CSC Armbian for RK322x TV box boards

[jock]

2 hours ago, RaptorSDS said:

i am on mainline kernel 5.10

 

i had befor set cpu from 400MHz to limit 1.2GHz max  -> to limit thermal output

after that kernel panic i switch back to 600Mhz to 1.39GHz ( after kernel panic armbian-config has no 400Mhz option) now its little bit better

(could a app like php3 , nginx, mariadb do a kernel panic  like above ? )

 

but i hope i will not be get worse

 

 

I have already experienced stability issues when lowest frequency is set to 400 Mhz, just can't remember if it was on rk322x (probably) or rk3318.

If you still have such issues, there is the cpu-stability dtb overlay you can add to overlays but beware that it will increase temperature by 1-2°C at lower frequencies.

 

Userland applications must not cause any kernel panic in any condition. If they do so it is because something is wrong in the kernel (a bug in a driver, an error in the dtb, ...).

There may be the chance they are messing with some device internal they should not do, like writing directly to phisycal memory or MSR registers, but in normal conditions they are not allowed to do so. Surely php, nginx and mariadb don't tinker with low level things at all.

Of course, if the board is not stable you may get plenty of kernel panics, but indeed they are not software related.

 

[RaptorSDS]

thanks for that fast reponse

 

after 2 more crash i also change governer to "schedule" -> my box sitting now at 1 ghz at 55 degree and is fine now (about 4h)

 

before i saw that every http request request the cpu to up to all 4cores 100% for 1sec and also fast switch of cpu frequency and temp (50degree to 65 degree )for the 1sec after that goes down to 600mhz , maybe the fast up and down related to the issue

 

thanks for the info about apps

[jock]

57 minutes ago, RaptorSDS said:

thanks for that fast reponse

 

after 2 more crash i also change governer to "schedule" -> my box sitting now at 1 ghz at 55 degree and is fine now (about 4h)

 

before i saw that every http request request the cpu to up to all 4cores 100% for 1sec and also fast switch of cpu frequency and temp (50degree to 65 degree )for the 1sec after that goes down to 600mhz , maybe the fast up and down related to the issue

 

thanks for the info about apps

I have a very similar problem on my box too.

The cpu-stability overlay increases the voltage of the lower frequency operating points, so the voltage regulator has to span a shorter delta when increasing frequency. With the overlay I solved and now the board is rock-solid.

[Charles Bauer]

Hi, I have a tv box with rk3228 cpu and it´s working almost fine with armbian.

I am having some issues but I am o working on it and I expect to provide useful tutorial here.

I am working on get everything done and fine because we espect to tranform tv boxes on desktops to use on public schools here.

 

What I need to know is how to do armbian recognize all my memory. My armbian is recognizing just 1GB and I think that it has more based on the chips it have.

I am using this image: Armbian_21.05.1_Rk322x-box_focal_legacy_4.4.194_xfce_desktop.img.xz

The pic below shows my board.. This is the back and in front there are more 4 of this ones.

tks in advance.

 

[Charles Bauer]

Just now, Charles Bauer said:

Hi, I have a tv box with rk3228 cpu and it´s working almost fine with armbian.

I am having some issues but I am o working on it and I expect to provide useful tutorial here.

I am working on get everything done and fine because we espect to tranform tv boxes on desktops to use on public schools here.

 

What I need to know is how to do armbian recognize all my memory. My armbian is recognizing just 1GB and I think that it has more based on the chips it have.

I am using this image: Armbian_21.05.1_Rk322x-box_focal_legacy_4.4.194_xfce_desktop.img.xz

The pic below shows my board.. This is the back and in front there are more 4 of this ones.

tks in advance.

 

The image above is from the front. Send now because before I did not see how to attach more images.

[jock]

12 hours ago, Charles Bauer said:

What I need to know is how to do armbian recognize all my memory. My armbian is recognizing just 1GB and I think that it has more based on the chips it have.

You think wrong. According to the official specs of the DRAM chips, those parts are 1 gigabit each, so 8 chips turns out to be 1 gigabyte.

[Charles Bauer]

3 hours ago, jock said:

You think wrong. According to the official specs of the DRAM chips, those parts are 1 gigabit each, so 8 chips turns out to be 1 gigabyte.

