request for Banana Pi M64

[geektillithertz]

Banana Pi M64 http://www.banana-pi.org/m64.html

the default ubuntu os is crap, requesting for an armbian build

 

Allwinner a64

2GB RAM

[Igor]

We probably won't support this board ... you can try running this image: https://www.armbian.com/pine64/

[tkaiser]

requesting for an armbian build

LOL, too funny! Why should anyone waste his time with yet another overpriced SBC? When do people start to search first what to expect (crap as you already mentioned) and then act accordingly? This here pretty much sums it up: https://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/3079-banana-pi-m2-ultra/#entry21505

[geektillithertz]

LOL, too funny! Why should anyone waste his time with yet another overpriced SBC? When do people start to search first what to expect (crap as you already mentioned) and then act accordingly? This here pretty much sums it up: https://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/3079-banana-pi-m2-ultra/#entry21505

other than rpi, what board do you recommend?

[geektillithertz]

We probably won't support this board ... you can try running this image: https://www.armbian.com/pine64/

i did try this (the mainline one for now, i'll try the legacy one too) it did'nt boot, but I can't find any sources online on github that i can start with my own build. Their build of ubuntu mate is utter crap, anything from random log outs to complete lack of drivers. Its sad to see how well android is supported on these platforms but other linux distributions sometime remain in beta forever

[Igor]

https://github.com/igorpecovnik/lib

Check docs ... this is a tool that helps you compile kernel or image for any board that we support.

 

There is one kernel for A64 and that one was initially designed for Android which is also shit if you look closely.

 

Other alternative is community developing mainline kernel, which is far for ready for end users AFAIK.

http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort

[geektillithertz]

https://github.com/igorpecovnik/lib

Check docs ... this is a tool that helps you compile kernel or image for any board that we support.

 

There is one kernel for A64 and that one was initially designed for Android which is also shit if you look closely.

 

Other alternative is community developing mainline kernel, which is far for ready for end users AFAIK.

http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort

thnx, looks like i'll need to bake one armbian myself.

[tkaiser]

other than rpi, what board do you recommend?

Use case? Which problem did you try to solve by buying this BPi M64 thing?

[geektillithertz]

Use case? Which problem did you try to solve by buying this BPi M64 thing?

didn't buy, got for review.

use case: arm mini pc

[geektillithertz]

i did try this (the mainline one for now, i'll try the legacy one too) it did'nt boot, but I can't find any sources online on github that i can start with my own build. Their build of ubuntu mate is utter crap, anything from random log outs to complete lack of drivers. Its sad to see how well android is supported on these platforms but other linux distributions sometime remain in beta forever

nope nothing on the legacy build as well, going for a custom build.

[tkaiser]

use case: arm mini pc

 

Sorry, I asked for a use case and not for buzz words. That being said A64 is a pretty stupid choice anyway since HDMI situation with legacy kernel is limited (only a few resolutions supported), there is literally no one working on Linux support with this BSP crap (only Android guys like ayufan or Jon Smirl interested in this platform at all) and situation with mainline kernel is still far away from useable.

 

And with SinoVoip's offer you get an overpriced device with the slowest eMMC around (which you can't use anyway since they're too dumb and/or lazy to add eMMC support) and their usual Wi-Fi/BT combination (which also doesn't work since vendor too dumb or too lazy)

 

I can't find any sources online on github that i can start with my own build.

 

So you didn't look into Armbian's build system yet?

 

Sources are configured here: https://github.com/igorpecovnik/lib/blob/master/config/sources/pine64.conf#L33-L34

 

Please note that Icenowy has a more recent branch in the meantime and if you need the specific BPi M64 bits you'll have to look there (too): https://github.com/apritzel/linux/commits/a64-v6-wip

 

As already said: Since this board is absolutely uninteresting and there exists not a single use case where such an A64 device would fit don't expect any further help. At least I got pretty sick of people demanding us to waste our time with crappy/uninteresting devices.

