Sorry for the weird thread subject but I'm not able to summarize better this behavior.

Scenario:
Pinebook 14" with default Ubuntu 16.04 (same shipped with the pinebook itself, just updated with apt + pine* scripts for uboot and kernel)

Problem:
Sometimes when powered off it cannot correctly power back on in a useful state since, even if the system is running, the screen is black (may lit up but no X session is there)

How to replicate:
Use the pinebook with AC adapter plugged in (charging), power it off, unplug the AC adapter, power back on --> black screen of death
Use the pinebook with battery, power it off, plug the AC adapter in, power back on --> black screen again

How to "workaround":
Just randomly powering it off and on again with AC adapter in until I get the "pinebook splashscreen" --> at this point boots fine

Tried different OSes:
Yes same thing on a SD card installed OS, or even worse --> with that never gets to a working X session (boots and does all stuff lilke expanding the ext4 partition) but screen just flashes in backlit black for 2 times and never comes along  (tried this image as last one: https://osdn.net/projects/manjaro-arm/st...03.img.xz/)
Sometimes I've successfully used a plain vanilla console-based armbian to try to recover a "always in black screen mode" (I discovered that I had ext4 to be checked due to my poweroff/on to restore a usable screen).

Battery state:

It's OK. It can stand many hours of work, and voltages are fine, charges regularly (if we exclude the black screen issue)

Image flashing issues:

I dont' think so, really, checked the sums, flashed with different sdcarcs and different methods  (dd with conv=fsync, etcher, name it... I do this stuff on a daily basis so at least here it's not a place to check for possible issues I think).


that said...


Any clues any of you mighty piners?

I suspect my pinebook is just faulty, but maybe I'm getting something wrong or we can discover something potentially useful for others users as well.

Although the RockPro64 has great specs in theory, it is often not usable for real applications because of the current state of software support.

First problem: USB3. No matter which kernel I've tried to use on my RockPro64 (Ayufan's 4.20, 5.0 as well as Armbian's 4.4.174 which is supposed to be directly based on Pine64's patches), there is no way to do any serious usage of USB3 storage. With all the dev. kernels, I end up with massive filesystem corruption after transferring a few Gb of data in/out of USB3. With kernel 4.4, transferring a few Gb of data leads to kernel crash. I can do some benchmarks (with hdparm for example), but not serious usage. My usb storage is a Samsung SSD connected through a JMicron JMS567 bridge (with Hardkernel's latest firmware), so this is very similar to the USB3/sata adapter sold by Pine64. Of course, the whole thing works very well on my laptop (running Debian Buster) where it can transfer 100's of Gb without a sweat. I've tried other USB cables, I've tried a laptop power supply (that can provide up to 6A), nothing can make the RockPro64's USB3 stable.

For mainline kernels (even with a thick layer of additional patches), several other major issues remain: there is no HDMI output (so if you're out of luck, your system is not connecting to the network and you don't have an easy way to check what it is doing on a connected screen). There is no proper handling of the big.little clusters (so the processes get distributed more or less randomly, leading to unsatisfying performance, see this previous post). There is no support for the DDR4 memory, it is handled as ddr3. The eMMC is handled as HS-200 instead of HS-400 (so less speed, see FreeBSD post and it is far from stellar anyway). The SPI memory seems to be half-buggy, half-slow (see lkml). The U-boot is still relying on an older version (from 2017) because of difficulties in making it work with the current mainline (see this post). There are some reports of problems with using the PCIe (see this thread ). Half of the time, the board does not reboot but gets stuck when shutting down.

I am wondering if somebody at Pine64 works with the community to help fix these problems... (this is not supposed to be mean, but a genuine question: is the community left by to fight by itself or is there some support from Pine64).

Mathias

https://t.17track.net/en#nums=LL171118195CN

From the above, it shows that on April 25, the item was updated to be ready for dispatch and for the Origin, it was updated to say "离开深圳市 发往汉城" which a translation site says means "Leaving Shenzhen City to Seoul". And it says that it's coming from China Post.

