Beelink X2 with armbian possible?

[mdel]

yeah nothing boots here on my E237212 94V-0 1542 board (SN X2H3CACE10205) but something is definitely going on (from one image to the other, the power led is not the same color, with armbian download it seems both blue/red are on). i'm still hoping for a sd card issue but i highly doubt it's the case, tested 3 so far which should work perfectly fine.

 

Who knows maybe i have a different board configuration, maybe it doesn't have an H3 inside, that would be fun =)

And i didn't remember there was a nice smiling sheep in there, is that what's the "bee" in beelink stands for ?

 

Anyways i was hoping for a quick test, i don't have time to debug that in the next days, i'll come back to it with an uart cable connected next week.

 

In the meantime if someone can simply point me to a post explaining how to extract your fex / script.bin that would help, sorry i don't have much experience with alwinner images.

thank you

[Algi Zid]

yeah nothing boots here on my E237212 94V-0 1542 board (SN X2H3CACE10205) but something is definitely going on (from one image to the other, the power led is not the same color, with armbian download it seems both blue/red are on). i'm still hoping for a sd card issue but i highly doubt it's the case, tested 3 so far which should work perfectly fine.

 

Who knows maybe i have a different board configuration, maybe it doesn't have an H3 inside, that would be fun =)

And i didn't remember there was a nice smiling sheep in there, is that what's the "bee" in beelink stands for ?

 

Anyways i was hoping for a quick test, i don't have time to debug that in the next days, i'll come back to it with an uart cable connected next week.

 

In the meantime if someone can simply point me to a post explaining how to extract your fex / script.bin that would help, sorry i don't have much experience with alwinner images.

thank you

armbian image has the nice led color change in bootup. So if leds color change, that mean smth works:) Other images don't have that fine feature (only red light).

Are you tried other android image (like superceleron or the one from OrangePi site) with Phoenix soft to burn? I mean run android from sdcard.

 

[mdel]

Okay i'm moving forward a bit and something does not work with my x2 and current 5.14 images in the download section.

 

So no image would boot on my x2, i flashed on the same card the 5.14 desktop orange pi pc image and let it install, no problem.

I then replaced the /boot/script.bin symlink for one pointing to bin/beelinkx2.bin, and put the sdcard in my x2.

 

And of course it booted directly into the desktop, i'm currently writing this from the beelink x2 box.

 

I just have 30 mins to play, so i can't do a lot more right now, i'll reflash the 5.14 x2 image on that sd card to make sure it still doesn't boot and if that's the case i'll solder a serial and see what happens..

 

In case i can't solve the problem and still want to use my x2 with armbian, i wanted to know if changing the script.bin is the only thing to do to switch an armbian install from one device to another ?

thx

[tkaiser]

In case you did not already... it's always a good idea to check download integrity: http://docs.armbian.com/User-Guide_Getting-Started/#how-to-check-download-authenticity

 

Relinking script.bin is sometimes not enough, you should also check /etc/defaults/cpufrequtils for limits (otherwise your log gets filled with ARISC errors and temperature/consumption increase a lot) and also some devices (eg. all with eMMC) require a different bootloader. That being said: The OS image we provide for Beelink X2 is known to work so please check the suggestion above first

[Edgar Mondragon]

yeah nothing boots here on my E237212 94V-0 1542 board (SN X2H3CACE10205) but something is definitely going on (from one image to the other, the power led is not the same color, with armbian download it seems both blue/red are on). i'm still hoping for a sd card issue but i highly doubt it's the case, tested 3 so far which should work perfectly fine.

 

Who knows maybe i have a different board configuration, maybe it doesn't have an H3 inside, that would be fun =)

And i didn't remember there was a nice smiling sheep in there, is that what's the "bee" in beelink stands for ?

 

Anyways i was hoping for a quick test, i don't have time to debug that in the next days, i'll come back to it with an uart cable connected next week.

 

In the meantime if someone can simply point me to a post explaining how to extract your fex / script.bin that would help, sorry i don't have much experience with alwinner images.

thank you

 

@mdel Please, tell me that you are not asking for support for a non H3 Beelink (non Beelink X2)

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=HM+E237212+94V0

 

[mdel]

yup my images integrity are all valid according to gpg.

 

thx for the comments i'll check cpufrequtils, i was monitoring dmesg and didn't get too many errors so i was happy with that.

I've also seen the /var/run/.machine.id, mentionned in previous posts but i don't know where it's generated from, also /etc/machine-id which is some kind of hash.

 

now check this :

 

i've taken my freshly flashed x2 desktop image that will not boot on the x2 (led flashes red, then purple, never goes blue, no hdmi out)

i put it in my opi pc, it boots right away no problem (haven't even changed script.bin symlink, it will crash on reboot until i fix script.bin).

i complete the x2 image install on my opi, then i fix back script.bin, put it in the x2 and it boots, no problem !

