great project, can't wait to jump in!

 

Welcome 

 

2 hours ago, mumrau said:

I'm browsing around to try and find a way to enable module/build them into a kernel

 

In this case its little more work then just enabling a module. In general.

 

2 hours ago, mumrau said:

but maybe further guidance could be provided.

 

https://forum.armbian.com/topic/19172-do-you-like-to-see-your-favorite-board-supported/#comment-135342

 

[mumrau]

I'm going to run further tests in case.

My first question though, is do we expect to have the Orange Pi 3 LTS supporter with the same image as the Orange Pi 3 ? In which case it becomes a supported model etc, etc... At first i would think yes but they kinda changed hardware for connectivity which is an uttermost priority, so...

Also, Armbian being listed as an OrangePi , I thought they would potentially provide some samples for testing and development to more "capable" people than me haha

[Ukhellfire]

Hi all! 

I'm new to this community, and am about to dive into the world of the orange pi 3 lts!

It's due for delivery today, and I already have built every variant from orange pis build script.

 

I plan to port over the support for the pi 3 lts from their own github, as I believe other things have slightly changed to. 

 

I believe this to be a great board with a lot of potential! 

 

My plan is to 1) port, and then 2) submit patches for approval over here. Fingers crossed! 

 

Good luck to everyone else involved!

Edited February 21, 2022 by Ukhellfire

[Myron]

Welcome to the community @Ukhellfire. Any help is welcome.

[mumrau]

Hello @Ukhellfire, if you have the scripts and need a second tester, I'm willing to help, I have the build environment set up and 2 pi 3 LTS that I can try with. 
I lacked time to get into the world of kernels and u-boots, might find time soon, but I can for sure find some time to test things.

Keep us posted!

 

Hello everyone, 

I have read the release notes about the new version of armbian (https://www.armbian.com/newsflash/armbian-22-02-pig-release-announcement/), which contains the following: "AR-1100 Support for Orange Pi R1 Plus LTS, Drivers for YT8531 and other Motorcomm chips. Linux-5.10y and Linux-5.15y.".
The ethernet PHY driver support YT8531 has been added, which sould, I believe, in theory, work on this chip and on this board which has YT8531C,  as stated by the manufacturer. Not too sure about what the trailing C means.

I don't have access to my board right now, but I will test the new release ASAP (probably the next week-end, or next-next week-end), hoping for the ethernet support ! I am in no rush for the wlan support, which might never land, as most SBCs are, in my opinion and usage, meant to run wired.

Will keep posted. 

[Ukhellfire]

Ah brilliant! I shall take a look!

I've run out of time recently. Have booted orange pis official ubuntu for it. And it works. WiFi and ethernet. So if this update doesn't work, the drivers can be ported. 

I've had a fair bit of experience with this, when I was reverse engineering drivers for the lcm on mediatek soc phones. 

 

Does the orange pi 3 boot on the lts? Have you tried this? 

 

Well apparently wifi drivers are available. Maybe we just have to enable it? 

 

https://linux-sunxi.org/Wifi#AW859A

 

Off to find the dts now! 

 

I'm looking at this line in particular...

 

https://github.com/armbian/build/blob/master/config/boards/orangepizero2.conf#L5

 

As it also appears here... 

 

https://github.com/orangepi-xunlong/orangepi-build/blob/main/external/config/boards/orangepi3-lts.conf#L6

 

I feel a build coming on!!!

 

Definitely think I'm onto something...

 

https://github.com/orangepi-xunlong/linux-orangepi/commits/orange-pi-5.10/drivers/net/wireless/uwe5622

 

I think a long evening porting the driver over, figuring out if I need to pull in firmware too, and where from. And then building/testing...

And possibly some patches coming our way!

[Rockford the Roe]

Will any of those changes to the kernel and u-boot be added to their respective upstreams? I've been looking at porting other distros to this, but most of the time the upstreams don't seem to work properly.

