ihipop Posted December 17, 2024 Posted December 17, 2024 (edited) I can't get HDMI output in RK3399 board Nano PC T4, what I have tried https://dl.armbian.com/nanopct4/Noble_current_gnome-kisak https://dl.armbian.com/nanopct4/Bookworm_current_minimal the SSH is working I can only get a black screen on HDMI Kernel 5.x (Armbian 22) works Edited December 17, 2024 by ihipop 0 Quote
Solution Igor Posted January 3 Solution Posted January 3 On 12/17/2024 at 10:44 AM, ihipop said: the SSH is working Those are community supported images - they work or not. Nobody will debug them but you. Just type: armbian-config and switch to alternative kernels which might work better - easy. I accidentally bump into this by scanning copycat projects. Quote Thank you for being willing to discuss this with me, you are the only one for now. Without supplying logs, nobody will answer. This is open source project that invest into R/D. Time is not at our side. There are too many problems in open source, so you need to fight for attention ... and community supported is down to community, make friends first, ask questions next. Team is not covering those. I don't know if you noticed, but he only does lots of chatting and not resolving common problems. https://docs.armbian.com/#comparison FYI (downstream = dietpi) Quote Interesting that features of such an old long mainline-supported board break. We (developers) know that very well, its quite a norm. Pure luck keep those boards functional - "Armbian community support" counts only on that. Mainline support means little in this regard. Without constant maintenance, things will certainly break apart. This is law in this world. In most cases (supported branches) we fix this before anyone notices. For not maintained, as in this case, - we don't know and don't want to know. I mean, perhaps you got lucky and someone will respond. Quote There have not been any significant changes recently, or at all, and its device tree does not define any HDMI-related thing anyway, while it works on other RK3399 boards I think it is better asking CHATGPT. Quote It is actually a good circumstance to test the new Linux 6.12 kernel build. ... which is our work. We suffered and lost months, while he is selling this under his brand while he never helped in any way. Contrary. Quote HDMI and HDMI audio is working! It is hard to describe how muck work was needed to get this working: (sales person you have been talking too, never worked with / for us) https://docs.armbian.com/Release_Changelog/#v24111-2024-11-28 Here you can make a donation: https://www.armbian.com/donate/ And here you can step up as a maintainer. I would not ask you this, if we would have other options. Then you can sort out and provide people images that works. 0 Quote
ihipop Posted January 5 Author Posted January 5 (edited) Dear Igor, Thank you for taking the time to respond to my concerns. I carefully read your comments and deeply appreciate the contributions made by the Armbian community to the SBC ecosystem. Below are my responses and clarifications regarding the points you raised: About Community-Supported Images,You mentioned that "these are community-supported images—they may work or may not. Nobody will debug them but you." I fully understand the limitations of community-supported versions and recognize that the development team's primary focus is on the official supported versions. When using community-supported images, I did not expect direct support but will follow your advice and try further testing while providing logs to assist in locating the issue. About the New Kernel and Related Work, You mentioned that the team invested significant time and effort in developing the Linux 6.12 kernel build and that others have not for it. I truly appreciate the work that the Armbian team has put into this. Open-source contributions are challenging, and I recognize the immense value in the hard work that has been done. I believe that Armbian's influence in the SBC ecosystem is irreplaceable, and I am thankful for your team's efforts. About Community Donations and Maintenance,You suggested that "here you can make a donation" and "if you wish, you can step up as a maintainer." I appreciate this sincere invitation. While I am currently unable to take on the role of a maintainer, I am willing to contribute by providing feedback, testing information, and participating in community discussions. I will also consider supporting Armbian's development in other ways, including through donations. About HDMI Output Issue Clarification: In my debugging process, I did not see any error messages related to this issue in the dmesg logs. This led me to suspect that it might be related to the changes made in PR #2016, which appears to have disabled certain HDMI features, preventing error messages from appearing. Since I observed similar issues in other distributions based on the mainline kernel, such as DietPi, I began to suspect that the issue might be inherent to the mainline kernel itself. However, LibreELEC did not exhibit this problem, suggesting that they may have fixed the issue in some way. Since I did not receive further discussion on PR #2016 in the Armbian community, I reached out to the DietPi author. He was very willing to discuss the issue with me, for which I expressed my thanks to him. This was purely a thank you for his willingness to invest time in helping, and it was not meant as a criticism of any other organizations or individuals. I fully understand your point that the development team's resources are mainly focused on the officially supported versions, and community-supported versions may not receive timely responses. I sincerely appreciate the contributions Armbian has made to the SBC ecosystem, particularly tools like armbian-config, which greatly help users resolve issues. I will follow your advice and try switching to other kernel versions for further testing. Best regards Edited January 5 by ihipop 0 Quote