 

But it seems i can also "corrupt" the sd (it's not actually corrupted at least fsck.ext4 sees nothing wrong) when doing a shutdown -h or -r, or upgrade on the x2.

Once the sd gets corrupted there's nothing i can do with it in the x2. Also sometimes the reboot (shutdown -r, "hot start") will not work and stay purple, i have to power cycle the x2 to boot again (happened only one once without "corrupting" the card).

 

I'm currently running the x2 xenial image, 1st run not booting on x2, so installed on opi with script.bin swap method, upgraded to 5.16 on opi, then back in the x2.

 

on the beelink x2 with that same non "1st run booting" sd card :

- in xenial i've done some iozone tests (same ones as on your NAS/UAS thread), made some dd 4GB writes, never got an i/o error message in the logs.

- copied some multi GB files in android, from usb to the sd, no problem

 

armbianmonitor shows 45 to 50c.

 

i'll still solder a serial later this week and reproduce the boot problem to see what it says, maybe you'll find that useful.

I have no idea what's going on, i still hope it's an sd card compatibility issue but maybe my x2 is a bit faulty.

 

But the errors are really too easy to reproduce :

- 5.14 freshly flashed images will never boot on my x2, they will always boot on the opipc (tested 5 different sd cards, brands and classes).

- then after 1st run is passed (2nd run completed), the card will always boot on the x2.

- once an "installed" card gets "non bootable" (reboot / halt / upgrade on the x2), then i can never get it to boot again on the x2 (not sure what happens on the opipc).

 

 

@Édgar Mondragón

well knowing myself, it was entirely in the realm of possibilities, but my beelink x2 do have a chip labeled H3 on the board, although i can also read "made in china" down there, so who knows..

Although i did scratch my head at some point, trying to install arm64 packages thinking the H3 was a 64bit cpu, but i'm playing too much with s905 boards at the moment, that's all.

 

Oh and in my previous description i forgot to say that the pcb wifi antenna on that x2 board is really funky too.

 

 

Finally a couple of things unrelated to my problems :

 

- minor bug : the upgrade does not keep the display (h3disp) setting, i understand it replaces the beelinkx2.bin

- feat request : for the desktop image, would there be a way to get other resolutions like 1920x1200p or is it all defined in the closed driver ?

- feat request : after a halt, would there be a way to keep the device alive so it can still receive IR remote commands ?

well only "power on" i guess, is this defined in the uboot environment or is it a standby power level where the IR logic can trigger a poweron/reset pin ?

 

thx again for your work

[tkaiser]

- 5.14 freshly flashed images will never boot on my x2, they will always boot on the opipc (tested 5 different sd cards, brands and classes).

- then after 1st run is passed (2nd run completed), the card will always boot on the x2.

 

So most likely the usual problem: insufficient power supply. The first boot is way more heavy compared to subsequent boots since our firstrun script does a lot behind the scenes. Since I do some power consumption tests since a few weeks I've also a powermeter in use and observed really high spikes on firstrun.

 

Simple test: 'stress -c 2 -m 2' or 'sysbench --test=cpu --cpu-max-prime=20000 run --num-threads=4' -- if this kills the Beelink you know what to blame.

[mdel]

neither of those two stress tests killed my x2 on my current xenial 5.16 image, using the "cheap" power supply that was powering it.

stress seems to be more violent too as the box is much less responsive while it runs.

 

armbianmonitor shows the temp jumping from 40 to 60°c (after 10min stress) and a steady 1200MHz clock, i checked the cpu load running htop. 

 

but to make sure i'll plug it into my bench power supply when i solder the serial later this week.

[tkaiser]

armbianmonitor shows the temp jumping from 40 to 60°c (after 10min stress) and a steady 1200MHz clock, i checked the cpu load running htop.

 

Yeah, in the meantime I came to the conclusion that both tools are too lightweight. Maybe we should include the cpuburn-a7 binary for such tests...

[mdel]

ok i've tested cpuburn-a7, it seems to trigger some temperature throttling as seen below.

 

10:18:09:  240MHz  1.12   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   41°C
10:18:14:  240MHz  1.03   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   41°C
10:18:19: 1200MHz  0.95   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   64°C
10:18:25: 1008MHz  1.03   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   67°C
10:18:40: 1008MHz  1.69   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   69°C
10:18:45:  816MHz  1.88   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   69°C
10:18:50:  816MHz  2.13   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   70°C
10:18:55: 1008MHz  2.41   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   68°C
--
10:19:52:  816MHz  3.37   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   71°C
10:19:57: 1008MHz  3.42   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   69°C
10:20:02: 1008MHz  3.46   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   69°C
10:20:07:  816MHz  3.51   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   69°C
10:20:12:  240MHz  3.23   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   54°C
10:20:17:  240MHz  2.97   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   48°C
10:20:33:  240MHz  2.31   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   45°C 

Surprisingly the system is much more responsive than with other tests, but cpu load is 100% on all cores unlike other tests.

it will not go over 72°c after a 10min run but will stay in the 800-1000MHz range.

