Mainline Status of the H64

[kuleszdl]

Hi,

I played around with the H64 on the mainline kernel in Debian unstable (5.7) and the latest uboot (v2020.07). Unfortunately, it seems that neither eMMC storage nor the networking are supported in Linux. They get both detected in uboot and booting from eMMC starts successfully.

I guess this board is not supported yet in mainline, isn't it?

[as365n4]

Please check the status page --> http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort and see the column for H6 and you will find that works and what doesn't work. ;-)

[roel]

I uploaded a new dtb with wifi and usb3 support, no sound yet:


https://sourceforge.net/projects/manjaro...H64%20dtb/

[kuleszdl]

I uploaded a new dtb with wifi and usb3 support, no sound yet:


https://sourceforge.net/projects/manjaro...H64%20dtb/

Thank you! Is wired ethernet supposed to work with this dtb?

[as365n4]

Yes, HDMI-Video, Ethernet, Wifi and USB3 are working with this dtb file.
HDMI-Audio does not work at present.

[kuleszdl]

Thank you, I tried your DTB and have overwritten both H64 DTBs with it (the regular + model B). Unfortunately, ethernet still does not work on mine.

[as365n4]

@kuleszdl Which Debian Image are you trying to use?
Debian does not support the H64 as per index --> https://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/arm6...rd-images/ they only support Pine A64, Rock64, RockPro64, Pinebook and PinebookPro.

The dtb-file made by roel works flawlessly on Manjaro and Arch, so I suspect you are missing a driver or not using the right image for your board.

[kuleszdl]

I am using the stable branch with the official and generic kernel from unstable and self-compiled u-boot. The DTB file (with the non-working networking) is included in the kernel btw as well.

This per-index support is imho not very saying as it covers only boards where Debian provides the firmware (u-boot, arm-trusted-firmware) as well. Despite having official support, some boards (e. g. OLinuXino-A64) still lack essential hardware support (here: ethernet) as well but can be fixed by using a different DTB.

Please note that a lot of other boards that are not officially "supported" work great as well. See this article:

https://www.kulesz.me/post/140-debian-de...4-install/

I see two possibilities why manjaro and Arch work while Debian does not: (1) The Debian kernel config lacks the driver although it is in mainline or (2) Manjaro and Arch add some patches that are not in mainline yet to make the ethernet work. I assume the second case since Manjaro sometimes ships device-specific kernels instead of one unified generic kernel like Debian does.

[as365n4]

I never had any luck with Debian on my Rock64 and hence abandoned the idea of Debian on Arm.

Have you tried the dtb-file from an Armbian image? They have working ethernet, but no eMMC support on H64.
And Armbian is not a very stable platform from my experience, neither on Rock64 nor H64 as they mostly break something when one is doing apt update/upgrade. lol
https://www.armbian.com/pine-h64-b/ download section is at the bottom of the page, different flavours as well.

[kuleszdl]

I had way more luck with Debian/Devuan on the rock64 with the official kernel from unstable. No need for additional unofficial DTBs there. If you're interested, just follow my tutorial linked above.

Yet, this approach does not work on the H64.

Regarding Armbian, I agree with you - but I don't use it just because of possibly unstable kernels but rather because they change the distro not in the way I want. Yet, a friend of mine is running Debian stable with Armbian kernel (so just using their kernel) for a while now with no issues so far.