An unofficial Debian Installer for Pinebook Pro
(03-22-2020, 10:42 AM)xmixahlx Wrote: i find that is exactly the case with debian. due to unstable>testing migration processes you can often be caught in a broken situation.

Fair enough. I used sid for a long time too, and have had trouble with testing in the past, usually where automated package migration broke some integration dependency.

Anyway, this particular problem has been less frequent lately. The new annoyance is the gnome session losing it's connection to the keyboard after waking from sleep every once in a while...
(12-04-2019, 03:34 AM)danielt Wrote:
2020-03-02: Kernel updated to v5.5 (which will also be delivered to existing installs via apt upgrade), direct installation of buster is supported  (and documented) RELEASE=buster is now an install option, installed some extra firmware to help with BT, update to latest u-boot and made it easier to disable panfrost if needed.

To update for this version, should I simply use apt or I have to manually copy the bootloader, firmware and etc from GitHub?
PBP ISO / Debian Bullseye (unofficial installer)
(04-05-2020, 02:39 AM)wasgurd Wrote:
(12-04-2019, 03:34 AM)danielt Wrote:
2020-03-02: Kernel updated to v5.5 (which will also be delivered to existing installs via apt upgrade), direct installation of buster is supported  (and documented) RELEASE=buster is now an install option, installed some extra firmware to help with BT, update to latest u-boot and made it easier to disable panfrost if needed.

To update for this version, should I simply use apt or I have to manually copy the bootloader, firmware and etc from GitHub?

You should first try to use apt, reboot, and run `uname -a`. It's easy, it's quick, and it typically carries no more risk than manually copying the bootloader, firmware, etc., from GitHub. If after you've covered the basics the results are not what you expect - by all means, please ask this question again.

Speaking of U-boot (bootloader and firmware) - it is independent from kernel (and vice versa, kernel is independent from U-boot). There is a package that claims to support rk3399 SoC in Debian repos, but this installer currently uses the binary blob from mrfixit2001's repo. If you have installed your system before danielt@ updated the installer to use v2.0 of mrfixit2001's blob then you should update your bootloader manually - v2.0 has, among other things, a fix that allows to drop the 'maxcpus' workaround from kernel cmdline.
(04-05-2020, 08:53 AM)moonwalkers Wrote: You should first try to use apt, reboot, and run `uname -a`. It's easy, it's quick, and it typically carries no more risk than manually copying the bootloader, firmware, etc., from GitHub. If after you've covered the basics the results are not what you expect - by all means, please ask this question again.

Speaking of U-boot (bootloader and firmware) - it is independent from kernel (and vice versa, kernel is independent from U-boot). There is a package that claims to support rk3399 SoC in Debian repos, but this installer currently uses the binary blob from mrfixit2001's repo. If you have installed your system before danielt@ updated the installer to use v2.0 of mrfixit2001's blob then you should update your bootloader manually - v2.0 has, among other things, a fix that allows to drop the 'maxcpus' workaround from kernel cmdline.

Actually, I've done apt and have the 5.5 kernel now.
My question regarding the rk3399-pinebook-pro.dtb and the firmware blobs. How far as I understand, they were copied by the installer from the GitHub .
Now they are updated there, but not in my system.

In Debian's repos I see u-boot-rockchip, should I install it?
PBP ISO / Debian Bullseye (unofficial installer)
(04-05-2020, 11:19 AM)wasgurd Wrote: In Debian's repos I see u-boot-rockchip, should I install it?

As far as I can tell, this package contains a bootloader image, but doesn't automatically install any updates. So it's a way to get a recent build, but you have to copy it to the correct partition manually. No more convenient than downloading it from github., unfortunately. Either way, I would test it on a spare sdcard before updating your main image.
(04-05-2020, 11:19 AM)wasgurd Wrote: Actually, I've done apt and have the 5.5 kernel now.
My question regarding the rk3399-pinebook-pro.dtb and the firmware blobs. How far as I understand, they were copied by the installer from the GitHub .
Now they are updated there, but not in my system.

In Debian's repos I see u-boot-rockchip, should I install it?

