Broken Panfrost driver after update

[d_m]

I have been running Armbian on a Pinebook Pro without issues. I use the stable distribution, but after an update about a week ago (I think) the Panfrost driver has stopped working.

 

When logging into the desktop environment (Cinnamon) the symptom is a black screen with a cursor visible but nothing else.

 

Checking the logs I see a bunch of lines like:

> Mar 20 09:29:05 pine kernel: [ 534.502108] panfrost ff9a0000.gpu: js fault, js=0, status=DATA_INVALID_FAULT, head=0xb9f2b40, tail=0xb9f2b40

 

If I log in by disabling hardware rendering (choosing "Cinnamon (Software Rendering)") then the desktop does display and work (albeit very slowly).

 

After things broke I enabled the unstable updates, but this didn't seem to fix the problem. Unfortunately I can't remember exactly which software I updated but I assume it was either the kernel or a user space program that works with Panfrost.

 

Has anyone else seen this issue? I'm happy to provide any more details or try other steps if it would help debug the issue. Thanks!

 

 

[d_m]

Just to follow up, I reinstalled from the Pinebook Pro Cinnamon image listed here: https://www.armbian.com/pinebook-pro/

Using the 6.1.11-rockchip64 kernel things seem fine. I'm keeping kernel updates frozen and sticking to the stable distribution, so hopefully things will continue to work.

 

If anyone does have any questions I'm happy to do testing. Otherwise I will probably leave this alone (I had been updating the kernel trying to get suspend working but at this point I'd prefer to keep acceleration working and just shutdown the device when I'm not using it).

Edited April 6, 2023 by d_m