 

the x2 thermal pad is not very efficient (or too thick) as expected, seeing the very fast temperature drop when the stress test stops, and you can't really trust the values above as my x2 case is opened and upside down (the cpu / "heatsink" are on the bottom side, under the board).

 

but it still didn't kill my x2 =)

[Armen Hovhannisyan]

Hello.

 

When I install Android it works perfect. But trying to install Armbian from official link, power on/off LED flashes (purple), and system doesn't run. I try install orange pi PC image and change script.bin and cpufrequtils but there is no result. I read about update and compiled beelink x2 image, got  Armbian 5.17 but still no result.

 

Thank you in advance.

[Zander]

It boots with a freshly dd-ed image, seems to be resizing the fs, but next boot  always failes: only violet (blue+red) LED, and nothing on the screen. Not sure what does it damage during the initial boot. I've checked the loader at 0x4000 on my SD card, seems to be present, so it should not be the case. Also, I've tried to resize the partition on another system before the initial boot and to disable the resize2fs script. Result is the same: initial boot is successful, than I have to dd Armbian image to the SD card to make it boot once more. 

I think I'll try to disable few more scripts from /etc/init.d in attempt to find out what damages the installation during the initial boot. 

[slinde]

Are you guys sure it doesn't boot the second time?

 

It could be the case it just doesn't show video output for some reason. I have done quite a few Armbian installations on Beelink X2 without any problems. But I do not use monitor or keyboard/mouse. I just ssh into my systems. And that has always worked.

 

When booting i find it most useful to watch the LED:s on the network port on my switch to which the Beelink X2 is connected. At first boot you should see the LED:s turn on as Armbian starts up the network. Then they will turn off as the Beelink X2 does reboot, after that they will turn on again when the second boot is finished.

 

After that you should be able to find the IP-address used in your routers DHCP client list and ssh into the system.

[Zander]

Hi slinde, 

 

I'm almost sure that it does not boot (i.e. it's not a video output problem). I'll check the networking once more and will write you back. It lits the blue status/power LED after the successful boot. This LED is purple after the second boot, it does not turn blue. 

Unfortunately, there is no output on the screen making it a bit harder to find the cause of this failure. I guess I could start diagnosing the problem by comparing all contents of the modified SD card with the fresh initial image/SD: I'll have to create a list of all changed files/directories and then attempt to restore half of them to the original versions. Then restore half of that half and so on until I pinpoint that file or directory that causes this problem. That would take some time.... 

[slinde]

Had a bit of time today to do testing.

Downloaded a fresh copy of the Beelink X2 Jessie server image file Armbian_5.14_Beelinkx2_Debian_jessie_3.4.112.7z. Unpacked it and burnt to a micro-SD card. Put the card in my Beelink X2 and switched the power on. The only thing connected to the Beelink X2 is power and network cable.

 

Of course it booted just as expected and performed the dual boot it should do on first boot. So there is no fault in the ARMbian image file.

 

Here are my observations of the LED behaviour. By LAN led I mean the led on the switch port my Beelink X2 is connected to. I find observing the led on the switch to be the best way to know what is happening.

 

 

1st boot:

solid purple

solid blue

LAN led on

flashing blue/purple

LAN led off

flashing red/blue

 

2nd boot:

solid purple

solid blue

LAN led on

flashing blue

solid blue

ready to log in via ssh

[Matthew Hodgson]

Hi - Have being trying a number of different images for the H3 CPU on the beelink X2, the Nanopi-m1 Ubuntu Mate image boots up and works although no WIFI etc- I have finally tried the Armbian beelink X2 image and although initially it loads up, it fails on second boot with no output with a purple/blue light on the box.

 

Wondering if anyone has a fix or if their is just to many variants of the X2 board for it to work every time.

 

Thanks for your time

 

 

[manuti]

Maybe the problem is inside. Try to open your supposed Beelink X2 and sent a photo to this forum. For example, my Beelink X2 have different Wi-Fi than the first unit supported by armbian.

[Matthew Hodgson]

 

Here the photos of my boards

[manuti]

Is more or less different than mine. With this picture I can see different Wi-Fi and antenna but I think is a normal Beelink and I don't understand where is the problem. https://raspberryparatorpes.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/img_4155.jpg

[Matthew Hodgson]

Yeah iv another beelink X2 which was a more recent purchase and it pretty much the same as your board

[slinde]

Hi - Have being trying a number of different images for the H3 CPU on the beelink X2, the Nanopi-m1 Ubuntu Mate image boots up and works although no WIFI etc- I have finally tried the Armbian beelink X2 image and although initially it loads up, it fails on second boot with no output with a purple/blue light on the box.

