Orange Pi Plus 2e USB ports not working.

[catotinha]

TL:DR

Orange Pi Plus 2e USB ports are not working on newer images (LE and Armbian).
 

Full story:

Hi.  I am Catota and I am new here.

I am mainly a windows user with very little experience with linux.

My brother recently discovered an old forgotten Orange Pi Plus 2e and gave it to me as I was looking for a media player.
It has a functional Armbian 20.02.1 installed in its internal memory, but my brother does not know the passwords for either the normal user or root anymore.
I installed the latest Armbian from the SD slot and it booted just fine, but the USB ports (used for keyboard and mouse) do not seem to be working.
I installed the latest LE from the SD slot and it booted just fine, but the USB ports do not seem to be working.

I booted from internal memory into the old Armbian and all USB ports are working fine (but i lack permissions to upgrade or install anything because I do know any passwords).
I installed the oldest Armbian (21.02) and LE (10.04) I could find, but the USB ports do not seem to be working.

Does anybody know if there is something very obvious that I am missing?

Thanks.

 

[Igor]

10 hours ago, catotinha said:

Hi.  I am Catota and I am new here.

 

Welcome on board.

 

10 hours ago, catotinha said:

very little experience with linux.

 

This will be a huge difference, so be open for learning, have a lot of patience.

 

https://docs.armbian.com/User-Guide_Board-Support-Rules/

One of the key challenges we face is that maintaining older hardware is both time-consuming and costly. With limited financial and community support, the resources we have are already stretched thin across the entire project.

 

Our team is very small—currently, we have only one dedicated maintainer for the Allwinner software stack that is focused into latest 64bit Allwinner family (H6/H6xxx). Other projects often face similar constraints, often relying on a single contributor who can do anything. For example, in our collaboration with LibreELEC (LE), we benefit from some shared efforts, but both sides are still primarily driven by individual volunteers working on a best-effort basis. If priorities shift, progress can be delayed significantly—and unfortunately, Armbian doesn't have the capacity to pick up.

 

I’m sharing this openly in the hope that it raises awareness. Personally, I would love to see continued support for legacy devices. But to make that happen, we need to ask: who is willing and able to invest weeks or months each year required to maintain these older platforms?

What you can do? Try to understand how this works, connect with people that share your problem (all similar board owners with interest that it is maintained) - invest time to learn.

 

9 hours ago, catotinha said:

something very obvious that I am missing?

 

Probably USB ports are just not enabled - check this: https://docs.armbian.com/User-Guide_Armbian-Config/System/#device-tree-overlays

[catotinha]

Thanks, Igor.

 

I totally understand that when this project started you guys had to take care of a handful of boards and now there must be hundreds of them and that it is not  feasible to support every one of them, especially the older ones. It is indeed clearly marked as community support on the board page. I, nonetheless, accepted the challenge (I might fail, I might succeed). Thank you for your work, in general, and for the links, in particular (which I will read).

[catotinha]

I do not know if it is etiquette or not, but I will document what I have tried. This should be a time saver for others whether I can find the the solution or if I do not (so you do not have to do the things I have already tried). Maybe it is also funny for the advanced users to read what the noob tried =D o

 

I started with the overlays as suggested by Igor. I installed WSL and mounted the IMG for the latest release and compared the files to the working 20.02.

• the dtb files were very very different but the overlays were the same. As a punt I replaced the new DTB with the 20.02 and tried to install. It failed a lot more than just the USBs... 😃

Then Pilinha and Werner (thanks guys) informed me that I could ssh log into a box before setting up a root password. I proceeded to install from the latest original image, log on, and use armbian-config to:

• activate the overlays (no dice)
• install headers (no dice)
• change kernels (no dice)
• install headers again (no dice)

I then installed 21.02 and tried armbian-config again and this time there were a LOT more options. I tried:

• enable USBs hardware (no dice)
• enable all the things in the hardware option (no dice)
• change the DTB (no dice)
• install headers (no dice)

That is all the time I have today, If I can think of something else I will report here. Feel free to pitch ideas.