Armbian and LibreELEC and AltLinux for Quartz64

[balbes150]

Libreelec kernel 6.0.7
Armbian kernel 5.19.17 and 6.0.7
Altlinux kernel 6.0.7

[balbes150]

Good news. A test version of the Armbian+EDK2 system (UEFI\grub) is available.

For more information, see this topic.

https://forum.armbian.com/topic/19766-pi...ent=154275

[balbes150]

The system startup control is performed as on a regular PC - through the menu on the monitor, therefore, to fully use all the features of selective startup, you need to have a connected monitor and keyboard.

[bosi564]

My Quartz64 model A finally showed a beautiful bootup picture on my FullHD monitor.

Nice progress!

Well, for some reason it didn't boot within a minute or so, but I'm tired and will leave it as it is for the night.

I did see the grub menu and after a few log lines showing it's loading the initramfs I got to the three lines with "EFI stub - something" and the third was like "EFI stub: exiting boot services".

As a side note: I tried moving the usb stick to one of the USB 3.0 ports (the bottom right), but GRUB didn't load and I got to see this TianoCore EDK II menu for the first time.

The files I've downloaded are:
1. Armbian_22.11.0-trunk_Quartz64a_sid_edge_6.1.0.img
2. QUARTZ64_EFI.img

written on both a usb stick and sd card as per the instructions on the other forum.

[balbes150]

My Quartz64 model A finally showed a beautiful bootup picture on my FullHD monitor.

Nice progress!

Well, for some reason it didn't boot within a minute or so, but I'm tired and will leave it as it is for the night.

I did see the grub menu and after a few log lines showing it's loading the initramfs I got to the three lines with "EFI stub - something" and the third was like "EFI stub: exiting boot services".

As a side note: I tried moving the usb stick to one of the USB 3.0 ports (the bottom right), but GRUB didn't load and I got to see this TianoCore EDK II menu for the first time.

The files I've downloaded are:
1. Armbian_22.11.0-trunk_Quartz64a_sid_edge_6.1.0.img
2. QUARTZ64_EFI.img

written on both a usb stick and sd card as per the instructions on the other forum.

1. Try to connect the media with the system to all USB ports.
2. Which USB media do you use? I recommend trying the simplest USB 2.0 flash drive.
3. Which devices are connected to USB? Try to disconnect all USB devices at the time of startup, except the USB flash drive with the system, if the system starts, they can then be connected.
4. Try using the Ubuntu variant (Cli or XFCE). I have not tested Debian and there is a possibility of an error in the image.

---

I found the reason why the Debian image doesn't run. need to manually make changes to the settings. Use Ubuntu image.

[bosi564]

Sorry to disappoint you, but both ubuntu images:

1. Armbian_22.11.0-trunk_Quartz64a_jammy_edge_6.1.0.img (md5 sum 030c1f596402809f01b674cb3afa6eeb)
2. Armbian_22.11.0-trunk_Quartz64a_jammy_edge_6.1.0_xfce_desktop.img (md5 sum 5a589965573896585e41ab4c4d0244d0)

Do not work. They too print the three lines with "EFI stub", then the monitor enters into sleep and the keyboard loses power. For example Num Lock stops toggling the led, which it did during booting up and while being in the menu of GRUB.
The first time after flashing the usb stick the wait time for default choice in GRUB is 5 seconds and later after just a reboot it's 30 seconds, but I do not know if this is significant.

Well, I'll also add the md5 sum of QUARTZ64_EFI.img - eb4c625a3ab63c7c2cf61b41ac6c3cf6, just to have something to compare. I didn't overwrite the microSD between changing OSes on the usb stick.

My usb stick is 128 gigabytes for at least USB 3.0. My microSD is 64 gigabytes for UHD video. I probably won't find anything smaller to test with.

I've tried both USB 2.0 ports on my model A and the result is the same. I've attached only a usb keyboard on one of the faster USB ports (which works in the menu of GRUB and the Tianocore EDK II menu), an HDMI cable and the power cable from the official power brick (5 amperes for NAS variant). No disks and no eMMC are attached at the moment, although I do have them available.

Previously I had a mini PCI express card plugged, but after removing it the results were the same.

Still, I feel we're really close to have it all work. If there's a need to test anything, I'll check every few days.

