Mekotronics R58 question

[Bas]

Hello people,

 

Half a year ago I flashed Armbian to to Mekotronics R58 plastic box, which was then an unofficial version. It's been on the shelf a while. Now I see new Armbian versions for download. I plugged in my device and did an update/upgrade. See Neofetch result below. My question is: is there any reason to completely flash the new version? Or am I already fine? It seems kernal versions are the same! Everything works fine and looks awesome including RealVNC for which I had some work to do. Therefore I am a bit reluctant to ditch the current version.

 

Couple of minor issues I have are can't get Samba working and boot from SSD.

 

Bas

 

 

 

rock@r58 
                 ◢🭫◣                   -------- 
                ◢◤ ◥◣                  OS: Armbian (23.8.1) aarch64 
               ◢◤   ◥◣                 OS Mod: AfterburnerMOD WIP 
              ◢◤     ◥◣                Host: Hugsun RK3588 MINIPC LP4x V1.0 And 
             ◢◤  🭉🬹🬾  ◥◣               Kernel: 5.10.110-rockchip-rk3588 
            ◢◤   🭅█🭐   ◥◣              Uptime: 3 mins 
           ◢◤    ███    ◥◣             Packages: 1952 (dpkg), 24 (flatpak) 
          ◢◤    🭋███🭀    ◥◣            Shell: bash 5.1.16 
        ◢█◤     🭅███🭐     ◥█◣          Resolution: 1920x1080 @ 60.00Hz 
       ◢█◤ 🬏   🭄█████🭏   🬞 ◥█◣         DE: GNOME 42.9 
      ◢█◤ 🭋▌🭈🭆🭂███████🭍🭑🬽▐🭀 ◥█◣        WM: Mutter 
     ◢█◤  🭅███████████████🭐  ◥█◣       WM Theme: Adwaita 
    ◢█◤   ███🭞🬎███████🬎🭓███   ◥█◣      Theme: Yaru-dark [GTK2/3] 
   🭮█◤    🭒🭡🭘  🭣🮂🮅🭫🮅🮂🭘  🭣🭖🭝    ◥█🭬     Icons: ubuntu-mono-dark [GTK2/3] 
   ◢█            █ █            █◣     Terminal: gnome-terminal 
  ◢██◣          ◢🭡 🭖◣          ◢██◣    CPU: (8) @ 1.800GHz 
 ◢████🭍🭑🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🭆🭂🭠🭗 🭢🭕🭍🭑🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🬭🭆🭂████◣   Memory: 1696MiB / 3735MiB 

                                                               
 

 

[Bas]

Ok figured it out, just downloaded the R58 image and it works and looks great. But Mali support doesn't seem to work, the post install scripts provided seem to fail halfway. As-is performance isn't bad, anyway.

 

As a general point: I find it a bit difficult to find the proper forum where I can at least get in contact with fellow R58 users. I mean: there IS an Armbian image for download for this board. And it's fairly recent too (28 sep) and Monka is the maintainer. So there is at least some form of maintenance. But which forum to exchange experience and help each other Mekotronics R58?

 

Bas

[Bas]

So after the total reinstall of Armbian, I lost the work to get RealVNC server working. I remember it costed me a day of searching and trying back then...

 

So last time I got RealVNC server working on Arm it costed me a day, but today only a couple of hours. In fact I am typing this via VNC on my laptop dialled in to the Mekotronics R58 Works great. Anyone interested how?

 

Bas

[NicoD]

Hi Bas. 
Go ahead and post your solution. 
The latest images should have a few fixes but not sure if you'd notice it. 
Monka his old images had more preinstalled. Also nicod-armbian-gaming what official Armbian doesn't have.
I also use the mini but in metal case. Works great for me. Using Monka his amazingfated gaming image.

For GPU and VPU on official Armbian you need to do this.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:liujianfeng1994/panfork-mesa
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:liujianfeng1994/rockchip-multimedia
sudo apt update
sudo apt dist-upgrade
sudo apt install mali-g610-firmware rockchip-multimedia-config
# In order to install additional packages with hardware acceleration support like chromium sudo apt install chromium-browser

You can post in maintained Rockchip.  

[Bas]

Hi Nico, I basically followed this:

 

https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/121199/realvnc-server-on-ubuntu-20-10-arm64-on-raspberry-pi-4

 

The crucial part is this:

 

$ sudo dpkg --add-architecture armhf
$ sudo dpkg --print-foreign-architectures
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install libx11-6
Download the next 10 files from https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware ... opt/vc/lib

libbcm_host.so
libvcos.so
libmmal.so
libmmal_core.so
libmmal_components.so
libmmal_util.so
libmmal_vc_client.so
libchiq_arm.so
libvcsm.so
libcontainers.so
These 10 files above need to be copied to /usr/lib.

$ sudo apt install gdebi
$ sudo gdebi VNC-Server-6.7.2-Linux-ARM.deb
$ sudo systemctl enable vncserver-x11-serviced.service
$ sudo systemctl enable vncserver-virtuald.service
$ sudo systemctl start vncserver-x11-serviced.service
$ sudo systemctl start vncserver-virtuald.service
$ sudo vnclicensewiz

 

Important: to download VNC-Server to RealVNC, and download the Raspberry Pi ARM version important of type armhf there are 2 flavors.

 

You have to solve a couple of security policy issues, RealVNC will tell you how. But when it in the end works, it works pretty brilliantly!! From my laptop I can login to Windows NUC, or R58 Armbian box. Same from Ipad mini.

 

What is also great: I did a couple of Watt measurements today: Latest Armbian does 2.1 watt idle that's crazy gooed! Isn't that even better than RPI4? When VNC server is active it goes to 4 Watt, some media browsing can go to 10 Watt. Pretty impressive. Performance is on par with my Dell I5 6300U laptop at least in the old Octane 2 javascript test. But I bet proper hardware accell can do even a lot better.

 

Bas

[Bas]

But Nico, with respect to hardware acceleration when I try to install the PPA's I get errors like this:

 

E: De pakketbron 'https://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/liujianfeng1994/panfork-mesa/ubuntu bookworm Release' heeft geen Release-bestand.

 

No release file therefore rejected as not secure. Any ideas? Is there a switch I can use?

 

Anyway I think the R58 is SO much better than the RPI5 that in fact we deserve our own forum.

 

- Crazy fast board

- 2.1 watt idle

- Does not run hot, and my plastic box has not even a fan

- Therefore super quiet operation 

- Support for SATA ssd is default there

- Fast enough for HD games and 4K media (if only we had accelerated HW, but previous versions and Android already proved it)

 

Compare that to RPI5, without fan it gets dangerously hot even when idle. And should we wait another 5 years for HD media to really REALLY work?

 

But eh...main question is above, getting HW accell working... At the same time I must confess that a stable and supported linux is my first prio. Armbian runs excellent even without it.  But of course youtube movie playback would be nice...!

 

Bas