[Ukhellfire]

48 minutes ago, Rockford the Roe said:

Will any of those changes to the kernel and u-boot be added to their respective upstreams? I've been looking at porting other distros to this, but most of the time the upstreams don't seem to work properly.

Still playing with creating patches at the moment.

Can't you compile against this kernel and uboot? 

Failing that, maybe your own repo, commit whats needed, and send pull request? Just a thought?

[TRS-80]

8 hours ago, Rockford the Roe said:

Will any of those changes to the kernel and u-boot be added to their respective upstreams?

 

Almost certainly not.  For some more context, see the 'BSP, blobs, ‘vendor’ kernels and bootloaders' section of the recent release announcement.  There is also some info in Armbian documentation.

 

8 hours ago, Rockford the Roe said:

most of the time the upstreams don't seem to work properly

 

This is essentially/roughly the raison d'être for Armbian in the first place.    Welcome aboard! 

 

[Ukhellfire]

Drivers ported. Patches created. 

Patches added to build/userpatches/kernel/sunxi-current.

 

Bit of a hacky approach to adding lines to config files, for modules etc. But want to see if it works first. Then to create patches for them! 

 

Now building a test build 😉

 

So it turns out that the firmware files are already automatically imported into the build! One step forward!

 

Now after putting the modules in the right config file (doh!) I'm running another build.

Unfortunately I won't be able to test until a lot later 😞

 

I'll keep everyone posted! 

Then I guess I'll create the patches, test, and probably bring up the board properly! 

[Ukhellfire]

And so the fun begins...!

[Ukhellfire]

https://github.com/afaulkner420/Linux-Mainline-5.15y/commit/59cc9191b9acc88a2f6a318d7bce5c2fc7fa2476

 

Commit here for the drivers if anyone wants to take a look...

[mete]

Thanks for that Ukhellfire. I'm looking forward on having Armbian working on my Orange Pi3 lts!

 

I wish I could help but I have 0 knowledge on this stuff.

[Ukhellfire]

Update.

 

So, I seem to be getting compilation errors. And thankfully armbian logs everything during a build. 

Haven't had time to sit and go through it properly, but it seems to be (as I expected) the tty side of my ported drivers. 

Not to sure if it's a conflict, or whether it's just due to the fact the driver is from an older kernel than what armbian builds. This I'll look I to over the next couple of days.

At the moment I have a few hours every evening (except today, typical! Just when I need spare time!) 

Going to leave the errors here, incase anyone has a spare few minutes before I do! 

The highlights are purely the word "error" haha! 

 

After more digging.

I beleive its down to a deprecated function: alloc_tty_driver

 

Which was deprecated by: tty_alloc_driver

 

Conclusion, I was kinda right. It's because it's a driver from an old kernel! Now to change over the function, and try get this working! 

Wish me luck!

 

Well... I'm on a roll. 

Some errors have been sorted. Some errors have been suppressed through makefile. These errors are only warnings though being thrown up, so everything should be OK. Fingers crossed! 

Running a build now, and will be testing tonight. 

So far the build hasn't errored out!

 

Let's give this a go!

 

I hope people don't mind me recording my progress here BTW. I've kind of hijacked the thread! Sorry!

[Rockford the Roe]

47 minutes ago, Ukhellfire said:

I hope people don't mind me recording my progress here BTW. I've kind of hijacked the thread! Sorry!

I can't say anything for the mods, but I don't believe that you did. If I had more knowledge in C, I would've done exactly this. 

[Ukhellfire]

Haha that's OK then! Don't wana start off on the wrong foot! Haha!

Well I'm going to need people to test once I got things working if you or anyone is interested? 

 

[orangepifan]

3 hours ago, Ukhellfire said:

Haha that's OK then! Don't wana start off on the wrong foot! Haha!

Well I'm going to need people to test once I got things working if you or anyone is interested? 

