Armbian 22.08 Jammy XFCE on Rock64 doesn't work out of the box

[jahro_me]

Hello,

 

i am pretty new to arm embedded. I have a Rock64 V3.0 2019-0626  So I downloaded Armbian 22.08 Jammy XFCE from https://www.armbian.com/rock64/ and copied it on a 265GB SanDisk Extreme microsd XC 1 V30 A2 using Balena Etcher. Boot process did work, but startxfc4 did not work. The system just went on a blackscreen, but i could still switch to another terminal with alt+f1 ...

 

Best regards,

Bo

[Igor]

Did you proceed this way:?
 

Spoiler

 

[jahro_me]

yes, also tried this way. And also tried to install the xfce de from a CLI installed system. It won't start, xinit not found?

[Igor]

5 minutes ago, jahro_me said:

yes, also tried this way.

This way must work and this is what we are testing. Sometimes graphical drivers or some library breaks down (unrelated to our work) and things breaks down. It happened before and it will certainly happen in the future. This is Linux and cheaper hardware its hard to find ...  

 

For manual way - installing from CLI - you have to know what you are doing. This is not Armbian problem anymore.

[jahro_me]

Zitat

This is not Armbian problem anymore.

What I meant by manual, is by using armbian-config. Enable Desktop Environment.. I don't remember the correct phrasing anymore. This should work, too. Maybe I have done something wrong. Thanks for assistance

Edited November 18, 2022 by jahro_me

[Igor]

18 minutes ago, jahro_me said:

What I meant by manual, is by using armbian-config. Enable Desktop Environment.. I don't remember the correct phrasing anymore. This should work, too. Maybe I have done something wrong. Thanks for assistance

Safest way is to download XFCE image and proceed as stated in the image I have pasted. It is at most important you follow instructions as stated, generate username. If this doesn't work and if also RC candidate images are not working, then we might have some problem. It can be a small one or weeks of work ... I always note that vendor never supported what we are doing for you. And you ofc expects that this just works.

[jahro_me]

Zitat

 I always note that vendor never supported what we are doing for you. And you ofc expects that this just works.

Ohh, this I cannot tell.. I can just tell for myself, that I am grateful for any help and work, that is made to make my system run smoothly  But in this case, it really doesn't work. I have installed again and followed your instructions. It feels smooth and looks nice, but, the xfce4 desktop jsut doesn't start, i don't know, maybe a problem with ldm, but I am not sure, haven't found any output.

[amcduffee]

I too have encountered this issue after downloading Armbian 22.08 Jammy XFCE (Release date: Oct 28, 2022).  It appears that X server is crashing on launch with a backtrace.  See the attached Xorg.0.log.

 

Searching on Google leads to the following thread and the suggestion to use mesa-git instead of the distro mesa:

   https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=8915

 

I know it is an old thread, but it got me thinking that this may be a related and/or similar issue.  At the very least it made me realize the issue is likely related to Mesa drivers, so I decided to try enabling Oibaf PPA to get the latest Mesa drivers.  While doing so I came to realize that Armbian is already building images with the Oibaf PPA enabled:

anderson@rock64:/etc/apt/sources.list.d$ cat oibaf.list 
deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/oibaf.gpg] http://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/oibaf/graphics-drivers/ubuntu/ jammy main

 

So, I decided to instead purge out the PPA to see if the issue is only present in newer Mesa drivers:

anderson@rock64:~$ sudo apt install ppa-purge
anderson@rock64:~$ sudo ppa-purge ppa:oibaf/graphics-drivers
anderson@rock64:~$ sudo reboot

 

After purging the Oibaf PPA drivers I can at least get X server to start, however it is not a good solution.  There are some graphical glitches such as black bands across the screen when it is redrawn in high activity cases.  These black bands happen for me when I move the mouse cursor around quickly at the login screen, or when I drag a window around rapidly on the desktop.

 

In any event, this almost certainly appears to be an issue with the rockchip_drm driver and/or Mesa driver.  I don't know if this is in Mesa, Xorg or both, but it likely needs a bug filed upstream with one of those projects in order to get a fix.

Xorg.0.log