Hmm I was understanding that each piece give me 1gb. But the right answer is that each give me 128mb and it is 8 to give me the 1gb that I have right? My apologies for not knowing and not having experience reading the datasheet.

 

Knowing that, could I use the nand memory as swap? I am having trouble with the apps that are crashing and I think, not sure, that the problem is out of memory. When I mean apps I am saying for example the web browser is even running apt to install other apps. The crash freezes the box after some code on the screen or without code too.

[jock]

21 minutes ago, Charles Bauer said:

Hmm I was understanding that each piece give me 1gb

That's true, each "piece" (the right jargon is "part") gives you 1 gigabit. In total it is 8 gigabits, which is 1 gigabyte.

 

22 minutes ago, Charles Bauer said:

Knowing that, could I use the nand memory as swap?

Yes, you can, but it is the worst thing you can do: it will kill the flash memory in no-time. Flash memory sectors have a limited number of writes, after then they wear out. Using flash memories (either they are NAND, eMMC or SSDs) for swap is not a wise idea in general.

Swap is already configured in Armbian as zswap, which is smarter for flash based device because memroy pages which are "unneeded" are just compressed directly in RAM, so they occupy less memory. Android, for example, does the same thing.

 

29 minutes ago, Charles Bauer said:

I am having trouble with the apps that are crashing and I think, not sure, that the problem is out of memory.

In case a process crashes due to out of memory, dmesg will tell you that a process has been killed because of an Out Of Memory (OOM) event.

It is much more probable that your board is just not stable, so you can try adding cpu-stability to overlays in /etc/armbianEnv.txt

[Charles Bauer]

Hi Jock! cpu-stability on overlays resolved the problem. Tks.

No I will work on the other ones! tks!

[Charles Bauer]

Hi all,

 

Just to share how this project is important.

We are working with our government to convert 500.000 tv boxes in Desktops to use on public Schools.

It´s a social project that I am leading. (https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=en&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gluee.com.br%2Findex.php%2Flearning-box&sandbox=1)

We are already using Libreoffice and some IDE for programming on the pilot TV box.

The next phase is to try to use Google Classrom and to try to achieve good performance on a browser and youtube videos.

 

Any help will be valuable.

 

Regards and thanks for all!

[fabiobassa]

@Charles Bauer

your project is awewsome and it deserves the greates support and my personal ammiration.

I am not a programmer,  I'm more on the hardware side, but hope you can achieve your goal

Compliments !!!

[RaptorSDS]

@Charles Bauer wow nice project

to achieve a good performance for Browser and YouTube is not easy way

my experience with raspberry 3b and as image DietPi, Raspbian or Ubuntu (Wireless over 5GHz or 100 Mbit link)

as browser I test chromium and Firefox and some small browser

all configuration I used has a lack of media acceleration because of missing free-GPU driver and the bottleneck of SD-Card (sometimes also lack of RAM)

most of the time I can open only max 3 Tabs than it gets very slow , youtube only 360p or less (360p i got only 15fps )

 

( my smartphone moto g5 2GB Ram has 10 Tab in chrome and did not get slower; my wife's laptop has 30 tabs in Firefox and Firefox used only 2GB Ram for this)

 

I did not test this rk3229 chip, but I thing because of missing free MALI-driver it maybe have same issues

I hope you get a better performance

I also work more on the hardware side as on software

but for my browser experience I switch to a rk3328 box with android and a chrome browser

 

[Charles Bauer]

2 hours ago, RaptorSDS said:

@Charles Bauer wow nice project

to achieve a good performance for Browser and YouTube is not easy way

my experience with raspberry 3b and as image DietPi, Raspbian or Ubuntu (Wireless over 5GHz or 100 Mbit link)

as browser I test chromium and Firefox and some small browser

all configuration I used has a lack of media acceleration because of missing free-GPU driver and the bottleneck of SD-Card (sometimes also lack of RAM)

most of the time I can open only max 3 Tabs than it gets very slow , youtube only 360p or less (360p i got only 15fps )

 

( my smartphone moto g5 2GB Ram has 10 Tab in chrome and did not get slower; my wife's laptop has 30 tabs in Firefox and Firefox used only 2GB Ram for this)

 

I did not test this rk3229 chip, but I thing because of missing free MALI-driver it maybe have same issues

I hope you get a better performance

I also work more on the hardware side as on software

but for my browser experience I switch to a rk3328 box with android and a chrome browser

 

So the problem seems to be on Mali driver? I will ask them to help us. Perhaps they could be interested on the project.

