Armbian for NanoPi Duo

[walt22]

Hello,

 

will there be a dedicated Armbian version for NanoPi Duo?

 

I have tried Armbian_5.33.171013_Nanopineo_Ubuntu_xenial_next_4.13.5.img, which worked on the Duo.

Mosquitto, Node-RED and WiringOR could be installed without problems.

One thing doesnt work until now is  WLAN, which is not recognized by nmcli dev.

 

Would be fine to get a validated Duo version.

Regards, Walter

 

[chwe]

There you go.... (second post by searchengine below your post). 

[walt22]

Thanks chwe for your comment.

 

What I understood until now:

- There is no  dedicated Armbian for NanoPi Duo.

- In case one use the Neo version, the XR819 WiFi driver must be installed manually.

 

I have made an inquiry, but cannot interprete it:

 

root@nanopineo:~# modinfo xradio_wlan
filename:       /lib/modules/4.13.5-sunxi/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/xradio/xradio_wlan.ko
alias:          xradio_core
license:        GPL
description:    XRadioTech WLAN driver core
author:         XRadioTech
alias:          sdio:c*v0020d2281*
depends:        mac80211,cfg80211
intree:         Y
name:           xradio_wlan
vermagic:       4.13.5-sunxi SMP mod_unload ARMv7 thumb2 p2v8
root@nanopineo:~#

 

No hint on XR819.

 

Regards

Walter

 

[Igor]

1 hour ago, walt22 said:

No hint on XR819

The driver is present but you need to apply proper board settings.

[walt22]

The driver is present but you need to apply proper board settings.

 

Thanks Igor,

 

is there a docu available for the proper board settings?

Regards, Walter

[Larry Bank]

3 hours ago, walt22 said:

The driver is present but you need to apply proper board settings.

 

Thanks Igor,

 

is there a docu available for the proper board settings?

Regards, Walter

I've been hitting similar issues trying new builds on various boards. I find it much less stressful to just use a USB wifi dongle when doing these kinds of tests. I'm running Armbian with a 4.13 kernel built for the Orange Pi Zero on my NanoPi Duo and with a USB wifi dongle, it works fine:

 

The Linux build provided by FriendlyElec has a super slow SPI driver, so I went in search of a way to see if it was a hardware or software bug. Running the OPZ build of Armbian on the Duo shows that it's purely a software bug.

 

[raschid]

6 hours ago, walt22 said:

is there a docu available for the proper board settings?

 

Mainline linux uses a "device tree" data structure to represent specific properties of board hardware (such as wlan chips).

Device tree files are usually part of the kernel building process - and at the moment there is no such file for the NanoPi Duo in the armbian kernel build environment (it would be called something like <sun8i-h2-plus-nanopi-duo.dts>).

Alternatively there is a mechanism to adapt device tree entries for an existing kernel referred to as device tree overlays. An example for such an overlay explicitly for integrating an xradio wlan chip (for an orange pi zero) can be found at 

https://github.com/karabek/xradio/ (see file <xradio-mrk1.dts> in directory <dts>.

[walt22]

@Larry and Raschid,

Many thanks for your hints. I will try the OrangePi zero version either with dongle and XR819 driver.

Best regards

Walter

[raschid]

@walt22/ @Larry Bankthere is a "community supported" armbian config for the NanoPi Duo now, supporting the Xradio WLAN chip - gives me 20-22Mbit/s over 1,5m. To build the kernel you have to specify the board in the compile command ("compile.sh BOARD=nanopi-duo") in the armbian dev environment.

 

[Igor]

I upload an image: https://dl.armbian.com/nanopiduo/nightly/. Boot logs: http://sprunge.us/OhHi ... besides WiFi and ethernet, USB ports are up. I did not test header functions ... mSATA in the position as on picture is not recognized. I am not sure this part is powered at all.

[tkaiser]

23 minutes ago, Igor said:

mSATA in the position as on picture is not recognized

 

Your lsusb output looks like USB DT overlays are missing...

[Igor]

 mSATA works when enabling other USB ports http://sprunge.us/AffX

[raschid]

All pins of the DUO module are routed the the shield's GPIOs (or audio components), except for the tweo USB lines (2&3). So I guess one USB line feeds into a 4xhub for the shields USB ports and the other drives the mSATA converter.

 

 

[tkaiser]

10 minutes ago, raschid said:

So I guess one USB line feeds into a 4xhub for the shields USB ports and the other drives the mSATA converter.

 

• usb0 is OTG and IIRC Armbian's next kernel still not enables this port (TBC -- should be easy trying out the Micro USB port)
• usb3 is activated in sun8i-h3-nanopi.dtsi and this is obviously the port the Terminus USB hub is connected to

So

overlays=usbhost1 usbhost2

should be sufficient for 'Shield operation' (though no idea whether both are needed and if only one which one -- @Igor can you do two reboots and find out?)