[zador.blood.stained]

Please note that Icenowy has a more recent branch in the meantime and if you need the specific BPi M64 bits you'll have to look there (too): https://github.com/apritzel/linux/commits/a64-v6-wip

Or here: https://github.com/apritzel/linux/commits/sunxi64-4.9-testing

 

In any case: no proper vendor support and no proper community support means no official Armbian images. At least until mainline reaches stable and functional enough state so WIP/test images can be made with minimal effort.

[geektillithertz]

Sorry, I asked for a use case and not for buzz words. That being said A64 is a pretty stupid choice anyway since HDMI situation with legacy kernel is limited (only a few resolutions supported), there is literally no one working on Linux support with this BSP crap (only Android guys like ayufan or Jon Smirl interested in this platform at all) and situation with mainline kernel is still far away from useable.

 

And with SinoVoip's offer you get an overpriced device with the slowest eMMC around (which you can't use anyway since they're too dumb and/or lazy to add eMMC support) and their usual Wi-Fi/BT combination (which also doesn't work since vendor too dumb or too lazy)

 

 

So you didn't look into Armbian's build system yet?

 

Sources are configured here: https://github.com/igorpecovnik/lib/blob/master/config/sources/pine64.conf#L33-L34

 

Please note that Icenowy has a more recent branch in the meantime and if you need the specific BPi M64 bits you'll have to look there (too): https://github.com/apritzel/linux/commits/a64-v6-wip

 

As already said: Since this board is absolutely uninteresting and there exists not a single use case where such an A64 device would fit don't expect any further help. At least I got pretty sick of people demanding us to waste our time with crappy/uninteresting devices.

1) I just have a nick for arm based boards, x86 pcs take a lot of power to perform basic tasks like web browsing and I have seen people just using their systems for a bit of word processing and web browsing at most. Lets just say I like to fiddle with these boards as a hobby and one of the things I am interested in is using them as a regular desktop ie the mini pc buzz word.

 

2) I knew what i was going into when SinoVoip informed me that they were sending me a sample to review, but i thought they would have learnt from pine64, sadly not. Didn't expect it to be this bad though.

 

3) When I said i couldn't find sources i ment on sinovoip's github page that they are "supposed" to provide, let linux kernel be even android device source is not available. Maybe i've been spoilt too much by the raspberry pi.

 

4) I will be attempting to get armbian build running from the sources provided in this thread.

[tkaiser]

2) I knew what i was going into when SinoVoip informed me that they were sending me a sample to review, but i thought they would have learnt from pine64, sadly not. Didn't expect it to be this bad though.

 

Well, judging by looking at this mess http://forum.banana-pi.org/c/BPI-M64 it's pretty obvious what happened. SinoVoip gets direct support from Allwinner's business unit 2 (they support the A series SoCs and are also responsible for Pine Inc's Android offerings) and that's the reason they can provide an Android 6.0 build with working WiFi/BT/eMMC (but maybe they have not even Allwinner's sources for 'their' Android build).

 

The Linux images are based on outdated community stuff and 100% wrong settings (those for Pine64+). They did not prepare an own Github repo but simply took longsleep's 3.10.101 kernel, simpleimage framework and Pine64+ device tree settings to combine it in the most stupid way possible with an ARMv6 userland. Results as expected (slow as hell): https://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/751-rfc-support-cortex-a53arm64/#entry12462

 

And nothing changed within the last 5 months. If I understand correctly all their Linux images (since based on settings for the wrong device) are missing WiFi, BT, eMMC, GPIO capabilities and according to some posts not even Ethernet is working? 

[geektillithertz]

We probably won't support this board ... you can try running this image: https://www.armbian.com/pine64/

the legacy one works fine for now, except the usual wifi bt emmc. I'll probably get a desktop image built using the tool. 

thnx.

[tkaiser]

the legacy one works fine for now, except the usual wifi bt emmc. I'll probably get a desktop image built using the tool. 

thnx.

