Hello
As storage is going sparse on my Rock64, I would like to put my bootdrive, an Sata SSD connected over an USB 3.0 to Sata bridge, behind an USB 3.0 hub.

However, as soon as I try to boot with this setup, I get the following error in the U-boot console and the rock64 is trapped in a bootloop.

Could someone give me a very basic summary re what I would need to do to a PineTab to adequately use it as an ebook reader for pdf, epub, etc formats? I'm aware that I would need to identify working combinations of OS and reader sw - I'm interested in what other tasks I would need to complete. Thanks.

Anyone have any success with utilizing this device on either T-Mobile or US Cellular networks?

Since it's expected that most everyone here is using a Unix or Linux, and there seem to be a lot of users new to the idiom here, I thought it would be nice to have a thread of pitfalls to be aware of.  Experienced users have all been down this road many times.  If you have one or more to contribute, please do.

I'll start with one I ran into recently.  It caused a several-day headache.  Firefox was randomly crashing, and the only thing that would remedy it was to kill ypbind, a rather odd situation.  This was caused by a simple oversight on my part.  In /etc/nsswitch.conf I had the line

Hello all!
I ordered my RockPro64 4GB model in December 2019 for use as a home data server.
For this I also bought the PCIe SATA adapter from the store and connected two 8TB drives in a BTRFS RAID 1 to it. For the OS I installed the most recent Debian-based desktop Armbian at the time on a microSD and would work on it either locally or via SSH.

This worked very well until about this summer, when I could suddenly not reach my server over SSH anymore. When I came home to check it I found it completely frozen and had to use the reset button to reboot it. From then on these freezes became common and I started troubleshooting:

• First I guessed at flash death and replaced the microSD with an Armbian recommended 32GB Sandisk Extreme Pro A1.
  
• Then I installed the latest terminal-only Ubuntu-based Armbian.
  
• Then I ran memtester to check the RAM, with no errors.
  
• Lastly I disconnected my RAID and plugged in a big USB-Stick to do tests on that instead.
  

• They do not occur on boot.
  
• They do not occur even after days of uptime if it's only idle.
  
• They occur on various I/O intense workloads such as scrubbing the BTRFS filesystem (which I also did as part of the troubleshooting) or checking the files of a large torrent.
  
• They rekt my data on the RAID (likely from the repeated interrupted writes), a backup is available.
  
• If a display is plugged in at the time of the freeze it stays active and shows the last frame. If I plug it in afterwards it does not find a signal.
  
• Alt + SysRq + B worked exactly once, at the other tries no keyboard input seemed to have registered. So the reset button is almost always necessary for recovery.
  
• HDDs audibly go into idle and spin down seconds after a freeze.
  
• The same tasks that lead to a freeze work without a problem on other machines.
  
• I'm still a linux beginner and don't know much about logs, but I couldn't find anything relevant in them.
  

I run into few problems while trying installing e.g. 20.12 manjaro to eMMC on etched SD with osdn.net image. I had to go back to image 20.04 where image already contains script/way to select installation to eMMC.

Later will edit this post, so this will be complete and universal guide to dd of any OS distro with emmc-installer.

Please help with steps to be done on manjaro and ubuntu. thanks


There are two methods:

1. by Etching SD: Take your pick of desired OS distros with emmc-installer images. osdn.net offers booting form eMMC.
   • run your favorite Etcher and flash your SD (e.g. Balena Etcher) Note that only distros with explicit note in description will install OS to eMMC like here
     
   • Turn off pbp, insert Etched SD, power on, after about 15s press ESC, then pop up warning informs that all data will be lost -> Yes, later we are asked to pick our eMMC device: mmcblk2 is our pbp eMMC, so just press OK and Voila. All done.
     
     
2. Using dd if command: with this i would need some help how to make it.
   

I'd like to completely disable the lock screen in Phosh - I strongly prefer not having to type in my password to start using the phone.  I'd expect to have this option in user settings, but it's not there (yet?).  What would be a proper way to disable lock screen?

The only idea (and probably not a good one) that came to my mind is to create a passwordless user.  I've attempted to do it and failed.  I copied the sha512 hash of the empty password into /etc/shadow.  It didn't work as evidenced by my inability to ssh into PinePhone from computer using empty password.  I tried it on different distros, and in the case of Mobian my attempts even rendered the install unrecoverable (I wonder why), even after restoring the original /etc/shadow that I had backed up previously.

Thanks for any input on this issue!

Hi,

I have a braveheart Pinephone with a brand new community board upgrade.

I've tried installing all the latest Manjaro os images, without success at boot. Seems to be stuck in a loop at startup. Latest Mobian/Phosh image works well.

Thanks.

so if screen blanks during call you will not be able to pull up some notes