 

Regards,

 

Charles Bauer

[Charles Bauer]

Just now, Charles Bauer said:

So the problem seems to be on Mali driver? I will ask them to help us. Perhaps they could be interested on the project.

 

Regards,

 

Charles Bauer

I forgot to mention that we cannot use Android because it would be too easy to use the box again to watch pirate videos. And that would not be nice for the government to have they donated boxes used to bad things.

[RaptorSDS]

vor 5 Stunden schrieb Charles Bauer:

So the problem seems to be on Mali driver? I will ask them to help us. Perhaps they could be interested on the project.

 

Regards,

 

Charles Bauer

please look at page 34 @fabiobassa and @ArkhanLK with @jockspeak about Mali400 driver and Desktop with HW-Video and some problems

 

 

[fabiobassa]

@Charles Bauer

Charles the problem is really a sum of problems... lack of right mali drivers isn't exactly true since we have the right drivers...  poor integration into Xorg server experiences is more true

What I mean ? You can have a very satisfactory video experience ( kodi with gbm video drivers) but no desktop.....or......a good xserver desktop daily use and a poor video experience .

But the desktop experience could be good for programming or server use. All depends what use you really need for the box. Many tabs on chromium ( chrome) with video inside are not possible.

But I repeat this project is very admirable and with some tuning you can have satisfactory experience

 

[jock]

8 hours ago, Charles Bauer said:

So the problem seems to be on Mali driver? I will ask them to help us

Ask who? ARM? Good luck then... they somehow cooperate now providing limited documentation, but often in the past have been very troublesome for opensource community; they started sharing things after people already reverse engineered GPUs by themselves (not before).

 

Anyway, Mali GPU is not part of the game in video decoding, that's a job of the VPU, which is already working very well with opensource drivers.

The "only" problem is that making the driver does not magically let things work everywhere, there is the missing glue that connects applications to the hardware decoding capabilities and also browsers are huge and complex piece of software. Also mixing hardware decoded frames coming from the VPU into a CPU-rendered page and displayed via VPU is yet another complex task not yet completed: you can clearly see the many parts of the SoC in need to cooperate.

 

I would not go for the legacy/proprietary kernel, I would rather push over the mainline kernel which is probably getting better and better support with time; proprietary kernel is stuck and rockchip does not provide updates anymore, but this requires exploring ffmpeg recent introductions and experimental code too. For example, firefox has a vaapi capability to do hardware video decoding (introduced very recently for linux BTW), but yet there is no vaapi driver for rockchip (nor for amlogic or allwinner) yet; so until someone writes a proper vaapi driver, no hardware decoding in browsers for now. I don't even consider Chromium since the last Google idea to lock-out their APIs for their own opensource browser.

 

Another fact is that the box is generally slow, so desktop experience is not great. I think there is something missing in the DRM part because Allwinner H3 chips have generally better desktop experience despite they are just the same as rk3229.

 

Anyway good luck for your project, I think that it has the numbers to convince some people in the high towers to make some political changes and let involved companies contribute!

 

[arir]

On 5/24/2021 at 3:55 AM, jock said:

Try this experimental image posted here: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/12656-csc-armbian-for-rk322x-tv-boxes/?do=findComment&comment=123438

Hi, I try this experimental image and it works for my board, wifi not work but no problem.

I just want to ssh to my box, no need display output.

if HDMI plug to monitor everything works fine.

how to boot headless with out HDMI connection?

[jock]

53 minutes ago, arir said:

Hi, I try this experimental image and it works for my board, wifi not work but no problem.

I just want to ssh to my box, no need display output.

if HDMI plug to monitor everything works fine.

how to boot headless with out HDMI connection?

Hello. The experimental image is not really recommended unless you have problems with the stable images.

Don't use it if you don't really need it!