K, for the device tree, from the installer source:

Code:
# Note that we have to create a dummy DT file (rk3399-pinebook-pro.dtb)
# since the u-boot integration will not include this in extlinux.conf
# if it does not exist... and we don't have a real one until we have copied
# it from the kernel image.
Then looking at the contents of /boot:

Code:
$ ls -l /boot
total 51431
<...>
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    62204 Apr  5 07:02 rk3399-pinebook-pro.dtb
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    62204 Apr  5 07:02 rk3399-pinebook-pro.dtb.bak
<...>
In my case I got a kernel package update this morning. If you search the packages contents for the file you'll come up with linux-image-5.5.0-1-arm64-unsigned but nothing for the linux-image-5.5.0-1-pinebookpro-arm64, that's because danielt's repository doesn't have packages contents data published and you won't see any files at all listed for linux-image-5.5.0-1-pinebookpro-arm64, but if you take the .deb file in /var/cache/apt/archives/ and take a peek at what's inside it you'll see under CONTENTS/usr/lib/linux-image-5.5.0-1-pinebookpro-arm64/rockchip/ a file named rk3399-pinebook-pro.dtb.

As to the firmware:
For the blob in /lib/firmware/rockchip (dptx.bin) - it is already shipped as part of firmware-misc-nonfree:

Code:
# apt-file search rockchip/dptx.bin
firmware-misc-nonfree: /lib/firmware/rockchip/dptx.bin

And if you don't trust it to be the right version you can compare sha1sum of the file in https://gitlab.manjaro.org/tsys/pinebook-firmware/ and in the package, after all the commit in tsys' repo is from Dec 4, whereas the file in the package is from Sep 1. brcmfmac43456 firmware is not yet shipped in Debian:
Code:
# apt-file search brcmfmac43456
# echo $?
1


But the latest commits in the relevant repos are on 4th and 5th of December last year, so if you installed since then you should be perfectly fine. In the future it will probably be eventually included in one of the Debian firmware packages like firmware-brcm-80211 or firmware-misc-nonfree, until then you can keep checking the appropriate Git repositories.

(04-05-2020, 11:53 AM)rillian Wrote: As far as I can tell, this package contains a bootloader image, but doesn't automatically install any updates. So it's a way to get a recent build, but you have to copy it to the correct partition manually. No more convenient than downloading it from github., unfortunately. Either way, I would test it on a spare sdcard before updating your main image.

I'm no authority in this question, but as far as I can tell u-boot-rockchip doesn't contain direct support for PBP. It supports rk3399-based Puma and Firefly platforms, but nothing else. Both Puma and Firefly have separate device trees in the kernel package, and while quite similar to PBP (after all they share the same SoC) they do seem to be a bit different, so the boot process may also be sufficiently different. They might boot PBP successfully, but I wouldn't bet my money on it.
This message was created with 100% recycled electrons
(04-05-2020, 11:19 AM)wasgurd Wrote: Actually, I've done apt and have the 5.5 kernel now.
My question regarding the rk3399-pinebook-pro.dtb and the firmware blobs. How far as I understand, they were copied by the installer from the GitHub .
Now they are updated there, but not in my system.

In Debian's repos I see u-boot-rockchip, should I install it?

The devicetree will be updated since that is currently part of the kernel package, likewise any firmware that is packaged in debian will get updates. u-boot and some of the firmware binaries that are not yet in linux-firmware do not receive automatic updates.

Hopefully a v5.6 kernel will be coming your way shortly. I've been using it on my PBP for a few days and it seems solid enough so I will uploaded it to the build server in the next couple of days. The only problem I saw so far is that the backlight scale has changed. The new scale feels much better but after the initial upgrade the backlight may be so low it is hard to see the screen to turn up the backlight ;-) .
PineTime: wasp-os and MicroPython, Pinebook Pro:  Debian Bullseye
yes, manjaro folks and everyone else using the 5.5+ kernel have dealt with the new brightness scale for while and it's just hard knocks.

5.6.x and linux-next working fine here. looking forward to 5.7.
By the way, how to blank PBP's screen when an external display connected by USB-C?
PBP ISO / Debian Bullseye (unofficial installer)
I'm running debian using the debian installer. Is there anything I need to do in order to ensure I also get the latest firmware updates? Are these going to be packaged in with the regular apt updates?

Besides the long wake from suspend issue, I think most of the most pressing issues have been addressed. Granted. Cinnamon doesn't load so I'm using Mate with i3.

Great work with the installer. I can't wait until Kernel 5.7 gets pushed into Bullseye.


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