I'm looking to build a fast, but quiet and low power OpenVPN server.  Raspberry Pi is too slow due to the USB Ethernet.

Is a Pine64 a good platform for this project at this time?  What flavor Linux do people seem to prefer?  And where does the OS reside?  From the spec sheet I didn't see anything about using a flash drive or SD chip.

I recently received the pinebook.
One of the first things I did was to flash an android image to a sd card (8 GB) using the PINE64 Installer.
Did not boot from the sd card. With any other os I flashed - pinebook did not boot from sd card.
Tried to turn into FEL mode (long press and then at least 3 short taps), did not work.
All in all, pinebook booted the eMMC image unless I did.
The sd card slot is working: If booted with the eMMC image OS I can read any sd card I plug into.

So I removed the eMMC and tried to boot from sd card, failed also. But switched into FEL mode.

I currently haven't build a serial console (via audio) connector cable (missing parts) to see what's happening while trying to boot from sd card.

My questions:
- Does anybody struggled into the same behaviour? Or what's wrong with sd cards the pine installer flashes?
- What are the FEL key's? Or how do I force the pinebook without removing the eMMC into FEL mode?

I would really like to upgrade to Mate 17 for my Pinebook to make it run smoother, but I can't seem to run or open Installer. 

It's unzipped, permissions is "Me,' and the make executable box is checked, but double-clicking does nothing and nothing I've found works in the command line. 

I repeated the download and unzip on a computer running Mint, but got the same result.

I tried Etcher on both machines with same result, so it must be something I don't know how to do. 

I used Unetbootin on the other machine to creat a bootable USB and it took me two days to learn that the Pinebook will boot only from the mini SD card, so I bought an 8GB Sandisk. 

I'm totally missing something so I hope someone can point me in the right direction. 

Thanking everyone in advance. 

     stanley

For documenting the performance of the Gigabit ethernet onboard the Rock64.

If you want to post your own results, remember to mention which board you are using (1/2/4GB), OS/kernel, and any relevant software or hardware changes you have made.

Most testing will be done using iperf3 (sudo apt-get install iperf3), but other benchmarking methods are welcome.

Also do not forget to set the performance CPU governor (must do through sudo -i or sudo tee). (echo performance >/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor)

I'm running the latest release on eMMC and having repeated problems with WIFI that go beyond the suspend/resume applet stuff.
Conecting/authenticating to my home network (WPA2) is hit or miss with Pinebook, despite being int he same room as the access point. I'm having to repeatedly restart the network manager, etc. It seems to me like teh authentication process is maybe timing out, even though the signal is strong and credentials are correct.
Are others encountering similar issues? If so, what solutions or work-arounds have you employed?

Dear All,

apologies for the basic sounding question. Do we have a choice in the kernel we use? As far as I can tell, the current version of the linux kernel I am using is an ayufan modified version of Allwinner's BSP. Is this similar to Sunxi's current kernel and does one version have benefits over the other?

Many thanks for our help.

FB

Hi all,
 
Just a (hopefully) quick question - I have Ubuntu MATE installed to the eMMC and I have a 32Gb SD card installed for extra storage.  If I try to boot up with the SD inserted, the boot process stalls at a blank screen (no bootup logo etc).  It will only continue to boot into eMMC if I remove the SD card.

This is a bit of a pain in the arse.

I know that the PB looks at the SD first, but I assumed that if it didn't find what it needed to boot - it would failover to the next option of the eMMC.  Is there anything I can do to get this to work how I would like?

M.

Thread to collect iozone performance tests of the rock64. 

When posting a report, please list your board (1G/2G/4G), OS type and version (Xenial/0.2.5), hardware tested (make/model), and the file system it has (ext4/fat32/ntfs/etc). And don't forget to use code tags so the formatting doesn't stuff up

If you don't have the iozone package installed yet: sudo apt install iozone3

Set the CPU governor to performance (as root, i.e. sudo -i first or pipe through sudo tee):

echo performance >/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor

Mount your drive, change to the mount point, and run the below to run your tests:

iozone -e -I -a -s 100M -r 4k -r 16k -r 512k -r 1024k -r 16384k -i 0 -i 1 -i 2

Hello all,

Sorry if i already missed the posting but I have been trying to change the username in the terminal from somthing other than pine64@pinebook. I have changed my name on login but in the terminal still keep the old username. I also tried using:

In order to flash a new image for the Pinebook to either eMMC or microSD please use the installer utility provided by Pine. The Installer utility supports all major platforms - Mac OSX; Linux; Windows 7/8.1/10, but CANNOT be run on the Pinebook itself if you wish to use it to prepare another SD card - you will need a standard x86/64bit machine to run this tool.

Here  are the step-by-step instructions for flashing an image for your Pinebook:

1. Launch the installer and click Choose an OS
   
2. From the drop-down menu select Pinebook (see attached screenshot)
   
3. Choose the OS you wish to install (take note of the information in brackets - Pinebook eMMC / Pinebook SDCard - it determines what your chosen OS will boot from) and click OK
   
4. Instert a MicroSD card to your computer and press Flash! The chosen OS will be downloaded, flashed and verified by the utility.
   
5. After the process completed, remove your SD card and intert it into your Pinebook's MicroSD slot.
   
6. If you chose a Pinebook eMMC Image, follow the onscreen instructions to flash your selection internal storage. If you opted for an image that boots from MicroSD, then your Pinebook should boot with the new OS straight away.