ihipop Posted January 6 Author Posted January 6 (edited) Dear Igor, On 1/3/2025 at 10:36 PM, Igor said: armbian-config I tried `6.13.0-rc5-edge-rockchip64`, and the HDMI works again so it's must a fix starting from Linux 6.13 The WLAN is still not working, But I know it's a Linux upstream problem and I know some solution Edited January 6 by ihipop 0 Quote
Igor Posted January 6 Posted January 6 On 1/5/2025 at 5:35 AM, ihipop said: I carefully read your comments and deeply appreciate the contributions made by the Armbian community to the SBC ecosystem. Thank you, appreciated! On 1/5/2025 at 5:35 AM, ihipop said: other distributions based on the mainline kernel It is based on Armbian kernel (usually binary) which is a big difference. All our kernels are patched and most of kernels are based on mainline. Some are patched heavily, some less. Stabilization of kernel stack is the biggest expense we have. Credits for our work are everything in this line of work and when someone takes them, it can't be worse. Explaining and fighting for our intellectual property is yet another stupid (common) loss. 5 hours ago, ihipop said: But I know it's a Linux upstream problem Mainline kernel is pretty raw which is causing constant troubles, which "based on Armbian, while telling everyone that they are based on Debian and mainline kernel" never have so they can focus on sales (of our work). On 1/5/2025 at 5:35 AM, ihipop said: it was not meant as a criticism of any other organizations or individuals. I understand. This was not directed to you. On 1/5/2025 at 5:35 AM, ihipop said: He was very willing to discuss "talk is cheap" while keeping things operation is something entirely different. 5 hours ago, ihipop said: I tried `6.13.0-rc5-edge-rockchip64`, and the HDMI works again so it's must a fix starting from Linux 6.13 Like I mentioned, software support is constant struggle and there is no way to address problems in real time, when people show up on this forum with it (and via emails that are constantly hitting our mall boxes). There are way too many of them and there is very very little support from general public, and there are people that, could help but changing wallpapers and taking credits is more profitable. Going for bleeding edge kernel is not a good solution as it always bring other problems - other features - we don't know - are certainly broken. What we generally do is - completing features on latest LTS kernel, which is 6.12.y, but to which we just switched few weeks ago and is expected to be stable-ish in about 4-6 months. Best kernel, in general, not just for this hardware, is (Armbian, mainline based) is still 6.6.y. Another way - If you seek for quick solution - we keep all older images in the archive: https://rsync.armbian.com/archive/ https://rsync.armbian.com/oldarchive/ Running older (kernel) builds is not what you / we would want, but there are no better options. Constantly changing mainline support is fragile and it will take months to nail things down. If you can help, welcome! 0 Quote
ihipop Posted January 6 Author Posted January 6 Dear Igor, 7 minutes ago, Igor said: Another way - If you seek for quick solution - we keep all older images in the archive: Yes, I currently run most of my NanoPC T4 SBCs with Armbian 22 from the archive due to HDMI issues. The others are running a custom-built kernel of LibreELEC (which officially uses kernel 6.12 at the moment, and HDMI is working on it as well). Quote If you can help, welcome! Comparing the kernel source differences between Armbian and LibreELEC is a significant challenge because LibreELEC trims many kernel features to optimize it as a "just enough" OS for Kodi. I’ll share any findings with the community once I start migrating my NanoPC T4 SBCs to LibreELEC's kernel 6.12. 18 minutes ago, Igor said: "talk is cheap" while keeping things operation is something entirely different. I completely understand and appreciate the effort and expertise that go into creating something valuable—it’s not always easy to see that fully acknowledged. At the same time, even seemingly simple conversations or feedback can sometimes play the role of a ‘rubber duck,’ helping to clarify thoughts and guide solutions. Also, I’m genuinely grateful for your work, as I've described the Thanks to Armbian Team before 0 Quote
Werner Posted January 6 Posted January 6 23 minutes ago, ihipop said: which officially uses kernel 6.12 at the moment, and HDMI is working on it as well My guess is that they backported patches which were merged into 6.13 and still in the pipeline. It is still on decision if we want to go through the pain backporting HDMI stuff to 6.12 LTS (our current) or simply drop everything related to that and tell users to follow edge (or stick with vendor which works very well) which will be 6.13, 6.14 and so on until a new LTS kernel is released. For server applications stability is more critical and HDMI is not needed there in most cases. 0 Quote
ihipop Posted January 6 Author Posted January 6 (edited) Dear Werner: 13 minutes ago, Werner said: My guess is that they backported patches which were merged into 6.13 and still in the pipeline Their build system use a Vanilla Linux Kernel Source + Patch Files, I haven't found any specific patch for fixing the HDMI is not working https://github.com/LibreELEC/LibreELEC.tv/tree/master/projects/Rockchip/patches/linux/default or maybe I've missed something Edited January 6 by ihipop 0 Quote
Werner Posted January 6 Posted January 6 As mentioned it was just a guess. Maybe something else is missing. Flaw in dts maybe? Dunno. Anyone who has some spare time might dive into and check. Armbian core team probably won't anytime soon, simply due to lack of human resources We highly appreciate contributions from our community. 0 Quote
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