 

Well, we did provide a good working desktop image some time ago but since then download pages have been rearranged, building nightly builds has stopped and IMO it's impossible now to find stuff users might be interested in. But please note that here under "Nighty builds" a desktop image with legacy kernel might appear sometimes in the future (again): https://www.armbian.com/pine64/

 

Then regarding this http://forum.banana-pi.org/t/armbian-os-aarch64-for-banana-pi-m64-download/2722

 

I really don't like 3rd parties providing downloads for Armbian images they built themselves but since Armbian team fails so horribly to provide OS images in a reasonable way maybe that's the price we have to pay.

 

Anyway: the reasons why Wi-Fi, BT and eMMC aren't currently working aren't related to Allwinner at all, it's just that someone has to adopt hardware changes to software (correcting device tree nodes, adding Ampak driver). But as already explained SinoVoip is either too lazy or too clueless to do this and no 3rd party developers are interested in this device.

Regarding 'GPU drivers': This is just old, slow and boring Mali400 which could help with 3D acceleration in retro games. Libraries are available in the meantime but with unuseable license so not re-distributable. But this doesn't matter at all since there aren't applications around (other than game emulators) that could make use of Mali400. So please stop whining about 'missing GPU support' since it's absolutely irrelevant. 2D and video acceleration is working on A64 since a long time.

 

Important: Could you please add this link here to your post: https://github.com/igorpecovnik/lib.docs/blob/master/docs/board_details/pine64.md

 

Especially the last paragraph is important since in Armbian we prepared supporting other A64 boards in some generic way and the Gigabit Ethernet issues BPi M64 users are currently running into might be solveable by adjusting the so called 'TX delay' settings (those settings for Pine64+ obviously are wrong on BPi M64).

[geektillithertz]

Well, we did provide a good working desktop image some time ago but since then download pages have been rearranged, building nightly builds has stopped and IMO it's impossible now to find stuff users might be interested in. But please note that here under "Nighty builds" a desktop image with legacy kernel might appear sometimes in the future (again): https://www.armbian.com/pine64/

 

Then regarding this http://forum.banana-pi.org/t/armbian-os-aarch64-for-banana-pi-m64-download/2722

 

I really don't like 3rd parties providing downloads for Armbian images they built themselves but since Armbian team fails so horribly to provide OS images in a reasonable way maybe that's the price we have to pay.

 

Anyway: the reasons why Wi-Fi, BT and eMMC aren't currently working aren't related to Allwinner at all, it's just that someone has to adopt hardware changes to software (correcting device tree nodes, adding Ampak driver). But as already explained SinoVoip is either too lazy or too clueless to do this and no 3rd party developers are interested in this device.

Regarding 'GPU drivers': This is just old, slow and boring Mali400 which could help with 3D acceleration in retro games. Libraries are available in the meantime but with unuseable license so not re-distributable. But this doesn't matter at all since there aren't applications around (other than game emulators) that could make use of Mali400. So please stop whining about 'missing GPU support' since it's absolutely irrelevant. 2D and video acceleration is working on A64 since a long time.

 

Important: Could you please add this link here to your post: https://github.com/igorpecovnik/lib.docs/blob/master/docs/board_details/pine64.md

 

Especially the last paragraph is important since in Armbian we prepared supporting other A64 boards in some generic way and the Gigabit Ethernet issues BPi M64 users are currently running into might be solveable by adjusting the so called 'TX delay' settings (those settings for Pine64+ obviously are wrong on BPi M64).

done...

Isn't it possible to get the correct device tree for bt/wifi/emmc from android build? or does the android build not use device tree?

also for desperate measures, how can i install the gpu drivers own my own (won't redistribute it).

[tkaiser]

Isn't it possible to get the correct device tree for bt/wifi/emmc from android build? or does the android build not use device tree?

also for desperate measures, how can i install the gpu drivers own my own (won't redistribute it).

 

Sure, it's possible to get the necessary bits from the Android build. I would assume Jon Smirl already did that since he's working on it: http://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=3016

 

Regarding this Mali BS please don't ask me but better join the stupid 'Mali hype' over there: http://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=587&page=26 (please note that the main actors still don't get that Mali400 is only 3D acceleration and that 2D and video acceleration is totally unrelated).