 

 

Signed up JUST for this thread. First of all, awesome at getting armbian to run on this board (or at least trying). I've been very frustrated by the stock Ubuntu/Debian images provided by the vendor. I have two Orange Pi 3 LTS. I will test any images you want tested. THANKS FOR ALL YOUR HARD WORK AND THANKS FOR DOING IT IN THE OPEN!!!

[Ukhellfire]

1 hour ago, orangepifan said:

 

Signed up JUST for this thread. First of all, awesome at getting armbian to run on this board (or at least trying). I've been very frustrated by the stock Ubuntu/Debian images provided by the vendor. I have two Orange Pi 3 LTS. I will test any images you want tested. THANKS FOR ALL YOUR HARD WORK AND THANKS FOR DOING IT IN THE OPEN!!!

Haha thank you! It started purely selfish! I want armbian for my board! Haha!

But then noone seems to be doing it, so figured I would. I have plenty of experience in this department. I used to reverse engineer drivers etc for mediatek soc phones. This is exactly the same. 

And this is all open source, and I feel strongly about open source, so will glady do it all publicly!

 

At the moment it's booting, it runs quite well. 

Ethernet only works when booting with the cable connected. If you connect the cable once already booted, it doesn't kick in. Not worried about that one at the moment. It's probably just a persistent permission thing. 

 

As for the WIFI:

Kernel modules build. The whole image builds and boots now. 

But the WiFi still doesn't work. 

The modules are found in /vendor/modules but are not loaded on boot. I can see this with the output of "lsmod"

OK. I'll load the modules myself. 

"Insmod uwe5622_bsp_sdio.ko"

I get an error. 

"insmod error could not insert module  uwe5622_bsp_sdio.ko invalid module format"

 

Now I'm think I need to delve into my kmsg and see what's going on when I run this command. 

 

If anyone with any experience is willing to give me a heads up if they've encountered this before? Feel free! 

[Ukhellfire]

So...

I've been bringing up the board properly. 

Using the correct dts files for the 3 lts and not the 3. Both for kernel and uboot.

I've created a whole patch set for the Orange Pi 3 LTS now. Ready and waiting for a pull request once I've done a test build. If it boots. And runs, I'll submit the pull request. 

 

One thing I'm not sure off though, is, would it be a wip or a csc? We shall see! Haha!

 

 

[Werner]

4 minutes ago, Ukhellfire said:

One thing I'm not sure off though, is, would it be a wip or a csc?

If you are willing to volunteer as maintainer for the board it would be WIP, otherwise CSC.

[orangepifan]

I apologize for the delayed response -- I'm rate limited on this forum as a new member.

 

> "insmod error could not insert module  uwe5622_bsp_sdio.ko invalid module format"

 

This may be caused by kernel module versioning support... e.g. "insmod error could not insert module  uwe5622_bsp_sdio.ko invalid module format"

 

One way to test this theory would be to disable kernel module versioning. I believe you can do this in menuconfig.

 

Re: ethernet and not working after plugged in post-boot, perhaps media negotiation is broken on this chipset? Monkeying with ethtool might deliver some results...

 

If you want to post a link to your source I can attempt building it and running it on a Orange PI 3 LTS. I can even let it burn in for a couple days and see if it's stable.

 

I can't wait to test drive Armbian on here. You are a gentleman and a scholar. Orange Pi should send you some presents for making their hardware more valuable.

[Ukhellfire]

On 3/11/2022 at 8:54 PM, Werner said:

If you are willing to volunteer as maintainer for the board it would be WIP, otherwise CSC.

If I submitted a pull request with the config file with a .csc extension, and then offered myself as a maintainer, would armbian change the extension for me? Or would I need to submit another pr? 

I may just start from scratch on a clean build repo and do a wip config file 😉 think I may have to offer my services.

 

On 3/11/2022 at 9:13 PM, orangepifan said:

I apologize for the delayed response -- I'm rate limited on this forum as a new member.