But previously, it showed that it was coming via China EMS and on April 18, it showed it as having been updated made ready for dispatch and with the same origin statement of "离开深圳市 发往汉城".

And when I go to https://track.aftership.com/china-post/LL171118195CN?

I see China Post tracking saying that on April 18, the item went through customs. On April 19, it was transferred to the airline. And on April 25, it cleared customs and was transferred to the airline, both apparently for a second time.

Through email, all I got was a pine64 rep saying that hopefully it's made it aboard the plane but I have no idea if it has. For all I know, it's heading back to Chinese customs for a third time. It seems to be going back and forth between the plane and customs.

Greetings,

I am about to be the proud owner of a RockPro64 SBC (It's due to arrive tomorrow!).


My immediate goals are to use it as a Smart TV set-top box (for streaming) and/or an NAS server for my local network,  besides the fun of playing around with it.

I'm aware that Android-TV is not the best host for an NAS server and plan on setting up alternative boot scenarios to allow for independent testing of each use.

The problem is that while linux-extractable archives (*,gz) for Android-TV are findable, the only other linux images I could find were buried inside a *.xz archive that apparently requires 7zip (a Windows executable) to extract.

It would probably be possible to run 7zip under WINE to extract the .xz archives, but that's a last resort.

All my systems are (gentoo) linux, is there a set of linux images that are archived using a format that I can read?

I have no overwhelming preference as to which linux, but the LXDE desktop is familiar so Ubuntu would be convenient.

Is there a list of RockPro64 linux images that can be extracted on linux?

Thanks for your time.

Brett K. Heath

Hey folks...

Having a pine64 as a "intelligent" display using a HDMI TV but in "portrait"

Everything works fine... I mean, I can boot and rotate fbcon on the right orientation and I can also do the same thing in XFCE.

The issue is... the monitor itself shutdown while not in use with a timer switch and when that happen, the config on pine64 revert to a default resolution "1024x768" and back to landscape.

How to force the output to always be 1920x1080 in portrait ?

Hi,

I've install OpenVPN, but I cannot get it to start as it throws the error "ERROR: Cannot open TUN/TAP dev /dev/net/tun: No such file or directory (errno=2)"

I searched the forum and found an old rock64 post which said the kernel module for /dev/net/tun was not on the system, so I ran

Hi, 

Is it possible to run Rock64Pro without power button? Some time ago the power was cut in my home and when it recovered unfortunately my board didn't comes up by itself... It is a little bit annoy, especially when you're not at home and you would like to use you board remotely but you can't...

Cheers!

Hi,
  I made some memory tests with rockpro64 and rock64. Here are the results :

The command is the following

Hi all,

I am thinking about buying the ROCKPro64 as an upgrade for a RaspberryPi, where I have running a NAS and a Nextcloud instance.

After having a look into the cases available, I have discarded the one for NAS as I already have the storage separately, so I am interested in the 'ROCKPro64 PREMIUM ALUMINUM CASING', detailed below:

https://www.pine64.org/?product=rockpro6...num-casing

I have read that it has a heat pipe connecting to the SoC, but is it really enough to keep the ROCKPro64 cold enough? I am wondering this because it seems there is not any air flow in the case.

Do anyone has this case who could give me some feedback about it?

Thank you all very much in advance.

Hi

I use to have several Raspberry Pi's for small project work but got bored with them and passed them on. I am now looking at sbc's once again but with a slight difference. I want to use one as my only computer. I currently web browse, emails, doc storage and editing, watching and storing movies/music. I tried with a PI and it wasn't possible but is it possible with a RockPro64 please?

I am also interested because I am about to set up some off-grid systems to teach young people about off-grid power, such as cycling to make a smoothie. It would be great to hook-up the RockPro to that system as well. Using a 5v plug makes it possible.

If I bought the RockPro I think I would also buy the NAS Casing and the Mid Profile heat sync. What else would anybody suggest please?

Thanks for the advice.

Rich
https://gucu.org.uk/