 

Good luck with this platform!

[zador.blood.stained]

There are Pine64 desktop images here: https://img.armbian.com/pine64/nightly/

Please note that this link may not work in the future since download server structure rework is in progress.

[tkaiser]

I really don't like 3rd parties providing downloads for Armbian images

 

And it already happened: http://forum.banana-pi.org/t/bpi-m64-new-image-armbian-os-aarch64-for-bpi-m64-download/ 

 

Now people will download this image since it looks like an official announcement, then realize that WiFi, BT, eMMC and Gigabit Ethernet aren't working (as expected since we don't support BPi M64) and complain about Armbian being rubbish. Well done.

 

@geektillithertz: could you please link over there to this topic here?

[geektillithertz]

And it already happened: http://forum.banana-pi.org/t/bpi-m64-new-image-armbian-os-aarch64-for-bpi-m64-download/ 

 

Now people will download this image since it looks like an official announcement, then realize that WiFi, BT, eMMC and Gigabit Ethernet aren't working (as expected since we don't support BPi M64) and complain about Armbian being rubbish. Well done.

 

@geektillithertz: could you please link over there to this topic here?

welp, didn't see that coming... anyways i linked this descussion

 

Damn, the banana pi's youtube page also commented on the video saying and i quote "we will update all android source code on github. and wifi&bt working fine"

android source... let's see

wifi&bt... bullcrap

[tkaiser]

"we will update all android source code on github. and wifi&bt working fine"

 

Well, according to Jon Smirl Wifi&BT is working fine with their Android image (that they don't develop but that they got from Allwinner). And if they refer to sources they do it that way: http://forum.banana-pi.org/t/android-5-1-1-for-allwinner-a64-source-code/2327 (this is nothing they even touched but Jon Smirl's initial Android 5.1 release for Pine64+).

 

And if Jon asked for their code they simply don't reply (see here or here). Only reaction is posting a link to his sources while trying to trick users into believing that would be their sources. In the past they always declared they could not release Android sources due to Allwinner NDA. Why should that have changed? Now they simply will use community sources or 'leaked' SDK contents while not giving users access to the sources they use (or Allwinner's BU2 to be more precise).

[geektillithertz]

Well, according to Jon Smirl Wifi&BT is working fine with their Android image (that they don't develop but that they got from Allwinner). And if they refer to sources they do it that way: http://forum.banana-pi.org/t/android-5-1-1-for-allwinner-a64-source-code/2327 (this is nothing they even touched but Jon Smirl's initial Android 5.1 release for Pine64+).

 

And if Jon asked for their code they simply don't reply (see here or here). Only reaction is posting a link to his sources while trying to trick users into believing that would be their sources. In the past they always declared they could not release Android sources due to Allwinner NDA. Why should that have changed? Now they simply will use community sources or 'leaked' SDK contents while not giving users access to the sources they use (or Allwinner's BU2 to be more precise).

BIG pile of mess.... But why do they do this?

no wonder raspberry pi's sell like hot cakes.

[tkaiser]

But why do they do this?

 

Maybe for the same reason they don't tell their users how to flash Android? Obviously they're too stupid, ignorant and/or lazy.

 

Their Android images come from Allwinner, are in LiveSuit format and can not be burned using the usual tools (Etcher, Win32Diskimager and so on). The only available tutorial for BPi M64 is hidden somewhere in the forum. Made by another user of course. And all the BPi morons do is adding 'Good job. I like it .................' as comment instead of adding this to their so called 'documentation'.

 

So in case you want to extract the settings from Allwinner's Android image you'll need PhoenixSuit/PhoenixCard for Windows or follow the aforementioned steps using Ubuntu to flash Android directly to eMMC. And then you can follow these instructions to extract sys_config.fex stuff to have a look how WiFi/BT and eMMC device nodes (and maybe voltage settings) look like: https://github.com/linux-sunxi/sunxi-boards/commit/4a432501c910fddf759dd1171b15b0327b0d787a

[jonsmirl]

There isn't really much source to release for the BPi M64 Android build. It is unchanged from Allwinner's stock release except for a couple lines in a fex file where BPI moved a few wires around. An accurate schematic for M64 has been released so we know where those wires go now.  I have been running their Android image for a couple weeks and it has never crashed unless I was messing around and doing bad things to it. It has no issues with adb.