 

> "insmod error could not insert module  uwe5622_bsp_sdio.ko invalid module format"

 

This may be caused by kernel module versioning support... e.g. "insmod error could not insert module  uwe5622_bsp_sdio.ko invalid module format"

 

One way to test this theory would be to disable kernel module versioning. I believe you can do this in menuconfig.

 

Re: ethernet and not working after plugged in post-boot, perhaps media negotiation is broken on this chipset? Monkeying with ethtool might deliver some results...

 

If you want to post a link to your source I can attempt building it and running it on a Orange PI 3 LTS. I can even let it burn in for a couple days and see if it's stable.

 

I can't wait to test drive Armbian on here. You are a gentleman and a scholar. Orange Pi should send you some presents for making their hardware more valuable.

At the moment, I'm building up the commits to submit a pull request. 

Making sure I'm not forgetting things etc. Making things as tidy as possible. 

As soon as I know it boots etc, you'll be more than welcome to try the build! I can either upload the img somewhere, or you can build it from my forked repo. 

Obviously I'll let you know when it's all fully complete. At the moment there's thing sitting locally that I haven't pushed as a commit. So the build would fail.

 

As for the WiFi and ethernet, I'll keep that in mind.

I'm hoping using the boards actual dts files etc may help with this. Not sure yet.

Plus I discovered the WiFi driver was looking in the wrong place for the WiFi firmware! So I've corrected that to. 

 

Haha if only they would send me presents! That would be cool. I'll have another of the same boards! Or maybe an opi 4? Haha! If only! 

May have to ping them a little message let them know I've done it though!

 

What a lot of work for a couple of day! 

 

So I've tested the first of the orange pi 3 lts builds...

It doesn't boot. Intact the board doesn't actually turn on, or seem to turn on, with the sdcard plugged in... very strange. 

 

Thinking it may be something with uboot. Not sure yet.

[Werner]

Use serial adapter to debug boot issues. There is no better tool for that

[Rockford the Roe]

7 hours ago, Ukhellfire said:

So I've tested the first of the orange pi 3 lts builds...

It doesn't boot. Intact the board doesn't actually turn on, or seem to turn on, with the sdcard plugged in... very strange.

Yup, I'm also stuck at this part, and it's not just on Armbian. It also doesn't even work with the BSP u-boot.

 

6 hours ago, Werner said:

Use serial adapter to debug boot issues. There is no better tool for that

 

Which adapter would you recommend? I've seen many of them online and I'm not sure if I should grab a USB based adapter or some other port.

[Werner]

3 minutes ago, Rockford the Roe said:

Which adapter would you recommend? I've seen many of them online and I'm not sure if I should grab a USB based adapter or some other port.

I'd say go for USB since it most common and convenient. I have one CP2102 and one CP2104 based one laying around and both are working nicely. I'd recommend to go for any CP2104 chip based since it supports higher baud rates which are needed for Rockchip SoCs for example.

Other chips probably working just fine as well, just make sure to get something supporting 1,5mbaud at least, since there is barely and difference in cost (they are all dirt cheap) and can cover a wider range of SoC.

Also pick up some jumper wires if they are not included in the adapter already.

 

Random one I found on ebay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/403432337070

[Ukhellfire]

3 hours ago, Rockford the Roe said:

Yup, I'm also stuck at this part, and it's not just on Armbian. It also doesn't even work with the BSP u-boot

What gets me, is it boots with the orange pi 3 image. So I'm trying the orange pi 3 uboot! Then I'll start adding things over slowly, see what breaks it. Trial and error. 

The long way, instead of a uart debug adaptor. If not I'll buy one! Haha! 

[orangepifan]

56 minutes ago, Ukhellfire said:

What gets me, is it boots with the orange pi 3 image. So I'm trying the orange pi 3 uboot! Then I'll start adding things over slowly, see what breaks it. Trial and error. 

The long way, instead of a uart debug adaptor. If not I'll buy one! Haha! 

If you want me to send a serial cable to you, PM me and we can arrange details, otherwise enjoy