Star64 apps crashing constantly

[tantamount]

Hi folks,

I'm using the latest 1.2 version of the Plasma distro provided by Fishwaldo.
I'm finding that many applications crash within a few seconds of launching them, or simply do not work.

- The web browser, maybe called something fishAngel? I forget the name. It crashes within seconds of visiting any web page.
- The web browser Konqueror is unable to bring up any web page. It just remains a blank page.
- The Settings app frequently crashes within 1 minute of launch.
- The "unicode" terminal app (not Konsole, the other one), has extreme graphics corruption and is unusable.
- After some hours of running, the window manager completely crashed, leaving only the Konsole running.

Is this just me (which might indicate a bad board) or is everyone seeing these problems?

Thanks.

[Der Geist der Maschine]

I had a similar experience  + the mouse pointer is always lagging behind.

I then switched to Armbian's XFCE image from https://www.armbian.com/star64/ + kernel and device tree from https://github.com/Fishwaldo/Star64_linux. Armbian's XFCE is based on Xorg and its incredibly slow.


A desktop is not important for me. I'm still in thinking mode with what OS to settle:

• It will not be Fishwaldo's image as I fail building it via yocto.
  
• It will not be Armbian as that are untested automated builds.
  

I will decide over the long weekend ....

[tantamount]

I had a similar experience  + the mouse pointer is always lagging behind.

Thanks I'll check out Armbian.

My own thinking is that I might try to compile Slackware 15.0.
It doesn't officialy support RISC-V but who knows, it might work.

UPDATE:
Armbian for Star64 doesn't seem to boot by itself. I assume I'll need to patch it with the device tree from Fishwaldo's image like you mentioned.

At present I think my strategy is likely going to be to use Fishwaldo's plasma image, but piece by piece replace it with new packages.
So far I've added ncurses and the most essential program, Vim.

[Der Geist der Maschine]

Thanks I'll check out Armbian.


UPDATE:
Armbian for Star64 doesn't seem to boot by itself. I assume I'll need to patch it with the device tree from Fishwaldo's image like you mentioned.

The armbian image is carelessly assembled.

Right now, I have ubuntu on my only micro sd card and write from memory:

After burning armbian on micro sd card, you need to mount its major linux partition from your Linux PC and rename /boot/dtb/starfive/jh7110-pine64-star64.dtb to /boot/dtb/starfive/jh7110-star64-pine64.dtb

Now you should be able to boot armbian. It misses one important kernel patch from Fishwaldos kernel. The stock armbian kernel is shutting down usb ports, e.g. your mouse and keyboard while Fishwaldo's kernel does not.

It is highly recommended to build Fishwaldo's kernel / modules / device tree by either a) cross-compiling it on your Linux PC or b) natively on your star64 via the serial console (which is not shut down).

If you trust random strangers, you can download these files from my webserver and copy them from your Linux PC onto your mounted micro sd card

• http://corona.crabdance.com/riscv/Image (copy into /boot)
  
• http://corona.crabdance.com/riscv/jh7110...star64.dtb (copy into /boot/dtb/starfive/jh7110-star64-pine64.dtb)
  
• http://corona.crabdance.com/riscv/modules.zip (unzip in /lib/modules/)
  

That kernel is an older backup and does not have my 8 GB patch from https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=18263

Again, Xorg was pretty slow on armbian. We would all be glad if you can figure out why

[tantamount]

Thanks I'll check out Armbian.


UPDATE:
Armbian for Star64 doesn't seem to boot by itself. I assume I'll need to patch it with the device tree from Fishwaldo's image like you mentioned.

Again, Xorg was pretty slow on armbian. We would all be glad if you can figure out why

The current Arbian image only has 1 partition. I don't see any signs of anything like EFI  or uboot.
In the image, the contents of boot...starfive are:

Code:

evb-overlay
jh7110-evb-can-pdm-pwmdac.dtb
jh7110-evb.dtb
jh7110-evb-dvp-rgb2hdmi.dtb
jh7110-evb-i2s-ac108.dtb
jh7110-evb-pcie-i2s-sd.dtb
jh7110-evb-spi-uart2.dtb
jh7110-evb-uart1-rgb2hdmi.dtb
jh7110-evb-uart4-emmc-spdif.dtb
jh7110-evb-uart5-pwm-i2c-tdm.dtb
jh7110-evb-usbdevice.dtb
jh7110-fpga.dtb
jh7110-visionfive-v2-A10.dtb
jh7110-visionfive-v2-A11.dtb
jh7110-visionfive-v2-ac108.dtb
jh7110-visionfive-v2.dtb
jh7110-visionfive-v2-wm8960.dtb
vf2-overlay

Usually if the X server was compiled without shared memory enabled, it will be slow.

[Der Geist der Maschine]

The current Arbian image only has 1 partition. I don't see any signs of anything like EFI  or uboot.

There is a spi flash hosting uboot. I have not set that up - that must be factory default.

Code:

root@star64:~# cat /sys/class/mtd/mtd?/name
spl
uboot
data

In the image, the contents of boot...starfive are:

Code:

evb-overlay
jh7110-evb-can-pdm-pwmdac.dtb
jh7110-evb.dtb
jh7110-evb-dvp-rgb2hdmi.dtb
jh7110-evb-i2s-ac108.dtb
jh7110-evb-pcie-i2s-sd.dtb
jh7110-evb-spi-uart2.dtb
jh7110-evb-uart1-rgb2hdmi.dtb
jh7110-evb-uart4-emmc-spdif.dtb
jh7110-evb-uart5-pwm-i2c-tdm.dtb
jh7110-evb-usbdevice.dtb
jh7110-fpga.dtb
jh7110-visionfive-v2-A10.dtb
jh7110-visionfive-v2-A11.dtb
jh7110-visionfive-v2-ac108.dtb
jh7110-visionfive-v2.dtb
jh7110-visionfive-v2-wm8960.dtb
vf2-overlay

I now realize that armbian does not come with a device tree for the star64 at all. You could hijack another device tree of a similar board (or use the one hosted on my webserver). Armbian is now my main OS for the time being. Yesterday, I posted elaborate installation instructions https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=18276

Usually if the X server was compiled without shared memory enabled, it will be slow.

Ugh, how Xorg is compiled on armbian is beyond me. A desktop is currently low on my priority list. My current focus is just building more recent kernels in the hope that all my small issues will eventually go away.

[Fishwaldo]

The apps crashing - any app that’s using HTML rendering in KDE is powered by a older version of the chromium renderer engine. That old version was never officially ported to Riscv, but there are some unofficial patches floating around.

Unfortunately that, and the “unique” GPU in the star64 are not playing together so well at the moment. I’m working on it and it should improve.

Unfortunately for anyone wanting a desktop experience right now, there is no “official” distro that supports the GPU acceleration so all desktop environments run with software rendering which is dismal.

[bupole]

There are unofficial patches available, however the original version was never ported to Riscvbackrooms game

[tantamount]

Unfortunately for anyone wanting a desktop experience right now, there is no “official” distro that supports the GPU acceleration so all desktop environments run with software rendering which is dismal.

Here's the GPU-accelerated distro that I got working:

https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=18341

I recently tried updating to the new June '23 image that Starfive provided but when I booted it, there was no GPU acceleration.

Regarding rendering HTML, I also tried compiling Qt 5 and Qt 6 in the hope that I could throw together a simple Qt+Webkit based browser, but both had compilation errors.