[balbes150]

Sorry to disappoint you, but both ubuntu images:

1. Armbian_22.11.0-trunk_Quartz64a_jammy_edge_6.1.0.img (md5 sum 030c1f596402809f01b674cb3afa6eeb)
2. Armbian_22.11.0-trunk_Quartz64a_jammy_edge_6.1.0_xfce_desktop.img (md5 sum 5a589965573896585e41ab4c4d0244d0)

Do not work. They too print the three lines with "EFI stub", then the monitor enters into sleep and the keyboard loses power. For example Num Lock stops toggling the led, which it did during booting up and while being in the menu of GRUB.
The first time after flashing the usb stick the wait time for default choice in GRUB is 5 seconds and later after just a reboot it's 30 seconds, but I do not know if this is significant.

Well, I'll also add the md5 sum of QUARTZ64_EFI.img - eb4c625a3ab63c7c2cf61b41ac6c3cf6, just to have something to compare. I didn't overwrite the microSD between changing OSes on the usb stick.

My usb stick is 128 gigabytes for at least USB 3.0. My microSD is 64 gigabytes for UHD video. I probably won't find anything smaller to test with.

I've tried both USB 2.0 ports on my model A and the result is the same. I've attached only a usb keyboard on one of the faster USB ports (which works in the menu of GRUB and the Tianocore EDK II menu), an HDMI cable and the power cable from the official power brick (5 amperes for NAS variant). No disks and no eMMC are attached at the moment, although I do have them available.

Previously I had a mini PCI express card plugged, but after removing it the results were the same.

Still, I feel we're really close to have it all work. If there's a need to test anything, I'll check every few days.

Changing the time in the menu from 5 to 30 seconds is important. This means that the system started to start and it was "incorrectly" turned off (the correct shutdown of the system was not performed). If you use 128 GB of USB, the first startup time will be very long (the partition is automatically expanded to the entire media). It is likely that with such a large delay, the monitor turns off.
It is also possible that it is "not compatible" with your USB media. I observed how some USB 3.0 devices could not work correctly due to the design (inside, a "tricky option" of connecting chips is used, through an additional controller, which is not always correctly detected immediately at the kernel startup stage).
Try disabling the primary setup wizard (immediately after writing the image to USB, delete the /usr/lib/armbian/armbian-firstlogin file from USB) and try running without it. Now I am testing a new version that will work immediately from the SD card.

By the way, have other images been recorded on your SD card before? Perhaps the reason is the "remnants" of old systems that leave a backup copy of GPT or other data. Try to completely clean the SD card (using the DD utility) before writing the EDK2 image.

[bosi564]

I'll quickly add a bit more information, because I'm not sure what will be helpful.  I'll have time later to do some tests (after 8-10 hours from this post).

My quartz64 has 8 gigabytes of RAM. I think I read somewhere in the wiki that early tests were done on devices with 4 gigabytes and there was no guarantee that video will work on devices with 8GB, but after a quick search I couldn't verify this info.

By the way, have other images been recorded on your SD card before? Perhaps the reason is the "remnants" of old systems that leave a backup copy of GPT or other data. Try to completely clean the SD card (using the DD utility) before writing the EDK2 image.

No, it was a brand new microSD from the store dedicated to video recording. But I'll wipe it clean later just to be sure.

The usb stick was used for some other linux/bsd installations, but I'll wipe it clean too.

[balbes150]

I'll quickly add a bit more information, because I'm not sure what will be helpful.  I'll have time later to do some tests (after 8-10 hours from this post).

My quartz64 has 8 gigabytes of RAM. I think I read somewhere in the wiki that early tests were done on devices with 4 gigabytes and there was no guarantee that video will work on devices with 8GB, but after a quick search I couldn't verify this info.

By the way, have other images been recorded on your SD card before? Perhaps the reason is the "remnants" of old systems that leave a backup copy of GPT or other data. Try to completely clean the SD card (using the DD utility) before writing the EDK2 image.

No, it was a brand new microSD from the store dedicated to video recording. But I'll wipe it clean later just to be sure.

The usb stick was used for some other linux/bsd installations, but I'll wipe it clean too.

There may be a problem with the launch, unlike models with 8GB of RAM. I have only a version with 4GB of RAM available, I can't debug a new system on 8 RAM versions. It may be necessary to change the settings, but without real equipment, it is not effective. And how does "normal" Armbian (latest versions with kernel 6.1) work on your model?

[balbes150]

Ver 20221204-EDK-EFI with support for direct launch from SD card, USB recording is not needed.