NanoPi Neo and Arabian 5.27 my first impression and issues

[Igor_K]

Hi there, 

 

I've received 4 NanoPi Neo (with heatsinks as suggested by @tkaiser) recently.  Here is my my first impression and also I've come across some minor issues. I hope It would be useful. 

 

I've installed Armbian_5.27.170403_Nanopineo_Ubuntu_xenial_dev_4.10.3.  

Also tried dietpi (kernel 3.4) and h3-mainline-ubuntu-core-qte-sd4g-beta-20170228.img (FrendlyArm, kernel 4.10)

 

So far for good. Armbian works like a charm I have been able to install Docker and I've performed some simple tests. Awesome job guys!

 

I've found one issue so far MAC address changes at every reboot. The issue was mentioned in some threads on the forum but seems like there is no solution still.  btw FA's h3-mainline-ubuntu-core-qte-sd4g-beta-20170228  has no such an issue. So my workaround for this is `hwaddress ether 02:81:xx:xx:xx:xx` in `/etc/network/interfaces` file. I took MAC address from FA's image.  

 

It is not a issue. Installer forces me to change root password and make a user  account. I totally understand all the security implications and stuff but it makes a massive bootstrapping difficult. I would like to make an ansible playbook to bootstrap all boards at once but it requires some extra work and jumping over hoops with expect module. If it it possible to disable that (without rebuilding an images) please share. 

 

Overall Armbian gives me a very positive impression. Great work. I'm looking forward for some more experiments. 

 

[Igor_K]

I've decided to put all my workarounds here for a reference 

 

1)  Mac address changes at every reboot.  

 

Explicitly set your MAC address upon an Armbian system in /etc/network/interfaces 

iface eth0 inet dhcp
hwaddress ether 02:81:xx:xx:xx:xx 

 

[Igor_K]

2) ethernet interface (eth0) is stuck at 100mb/s and Half Duplex.

Problem can be resolved with adding `pre-up` commands in section eth0 in `/etc/network/interfaces` file

 

iface eth0 inet dhcp
hwaddress ether 02:81:xx:xx:xx:xx
pre-up /sbin/ifconfig eth0 down
pre-up /sbin/ifconfig eth0 up
pre-up /sbin/ifconfig eth0 down

LINK

[tao]

Please keep adding workaround as you find them.  I have a neo but have not done much with it. These tidbits will help me when I get back to it.

[Igor]

@tao

 

This kernel is still in development phase - we don't provide user support for it and AFAIK new Ethernet driver is in making. It's seem a waste of time to implement temporally workarounds into the user space if proper solution is around the corner.

[Igor_K]

Igor,  thank you very much for your work. But the think is I would like to experiment with these boards right now and these hacks make it just a little bit more convenient. I'm glad to hear that he fix is on the way.