 

I'm not sure I understood the question, but the box boots fine even if you don't plug any HDMI cable.

If you don't want to "disable" the HDMI to not let it work at all, I guess the most straightforward way is to disable the HDMI node in the dtb.

Tinkering with the dtb is not recommended too, if you don't want a console access (but keep the ssh access), I guess it is better to disable the systemd getty services

[arir]

late response, new member only have 1post/day.

23 hours ago, jock said:

Hello. The experimental image is not really recommended unless you have problems with the stable images.

already tried many stable images, none of them worked for my board. maybe my board have EMCP like you said in that post.

so far only that image and libreelec image work.

hope you can make that image stable.

this is my dmesg http://ix.io/3rOh

23 hours ago, jock said:

I'm not sure I understood the question, but the box boots fine even if you don't plug any HDMI cable.

If you don't want to "disable" the HDMI to not let it work at all, I guess the most straightforward way is to disable the HDMI node in the dtb.

Tinkering with the dtb is not recommended too, if you don't want a console access (but keep the ssh access), I guess it is better to disable the systemd getty services

sorry if its hard to understand, like you said it is boot even HDMI not plugin.

my problem is cant login to ssh if HDMI not plugin.

my auth log:

Jul  3 17:08:11 rk322x-box systemd-logind[651]: Watching system buttons on /dev/input/event0 (RC for dw_hdmi)
Jul  3 17:08:11 rk322x-box systemd-logind[651]: Watching system buttons on /dev/input/event2 (gpio_ir_recv)
Jul  3 17:08:11 rk322x-box CRON[669]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Jul  3 17:08:22 rk322x-box sshd[1484]: Server listening on 0.0.0.0 port 22.
Jul  3 17:08:22 rk322x-box sshd[1484]: Server listening on :: port 22.

it seem like sshd service not start if no HDMI, something like that. maybe wrong too idk.

is there something i can do for disable hdmi check for startup?

[admtpu]

I have 1 box mxq pro 4k rk3229
I flashed Armbian_21.05.1_Rk322x-box_buster_current_5.10.34_minimal.img but it didn't work, the box boots for 1 second and restarts continuously, I can't even see what it shows.
I flashed Armbian_21.05.1_Rk322x-box_buster_legacy_4.4.194.img and it worked perfectly.
What if I want to use kernel 5.x?

[Charles Bauer]

In English:

I would like to share a Portuguese tutorial to help installing armbian on RK3228 TV BOX model MXQ PRO. This tutorial helps dealing with black screen after first reboot, configuring Wifi, keyboard and Language. The link to the tutorial is https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v0bS7mFausicoExFPDP2PR-PKZeeeC3Di75XyB1g0AQ/edit?usp=sharing and can be found on this site too: https://www.gluee.com.br/index.php/learning-box

 

Em Português:

Eu gostaria de compartilhar este tutorial em Português para ajudar na instalação do Armbian na TV BOX MXQ PRO com processador RK3228. Este tutorial ajuda a tratar a tela preta após o primeiro boot, configurar wifi, teclado e idioma. O link para o tutorial é https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v0bS7mFausicoExFPDP2PR-PKZeeeC3Di75XyB1g0AQ/edit?usp=sharing e também pode ser encontrado no site https://www.gluee.com.br/index.php/learning-box

[RaptorSDS]

vor 5 Stunden schrieb Charles Bauer:

In English:

I would like to share a Portuguese tutorial to help installing armbian on RK3228 TV BOX model MXQ PRO. This tutorial helps dealing with black screen after first reboot, configuring Wifi, keyboard and Language. The link to the tutorial is https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v0bS7mFausicoExFPDP2PR-PKZeeeC3Di75XyB1g0AQ/edit?usp=sharing and can be found on this site too: https://www.gluee.com.br/index.php/learning-box

 

 

nice work

 

some comments

 

1. i do not know if you get all box from same manufactor ( or if manufactor use always NAND) , maybe you have to show also eMMC install

2. after flash multiboot.img i had only 800mb partition (enought for "buster minimal.img" ) i had to boot it once because resize of fat32 partition than i got enought space for "buster desktop.img"

3. its maybe easyer to change armbianEnv.txt direct after rk322x-config , when a user unintend reboot the box you have the cpu-stability modifcation on . ( you can use "sudo nano" inside CLI for edit files)

[fabiobassa]

Perfect @Charles Bauer
nice work and again I hope your project can fly high .

