For folks booting Star64 with U-Boot TFTP:

U-Boot might show frequent TFTP Timeouts. This article talks about our fix for the TFTP Timeouts:

(1) First we throttled our TFTP Server to send packets slower. (Which made it worse)

(2) Next we reduced the TFTP Timeout Duration in our server. (Nope doesn’t work)

(3) But when we send every TFTP Data Packet twice, the problem mysteriously disappears!

(4) Apache NuttX RTOS now boots over the network in 20 seconds. (Previously 4 minutes)

(5) We verified this with 2 TFTP Servers: Linux and macOS

Details here: Strange Workaround for TFTP Timeout in U-Boot Bootloader (Star64 JH7110 RISC-V SBC)

   

Here's a quick review where the Linux distros for the Star64 seem to stand:

1. Fishwaldo's 2.1 Minimal Pinix distro
https://pine64.my-ho.st:8443/

Works for text-only use, but can't install X-Windows because his server no longer has those packages.

2. Fishwaldo's 2.1 Weston Pinix distro
https://pine64.my-ho.st:8443/

Automatic login as user "weston", no logout option, no menus. Sudo not working to add packages. 
However X-Windows is accelerated and fast, Firefox works and is fast (but can't play Youtube videos).

3. Fishwaldo's 2.1 Plasma Pinix distro
https://pine64.my-ho.st:8443/

It is very slow and therefore unusable.

4. Frankenstein distro (based on StarFive's Debian and Fishwaldo's 1.2 distro).
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u7qiCJv...sp=sharing

Works, but no Firefox.
Subsequent attempts to create a new Frankenstein distro based on newer Fishwaldo kernel & newer StarFive distro have failed.

I have installed postmarkedOS to the external SD card of my Pinephone, since I had troubles writing with Abiword to the external SD card. So I installed the whole OS with Abiword there.

Then I have sticked the SD card with a reader into a Windows PC, which could not read the SD card. I did not find an easy solution to solve which was convincing for me personally.

So I installed Ubuntu on an external drive on my PC. There I could see and open the files on my SD card with postmarkedOS on it, and also write to it with Abiword.

But when I put the SD card back to my Pinephone, the SD card does not boot anymore.

Why does my Pinephone not boot anymore from this SD card?

My Pinephone keyboard stopped working and after doing some inspection, I discovered that the GND wire has been torn apart at the hinge - too close to the upper case to reconnect it with solder.

The only way I see to fix this is replacing the cable. 

However, I'm having trouble finding information on how the top part is held together.

Is the upper part of the keyboard (where the phone goes) glued or held together mechanically?

Or is the 3D model for the case available someplace? I've looked for it in the wiki and searched for it without success.

Hi,
  Is there a way to make it not to switch on when connecting the usb charging cable?
thanks

Ahoj,

I just had a "high power" soldering job with my Pinecil V2 (power supply: 65W USB C PD; soldering task: Thin steel surface) where I had the pinecil set to maximum temperature and constantliy heating the piece where I wanted to solder.

After some time (2 minutes or so) I heard some noises from inside the pinecil. It did sound a bit crippling, like boiling stuff escaping some enclosure, or so.

I immediately disconnected power supply.

Outside of the pinecil, I felt not anywhere hotness; after disassembling (which took some time where parts can cool down) neither.

Has anyone observed similar things? Is the Pinecil safe to use long time at high power (will safe-protect if too long)? Any thoughts on what I have observed?

I now did re-test without or with thermal load, and in both cases there are two types of noises:

* Some regular noise which sounds like coming from driving the power output FET (PWM noise),
* rarely, some irregular noise as described above.

The second one _may_ also be some noise related to regular operation, emitted by the small inductor on the PCB, but I cannot discern.

Does the regulation sometimes involve "very irregular" pulses through the power FET/ the inductor?

Regards!

I can add my Nextcloud Account in Prefs, and I will see my files in Dolphin or in Konqueror. But Phonebook will not sync any contacts. And in Merkuro Calendar and Merkuro Contacts I can set up DAV connectivity but it will throw an error.
Are there methods to make Nextcloud connectivity a little more useful, or is DAV mostly disfunctional these days?

every other day, Manjaro KDE plasma mobile's screen brightness gets stuck at a rather low level and the slider will flip back to it's before position. Is there any fix known?

Hello there,
I am just wondering if Pinebook Pro can handle 256GB emmc?
Has anyone try that?

@Fishwaldo 

I tried using the new 2.1 minimal image on the Star64, and I see that a lot of progress has been made, which is great.

However when I installed xserver-xorg and xorg-minimal-fonts and a bunch of other stuff to run the X server, I found that every single basic X program was unable to locate its fonts.

Xterm, rxvt, twm, everything failed to load any fonts. The only program that was able to find any fonts was Firefox (which was unusable for a different reason--slowness).

Is there a quick fix for this font issue? I'd like to go ahead and start using the X server.

UPDATE 1:
I've now also tried the Weston and Plasma variants.

1. Weston worked the best, insofar as X works and I could launch the terminal.
Weston has a bug where, if I log in as pine64, it logs me out and logs me in automatically as the user weston.
Also, there is very little by way of menus e.g. there is no mechanism to log the user out.

2. Plasma was (as expected) very slow and I think unsuitable for this type of computer. Plasma is better on gaming rigs. Plasma failed to launch the Terminal, so it was useless.

UPDATE 2:
I tried Minimal again and now, there are no packages related to X Windows available.