NanoPi R4SE Armbian Image

[MBC]

The NanoPi R4SE is similar to the NanoPi R5S. Would love to have an Armbian image for it.

[Werner]

Actually it seems to be more similar to the R4S but with eMMC welded on.

[MBC]

That too.

 

https://www.friendlyelec.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=69&product_id=288 indicates "It works with FriendlyWRT, Ubuntu, Armbian etc." but I couldn't find an Armbian image for it..

[Werner]

I suggest to ask them why they claim that it works with Armbian then

[Kajelo]

I'm equally interested in an Armbian image file for R4SE.

There's an official Debian Buster desktop image (works fine, installed via USB), but I'm looking for an open sourced Debian Bullseye headless version.

I'm trying to understand how I can use the EFlasher to flash from a SD, ideally with the Armbian Bullseye or R4S on it.

Any ideas, what would be the steps ?

[Werner]

I assume to be make armbian run in R4SE an additional patch is needed that enables eMMC in the device tree. Then nand-sata-installer should be able to do the rest.

[MBC]

FYI, here's the DTB compiled from rk3399-nanopi-r4se.dts  It allows me to see the eMMC drive and run nand-sata-installer but it doesn't boot from eMMC. 

rk3399-nanopi-r4se.dtb

[Werner]

10 hours ago, MBC said:

but it doesn't boot from eMMC. 

Perhaps further adjustments to uboot are necessary.

[MBC]

Here's the kernel, uboot, dtb, and some reference files: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1r0-VhIPvTGCMiZZjIS6tQ4ZJNoIjFIe8/view?usp=sharing  but I'm not familiar with your https://github.com/armbian/build process so I'm not sure how to slipstream them into a new build.

Edited September 13, 2022 by MBC

[MBC]

Update: a working Armbian image (both SD card and eMMC) has been made available from c0rnelius / pyavitz: https://github.com/pyavitz/binary/releases/download/images/rk3399-nanopi-r4se-debian-bullseye-5.19.11-arm64-2022-09-27.img.xz

 

Boot using an SD card (either the image above or the Armbian R4S image with my dtb file above) and run the following to image the eMMC:

 

wget https://github.com/pyavitz/binary/releases/download/images/rk3399-nanopi-r4se-debian-bullseye-5.19.11-arm64-2022-09-27.img.xz

xz -dc rk3399-nanopi-r4se-debian-bullseye-5.19.11-arm64-2022-09-27.img.xz | dd of=/dev/mmcblk2 status=progress

 

 

Note: if booting using pyavitz image from an SD card, you'll need to use a toothpick to press in the MASK button on the R4SE for 3 seconds during power on to use the SD card bootloader.