 

Wondering if anyone has a fix or if their is just to many variants of the X2 board for it to work every time.

 

Thanks for your time

I have two different HW versions of Beelink X2 and both work just fine with Armbian. Maybe you have another (newer) version? What is the first nine characters in your serial number?

[Matthew Hodgson]

Hi assuming the serial number is from the bottom of the plastic casing, I have two X2 box's

 

S/N X2H3CACG10156

 

S/N A2H3CKIG40374

 

Thanks

[slinde]

Hi assuming the serial number is from the bottom of the plastic casing, I have two X2 box's

 

S/N X2H3CACG10156

 

S/N A2H3CKIG40374

 

Thanks

That seems to correspond to the same two versions I have. The X2H3**** is the older version using the brcmdhd wifi driver. The A2H3**** is a newer version using the 8189es wifi driver. Both of these should run perfectly with Armbian.

 

I always run my Beelink X2:s headless without display and keyboard, just using ssh to login to commandline so I don't really know if there is som kind of problem with the display output. I guess I have to test that some day.

 

When you say the second boot fails, have you tested to see if it responds to ping? Did you try to login via ssh? Do you have anything connected to the USB ports when it fails?

[Ben]

Hi,

I encountered the same issue (no boot, no blue led) for my newly X2 box : KO : S/N : A2H3CKIG40648.  (also tested with the latest 5.20 debian jessie : no boot, purple led)

 

I have also another X2 box which has always been : OK : S/N A2H3CKHH50149

 

Thanks for your help

[slinde]

Maybe there is some difference in the hardware between A2H3CKHH***** and A2H3CKIG***** that Armbian is not aware of yet?

[tkaiser]

If it's purple then this means kernel is not fully loaded (maybe stuck in u-boot?). Since I just did the update to 5.20 (no problems whatsoever, debug output after reboot) I updated our wiki page showing the most important 'tool' in this situation: http://linux-sunxi.org/Beelink_X2#Pictures (the cables connecting an UART adapter coming out of the bottom)

 

[Matthew Hodgson]

That seems to correspond to the same two versions I have. The X2H3**** is the older version using the brcmdhd wifi driver. The A2H3**** is a newer version using the 8189es wifi driver. Both of these should run perfectly with Armbian.

 

I always run my Beelink X2:s headless without display and keyboard, just using ssh to login to commandline so I don't really know if there is som kind of problem with the display output. I guess I have to test that some day.

 

When you say the second boot fails, have you tested to see if it responds to ping? Did you try to login via ssh? Do you have anything connected to the USB ports when it fails?

Hi - Nothing connected to the X2 USB when first booting, would it make any difference if connecting anything - Also burned the IMG again and this time the light turns Purple/Red but nothing is displayed on screen this time around

 

Sorry for a noob question, when you say SSH or Ping how can I do that without a network connection

 

Thanks

[Armen Hovhannisyan]

If it's purple then this means kernel is not fully loaded (maybe stuck in u-boot?). Since I just did the update to 5.20 (no problems whatsoever, debug output after reboot) I updated our wiki page showing the most important 'tool' in this situation: http://linux-sunxi.org/Beelink_X2#Pictures (the cables conneting an UART adapter coming out of the bottom)

I have connected usb UART converter an get this error. Serial number started from A2H3

 

U-Boot SPL 2016.09-armbian (Sep 15 2016 - 01:16:52)

DRAM: 0 MiB

### ERROR ### Please RESET the board ###

[tkaiser]

DRAM: 0 MiB

 

Not that much. Can you please post a picture of the DRAM chips or even better post the description written on here?

 

It seems Beelink X2 comes with different flavours of DRAM and our default 624 MHz DRAM clock might be too high for some of the modules. It might sound weird but you could try out our image for NanoPi NEO and report back (since there DRAM is clocked very low -- since you have UART workinf you could at least report whether board boots or not).

 

Please get back to us with an update.

[slinde]

Sorry for a noob question, when you say SSH or Ping how can I do that without a network connection

 

I assume you have a home network and a router?

When the Beelink X2 boots it tries to get an IP-address from your router. You can enter the routers menu and check which IP-address is assigned to the Beelink X2. Check for DHCP client list or similar in the router menu.

 

When you know the IP-address of the Beelink X2 you can try to reach it from another computer in your home network for example your desktop PC. Ping is a command that checks if there is network connectivity between two computers. Ssh is a way of remotely logging in to another computer. Armbian is by default configured so that you can connect to it via ssh.