May be could be a nice thing give credits in your document to @jockthat personally wrote the multitool , to myself and to armbian project in general, since without this base the whole goal wouldn't have been possible

Go on with this effort to bring low cost tecnology to kids of your country !!!

[jock]

On 7/4/2021 at 9:55 AM, admtpu said:

I have 1 box mxq pro 4k rk3229
I flashed Armbian_21.05.1_Rk322x-box_buster_current_5.10.34_minimal.img but it didn't work, the box boots for 1 second and restarts continuously, I can't even see what it shows.
I flashed Armbian_21.05.1_Rk322x-box_buster_legacy_4.4.194.img and it worked perfectly.
What if I want to use kernel 5.x?

Hello.

Can't read from the board photos if your flash is NAND or eMMC; in case of NAND (multitool tells you), you can't flash mainline kernel and expect it works. Mainline kernel will work from sdcard though.

In case you have eMMC, as usual we don't have the crystal ball and without the logs from the serial adapter can't guess anything.

[jock]

On 7/4/2021 at 9:55 AM, arir said:

maybe my board have EMCP like you said in that post.

Maybe. You can tell us, we surely don't know

 

On 7/4/2021 at 9:55 AM, arir said:

my problem is cant login to ssh if HDMI not plugin.

Definitely weird, this never happened on any box.

I can assure you that there are plenty of boxes around without anything attached to HDMI and ssh is indeed accessible, even after first boot.

There is no HDMI check of sort and never has been anyone.

[jock]

10 hours ago, Charles Bauer said:

This tutorial helps dealing with black screen after first reboot,

Black screen after first reboot? Do you mean the thing solved by cpu-stability overlay?

 

4 hours ago, RaptorSDS said:

after flash multiboot.img i had only 800mb partition (enought for "buster minimal.img" ) i had to boot it once because resize of fat32 partition than i got enought space for "buster desktop.img"

Note that the multitool is happy even if you put compressed gz/xz/zip/lzma/bz2 images in the images folder: it will decompress them on-the-fly.

The FAT partition, right after flashing the multitool, should be a bit less than 2Gb. 800 Mb is strangely small

[arir]

11 minutes ago, jock said:

Maybe. You can tell us, we surely don't know

 

Definitely weird, this never happened on any box.

I can assure you that there are plenty of boxes around without anything attached to HDMI and ssh is indeed accessible, even after first boot.

There is no HDMI check of sort and never has been anyone.

okay thank you 

[RaptorSDS]

vor 36 Minuten schrieb jock:

Black screen after first reboot? Do you mean the thing solved by cpu-stability overlay?

 

Note that the multitool is happy even if you put compressed gz/xz/zip/lzma/bz2 images in the images folder: it will decompress them on-the-fly.

The FAT partition, right after flashing the multitool, should be a bit less than 2Gb. 800 Mb is strangely small

 

Thanky for the Info about Zip/Gzip/XZ format , i use belanerEtcher for writing multitool image to SD-card

[Charles Bauer]

6 hours ago, RaptorSDS said:

nice work

 

some comments

 

1. i do not know if you get all box from same manufactor ( or if manufactor use always NAND) , maybe you have to show also eMMC install

2. after flash multiboot.img i had only 800mb partition (enought for "buster minimal.img" ) i had to boot it once because resize of fat32 partition than i got enought space for "buster desktop.img"

3. its maybe easyer to change armbianEnv.txt direct after rk322x-config , when a user unintend reboot the box you have the cpu-stability modifcation on . ( you can use "sudo nano" inside CLI for edit files)

Hi @RaptorSDS,

 

1 - I just have access to NAND boxes till now. As long as during our project we got other kinds We will write other tutorials. That´s what I expect to do.

2- I did not got what you mean. Should I format the SD card before writing multitool.img?

3 - I did not got what you mean. Shoul I change the order of the modifications? I used vi because it´s what I know.

 

Thanks for the feedbacks!