Rock64 random freezes

[BTB]

Hello everyone,

This is my first post, so I'll spare a couple of lines to introduce myself:
I'm a hardware enthusiast, sometimes over my possibilities and capabilities, but that is the way I learn. I like running Linux in every device I have, sometimes just because. But I am far from being a Linux-only kind of guy: there is always room for Windows, OSX and FreeBSD.

I started to be interested in the Rock64 board a couple of months ago when someone introduced me to it. After reading on the forums for a while, I decided to buy it from someone that wasn't going to use it anymore. So far I've tried Debian Stretch and Armbian Ubuntu Bionic 64 images.
I am using it to host small headless server for internal use. The resources I am using are the built-in Ethernet, the CPU, the memory and the SD-Card.

To my surprise, I've been having random freezes with both images for a while. So I decided to debug the freezes by using an external UART to see if messages were dumped to the serial console. (I followed this instructions https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=5029 )

These freezes could happen at random times, but mostly when I was interacting with the Rock64 through SSH protocol.
I tried to force this freezes with the stress command: sudo stress -c3 -m3; and succeded.
1-4 seconds after executing the stress command, the Rock64 board would freeze. I reproduced this four times in a row.

Would you think this is a board problem? I'm asking in case I have to ask for a refund from the person I bought the board from.

I'm pasting the kernel messages below for reference.

Salutations to everyone!

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Random crash at boot:
https://pastebin.com/BtwZiqXc

First crash induced by stress:
https://pastebin.com/Dxp6SKvT

Second crash induced by stress + temperatures.
https://pastebin.com/5jK74aAP

---

Images used:
https://github.com/ayufan-rock64/linux-b...m64.img.xz
https://github.com/ayufan-rock64/linux-b...m64.img.xz

PSU:
Original 5v 3A.

[Luke]

Hi, which image (exactly which version) are you running? ayufan just released new stable

[BTB]

Hi, which image (exactly which version) are you running? ayufan just released new stable

Hi Luke,

When I captured the kernel errors above I was using bionic-minimal-rock64-0.7.8-1061-arm64.img.xz .

I may give revision 0.8.3 a go tonight to see if the freezes reproduce on that version.

Regards,
BTB

[Luke]

0.7.8 is very old at this point, so granted the nature of the issue is not related to hw then its likely fixed.

[rotavio]

Hello, @BTB.
Did you have any luck finding the problem? I have the exact same issue with my board.

Yesterday I tried to reinstall the OS, and tested many distros. One thing I noticed is that it is complete random. At one point I used a clean Debian Minimal SD Card that I'd just created and it didn't pass the fist login.

[tomarm]

I've had the v2 version of this board a few months and mines very picky about bootiing, compiling and nic stability. The v3 had a nic resistor fixed.
So you should say what board ver you have not just the image. I just installed ayufan's latest focal unstable img and it's working well for a day now.
ssh hangs were a problem on lots of diff distro's I tried. There's a command for turning off tcp offload out there which helps but escapes me atm. ethtool eth0 tx rx off blah.

[wilsonYan]

By default Linux only runs the rk3328 at (approx!) 1.3ghz maximum cpu frequency

But Armbian may add a patch to boost that to 1.5ghz


This may cause problems maybe ? If you don't have a good power supply or the cpu gets too hot perhaps


You can try to change the max frequency:


sudo echo 1296000 > /sys/bus/cpu/devices/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_max_freq