 

Edit: Should be usbhost2 since @raschid wrote 'USB lines (2&3)' above.

 

[raschid]

It is usbhost2. I don't have the shield, but I checked the USB ports on the DUO. No port 1 there ...

[Igor]

usbhost2 is needed for mSATA http://sprunge.us/HWEa

 

[tkaiser]

IMO we should consider shipping with

overlays=usbhost2

added to /boot/armbianEnv.txt by default for this board since zero disadvantages but only avoiding support efforts and 'reviews' ('With Armbian mSATA does not work'). Users don't read the fineprint, so let's fix this now and not later.

 

On a related note: I did some tests with zram and vm.swappiness=100 and this really looks promising. Could be a real improvement on those boards with low memory where we can ensure that no legacy kernels will be used.

 

Edit: Or maybe it's better to add ohci2/ehci2 nodes to the DT patch since referencing sun8i-h3-nanopi.dtsi there and activating usb3 by default can already be considered 'wrong' from a kernel dev's perspective (for reasons unknown to me these guys want to reduce 'user experience')

[Igor]

13 minutes ago, tkaiser said:

IMO we should consider shipping with

Yes. And not just here. We discussed this briefly here https://github.com/armbian/build/issues/798 but it was off topic and we didn't continue.

13 minutes ago, tkaiser said:

On a related note: I did some tests with zram and vm.swappiness=100 and this really looks promising. Could be a real improvement on those boards with low memory where we can ensure that no legacy kernels will be used.

2

 

Shall we simply add this to armbian-config?

[guidol]

1 hour ago, tkaiser said:

IMO we should consider shipping with

overlays=usbhost2

added to /boot/armbianEnv.txt by default for this board since zero disadvantages but only avoiding support efforts and 'reviews' ('With Armbian mSATA does not work'). Users don't read the fineprint, so let's fix this now and not later.

 

http://wiki.friendlyarm.com/wiki/index.php/Mini_Shield_for_NanoPi_Duo

The mini shield has an onboard JMS567 USB to SATA IC and an mSATA interface.

 

The Duo also uses the same JMS567 USB3.0 to SATA Chip as the "1-bay NAS Kit v1.2 for NanoPi NEO&NEO2":
http://www.friendlyarm.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=192

So it would be fine if the NanoPi Neo(2) with 1-bay NAS Kit can benefit from the NanoPi Duo version
Maybe also for the missing frontright USB-Port of the Case?  

 

Could it be the Neo(2) NAS version of
http://wiki.friendlyarm.com/wiki/index.php/Mini_Shield_for_NanoPi_Duo
The mini shield has an onboard FE1.1s which extends four USB Host ports.
- so that has to be activated?

 

PS:
on a old page for the Neo(2) NAS v1.2 they do write about the former JM20329 USB2.0 to SATA Chip version:
http://wiki.friendlyarm.com/wiki/index.php/1-bay_NAS_Dock_v1.2_for_NanoPi_NEO/NEO2

 

[tkaiser]

3 minutes ago, guidol said:

So it would be fine if the NanoPi Neo(2) with 1-bay NAS Kit can benefit from the NanoPi Duo version
Maybe also for the missing frontright USB-Port of the Case?  

 

Huh? I don't get what you're talking about.

 

The issue we're talking here about is that some small H3 and H5 boards by default expose only 2 USB ports (usb0 == OTG/MicroUSB and usb1 on OrangePi Zero variants while it's usb3 NanoPi NEO/NEO2/NEO Plus 2 -- man, how I hate these shitty names!).

 

So all that's needed is either first line (for Orange Pi Zeroes or NanoPi Duo) or 2nd line for NanoPi NEO variants:

overlays=usbhost2 usbhost3
overlays=usbhost1 usbhost2

And as @zador.blood.stained explained over there an USB gadget driver is needed for usb0 to work with mainline kernel.

 

In other words: Using USB on these little gems with stinky Allwinner legacy kernel is a nice and flawless experience while with mainline kernel it's just PITA since kernel devs decided so (IMO there's a reason why Apple as company is successful: since there product development is not driven by engineers trying to solve technical problems but folks who think about stuff from the 'user perspective')

[tkaiser]

On 1.11.2017 at 10:34 AM, Igor said:

Shall we simply add this to armbian-config?

 

Will never work since average users don't give a shit about improving things. And if they enabled zram via armbian-config everything bad that will happen within the next 3 months (eg. SD card dying) will lead to zram being blamed.

 

Let's continue discussion over there.

[raschid]

@Igor Very small issue:

The DUO is a H2+ device. Any specific reason why it is flagged a a H3 board on the armbian dowload page?

People will not find it when they hit the <H2+> button on the download page ...

[Igor]

Thank you. Fixed.