 

The hardware seems stable. My board is exposed to the open air and it stays about room temperature, no thermal problems. But I am not running any games that would peg the fours cores at 100% for an hour. If you did that it'd probably get really hot.

 

It should not be a big deal to get Armbian working on the M64. The M64 is closer to the Allwinner reference design than the Pine64 is. The Ampak AP6212 wifi/BT is quite common and drivers for it have been in mainline since around 3.5 or so. All of the USB OTG support is correctly wired up (unlike the Pine). Ethernet PHY is common. Nothing special about the eMMC. All of the needed pieces are available, someone just needs to take the time to put them together. It could be as simple as having an accurate device tree and a kernel that supports the A64.

 

Something I do hope to be getting in the near future is direct access to the Allwinner git server. I've only been asking for about five years now. Direct access would save me the pain of getting 6GB snapshots from the OEMs and then turning them back into AOSP repo trees. Still waiting on my dream of Allwinner getting support for their SOCs into mainline.

[jonsmirl]

Maybe for the same reason they don't tell their users how to flash Android? Obviously they're too stupid, ignorant and/or lazy.

 

It is an image for PhoenixCard/PhoenixSuit/LiveSuit. The BPi M64 support is 99.99% unchanged from Allwinner's reference code.

 

You can run these images from either SD Card or eMMC.  Just click the appropriate choice when making the SD Card.

[tkaiser]

It is an image for PhoenixCard/PhoenixSuit/LiveSuit.

 

This is well known by everyone who deals with Allwinner Android images. But it's fascinating that a vendor provides an OS image he got from Allwinner and doesn't mention how to burn it since the process is special. So for BPi M64 they provide either images that work but none of their average users can burn or broken images where Wi-Fi, BT, eMMC and LAN aren't working since they simply took all settings from Pine64+.

 

Why should Armbian add support for this hardware? It was already a mistake to support BPi M2+ since users then think this would be worth a buy. SinoVoip only targets clueless people so they will sell their hardware anyway no matter how bad software support is.

 

Regarding 'accurate schematic' I simply don't trust them since they released inaccurate schematics for BPi M2+ for example (they know their mistake -- specifying wrong VDD_CPUX -- but they simply don't give a sh*t and don't release fixed schematics).

 

Regarding Allwinner: https://bananapi.gitbooks.io/bpi-m2-ultra-open-source-single-board-computer/content/tina-iotos.html (their tinalinux stuff released just recently still relies on this PhoenixCrap and uses kernel 3.4.39 for R16)

[@lex]

It is an image for PhoenixCard/PhoenixSuit/LiveSuit. The BPi M64 support is 99.99% unchanged from Allwinner's reference code.

 

You can run these images from either SD Card or eMMC.  Just click the appropriate choice when making the SD Card.

 

Hi @jonsmirl

 

Did you manage to extract a DTS (or DTB) from the running M64? Can you share it?

I am struggling to make eMMC work on linux, i have had some little success but still having errors.

 

I have updated the MMC driver with a hope that it would fix but most likely is the wrong DTB settings i have.

If your build environment is similar to M2U there should be sunxi.dtb, mind sharing?

 

@lex

[tkaiser]

I am struggling to make eMMC work on linux, i have had some little success but still having errors.

 

Did you already take the DMA buffer size limit into account? https://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/1917-armbian-running-on-pine64-and-other-a64h5-devices/?p=22188

[@lex]

I think so, the new driver take care of this if i am not wrong.

I need a working DTB to make sure i have not messed up with the driver.

 

BTW i am doing this on 3.10.102

 

I am confident the driver is ok, if @jonsmirl kindly shares a working DTB i can narrow it down hopefully.