Hi all. I'm trying to compile and boot a custom kernel on my PineBook Pro. Trying to add some printk instrumentation to troubleshoot a type C hotplug issue I'm having, but I'm getting stuck even getting the kernel to boot at all. I don't want to outright replace my stock kernel, I just want to be able to pick the kernel I want at boot time. Ideally I would want to stick to the principle of a 100% free software (or close to it) process, and using a second computer with a serial cable is not attractive to me.

I am reluctant to try any option that makes my custom kernel the default, unless I also have a working boot menu that lets me pick the stock kernel.

I am using the manjaro OS that came preinstalled, fully updated. I am using the default partition map and bootloader.

I have tried editing my /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf to look like this:

• https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=10568
  
• https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=9312
  
• https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=9627 (this is where I found the kexec suggestion)
  
• https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=10694 (some kind of development effort happening with U-Boot, but it's a 9 page thread with no consise summary, and it's not clear whether any of this is upstreamed anywhere or what the current state of it is, and some reports of people bricking their firmware make me nervous. Last post was a year ago, so maybe the situation has changed since then.)
  

Has anyone running postmarketOS/sxmo been able to get the charge level of the keyboard battery? I only see the Pinephone's battery and usb listed in /sys/class/power_supply . How would I go about getting that info from the keyboard?

Hello,

It is my first post here.

I've just managed to run Fedora 35 in rock64 without external kernels, u-boot or tools.
I searched in the forum and I did not find a post about this, so I am sharing the image in my google drive, fell free to download and test, I hope you enjoy.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1...sSeHehKkOC

In the drive there are some images of the system working.

You will need at least a 4GB sdcard and the system take about 40 seconds to finish the boot.
The image is using grub2 with uEFI emulated by u-boot, the USB3 port seems to work correctly, SELinux and Audit are enabled and the root filesystem is ext4.

The username and the password is rock64 and there is a sudo rule for this user.

TL;DR: the membrane between the keycaps seems very delicate. Don't try to remove keycaps using guitar pick or similar object, even if it's not sharp. Otherwise you risk cutting or tearing it apart.

Yesterday I received the PinePhone & PinePhone Pro Keyboard and immediately noticed the same issue as many others are facing: top row is less responsive.

Trying to work that around by padding the keycaps with washers, which has been already shown by others, I needed to remove the keycaps. And also removed some from the row below it. In order to find out if there's any mechanical difference between both rows of keys and why is the top one less responsive.

First I tried to remove the caps with a fingernail, as others suggested, but they were so tightly attached that I could break a fingernail in the process. I found it much easier to remove them using a guitar pick, and it worked just fine for a couple of keys. But when I was removing the next one, I noticed some ring attached to the keycap. And it turned to be a part of membrane that's been cut off. I've no idea how that happened, since the guitar pick is very old and has been used so much to open cases of various electronics over the years, that its edges are no longer sharp.

It looks like the safer tool for that job would be a small cable tie bent to the size of keycaps and slightly filed to make it thinner. Otherwise it can't be inserted under the keycap in order to pull it.

Please find all those things shown on the picture below. The piece of the membrane is shown upside down with the keycap.

Now with the piece of membrane and the keycap are back in place, the key is not as responsive as other keys. It works, but it looks like the membrane is not as springy under that key after the damage. Any ideas how to fix it? As it looks like the membrane is made of silicone, it can be hard to glue back together.

Final thoughts:
1. It'd be great if PINE64 could provide the fix for the top row. So that users won't need to work that around themselves. From the user perspective, it's clearly a defect.
2. It'd be great if PINE64 could sell the replacement membrane. Even the manual says you can rearrange the keycaps, so there's definitely a risk of damaging the membrane.

From a combination of haste, lack of experience awkward documentation and just enough knowledge to be dangerous, I have bricked my PPP. The result is a brief red LED on startup and then continuous green (lasts at least 12 hours). I think I have corrupted the eMMC - some of my stupid steps are below.

I have now enabled mask ROM mode (that took hours repeating the same thing over and over!). Is there anything I can now do to recover the device? I have read quite a lot on the forums, but I am now at the stage where I don't think my use case fits and I don't want to make things even worse than they appear to be. 

TIA for any hints - I'm enjoying the ride but it's a little bumpy at the moment...and next time I will be more careful

List of activities:
1) Startup and play with the default software. Update needs several attempts. Find camera app doesn't work, and having set up wi-fi, I can't seem to change the SSID. Look to install some apps and find challenges (Signal not available, and 2 options for BitWarden).
2)  Set up SSH so I can check a few bits, but then think that a bluetooth keyboard may be easier overall so enable bluetooth.
3) Perform update and reboot
4) Reboot fails and arrives in emergency mode (rockchip-usb2phy failed to create phy; bootsplash failed to initialise; failed to read codec capabilities on bluetooth hc10)
5) Boot into SD card (Arch Linux phosh)
6) Use SD card OS to extract Manjaro ARM image and copy over to eMMC
7) Current status

Lately I've been downloading videos to test playback on Fedora 35. These videos all range in quality from standard definition, to high definition to 4k. In all cases, playback in VLC exhibits hiccups (i.e. stuttering) at various points, enough to distract from those long, evolving cinematic sequences which had become a hallmark of Kubrick.
I have little to no experience in the world of video and find myself unable to correct the problem, even after downloading a bunch of gstreamer codecs and whatnot. For comparison, these same videos play flawlessly using VLC on an AMD-based Windows computer circa 2012. Now, I realize there are Linux distributions specifically tailored to maximizing video quality, but they are specialist in nature (i.e. LibreElec), and not tailored to general personal computing. As a result, I'm looking for advice on tweaking Fedora for best quality video on the RockPro64.

Like so many others, apparently, I assumed that I could exit the OS and turn my PPP off to charge.

A little research and it looks like this is a no-no for now since the recharging is handled by software, which is a work in progress.

Which I get.

I've combed the forums, but nothing seems to get this little guy to charge or boot or turn on at all. 

I did the remove-SD-card-hold-RES-plugin-USB-cable thing, but still no charging. 

So I'm wondering, has anyone figured out a way out of this situation?

I received my PPP and it won't charge. I realized I didn't have a 5v 3a charger so I bought one, but even with that the battery drains while plugged in. I tried to update Manjaro but I get a daemon package failed error through the updater, and if I try the pacman -Syyu in terminal I get an error that it can't lock database.

So I was wondering if another distro fixes this and if so any specific, I was thinking of trying arch or mobian (off an ad of course).

I did want to try Manjaro out so if you know a fix for the charging that would be awesome.

Hello all,

I ordered the developer's edition on the PineNote a week or so ago. Still waiting on DHL to get it to me, tracking disappears when they hand it off to a third party -_-

I keep seeing references to a UART adapter on the hardware wiki and the schematic is even up there. Does it ship with the device? I couldn't find it on the store. I'm no stranger to building my own hardware, just didn't know if that was necessary here.

Thanks!

I have the latest Arch image with updates and my ringtone for incoming calls is not working through the external speaker automatically. Sound exits through both the internal speaker and the external speaker when it is selected in Settings. System Sounds and Volume is 100%. During an incoming call, I can hear the ringtone, but it is through the speaker selected in settings. Is there a way to allow the incoming call ringtone to exit the external speaker so that I can hear it, then let sound return to the earpiece for normal calls?