Francesco_ismb Posted October 16, 2017 Share Posted October 16, 2017 Hello, I would like to use armbian on a custom board with an arm processor. I' am a beginner and I don't know many things about o.s and board. My questions regards what issues will I have to face? Why I can't just install it like i do with desktop? Why I need to customize it? What things I need to customize? Is O.S customization an "easy" job or it will take months? What are the advantages of starting with armbian instead of starting from ubuntu (xenial)? What are the critical component of a board (what need customization)? Thanks in advance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tido Posted October 16, 2017 Share Posted October 16, 2017 1 hour ago, Francesco_ismb said: Why I can't just install it like i do with desktop? I read this document a while ago "Device Tree for Dummies!" http://www.ohwr.org/documents/435 helps you to understand the difference between booting X86 and ARM chips. It will answer a couple questions from above and is easy to read. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Francesco_ismb Posted October 16, 2017 Author Share Posted October 16, 2017 Thank you. The keyword "Device tree" gives me a valid point to start Any other suggestion will be really appreciated Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkaiser Posted October 16, 2017 Share Posted October 16, 2017 3 hours ago, Francesco_ismb said: custom board with an arm processor Which custom board will this be? If the SoC is not already supported by Armbian chances are great that you won't see Armbian running on it anyway. 3 hours ago, Francesco_ismb said: What are the advantages of starting with armbian instead of starting from ubuntu (xenial)? If you choose an Ubuntu Xenial Armbian variant there will be not that much differences at the distro level since most packages are then coming from Ubuntu's repositories anyway. We just have a slightly different package distribution (eg. we neither install Ubuntu's ondemand service nor the irqbalanced packages since both counterproductive on ARM). Everything that's really relevant happens below the distro layer anyway. And that's Bootloader stuff (u-boot and ARM trusted firmware) Kernel stuff (Armbian collects a huge bunch of patches for the various kernels we support and tests them) Settings (both wrt lowering consumption and increasing performance -- often at the same time) You might happen to find $some Ubuntu image for a random SBC out there (eg. an OS image provided by the board manufacturer) that consumes overall more energy while performing only half as fast as Armbian with certainor even most use cases. The other huge difference is that Armbian images are created from scratch and no one ever has logged into when you burn your image to SD card and start the board. So you don't have to fear OS misbehaviour due to stupidity or unthoughtfulness. If a mistake is found on any of the Armbian images, the fix will not applied to an already existing OS image manually but always goes into the central development repository so every bug will be fixed in a documented and reproducable way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zador.blood.stained Posted October 16, 2017 Share Posted October 16, 2017 4 hours ago, Francesco_ismb said: My questions regards what issues will I have to face? If it's something based on already supported (and well supported SoC like Allwinner A20) - you won't encounter any significant issues, you will only have to adapt your board configuration and patches from time to time when syncing your repository fork with the main one. If it's something not supported already - the main issue would be the quality of vendor provided SDK, and the issue that comes after that - integrating the vendor provided stuff with our build scripts. 4 hours ago, Francesco_ismb said: Why I can't just install it like i do with desktop? Already partially answered by @Tido - no onboard firmware like BIOS/EFI (with rare exceptions), so you have to provide board specific bootloader, kernel and DT and hope that version you've been given works well with the userspace that you want (good luck & have fun running Debian Stretch on kernel 3.4 or compiling Amlogic 3.1x kernel with namespaces and AppArmor support without patching it) 4 hours ago, Francesco_ismb said: What are the advantages of starting with armbian instead of starting from ubuntu (xenial)? Integrated build system that works pretty well (especially if you have enough RAM, disk space and a stable Internet connection). For a private board other advantages (like kernel and u-boot package updates) may not apply. 4 hours ago, Francesco_ismb said: What are the critical component of a board (what need customization)? Bootloader (i.e. u-boot) and kernel are critical components (of the SDK/board support package), you don't have to customize anything else until you are optimizing the performance and improving user experience. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Francesco_ismb Posted October 18, 2017 Author Share Posted October 18, 2017 On 16/10/2017 at 3:43 PM, tkaiser said: Everything that's really relevant happens below the distro layer anyway. And that's Bootloader stuff (u-boot and ARM trusted firmware) Kernel stuff (Armbian collects a huge bunch of patches for the various kernels we support and tests them) On 16/10/2017 at 4:04 PM, zador.blood.stained said: Bootloader (i.e. u-boot) and kernel are critical components (of the SDK/board support package), you don't have to customize anything else until you are optimizing the performance and improving user experience. Ok bootloader and kernel are two really useful points. I will investigate it. Is there a valid book/link for this? Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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