Gentoo on Pinebook Pro

[VoxUnius]

Hi Everyone.

I'm one of those insane people who dared compiling everything on PBP. It actually hasn't been too bad. I've built the Manjaro kernel and everything I need. The problems were pretty much the same as those other people experienced here. However, I'm not sure about these:

1. Linux kernel load time is pretty long. dmesg indicates a 1 minute delay prior to executing
"cryptd: max_cpu_qlen set to 1000".
2. WiFi issue is present, although I wasn't able to associate it with high CPU load. For now I'm using a USB Ethernet adapter.
3. Sound issue - present, but I haven't tried the recent DTS fix yet. What I tried was using a USB sound interface (a 10 years old iMic). It worked fine. No noises or anything.
4. The main issue: flickering widgets in XFCE (checkboxes, especially). I thought it was only relevant to GTK applications, but Firefox appears to be ok. I'll continue playing with it. Another thing: upon launching Libreoffice, xorg begins using 100% CPU (single core) and the app becomes very slow and pretty much unusable.
5. Another one: the clock gets reset on every reboot.
6. Not sure if hardware video acceleration works. Does anyone know how it works? Does Panfrost have it implemented?

My software is:
Kernel 5.4.0-rc6-MANJARO-ARM
Mesa-19.2.4 (I did specify VIDEO_CARDS="panfrost" in make.conf)
Xorg-server-1.20.5
xfce-4.14-r1
Libreoffice-6.3.3.2.

If anyone tried to do what I did, please share your experiences

[Arwen]

Seeing as I use Gentoo on my 3 other Linux computers, (desktop, old laptop & media server), I'd hoped to use Gentoo as well.
You might look at the interrupt balancing that another Pinebook Pro owner has created;

https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?...3#pid52803

It's for systemd, but could be modified easily for OpenRC.


As for my experiementation with my Pinebook Pro, it's been limited at present. Too much paid work getting in the way of fun :-(.
But, I hope to use Gentoo with ZFS root, and multi-library, (32 bit & 64 bit), userland. And ZFS encryption for root pool.

[VoxUnius]

Seeing as I use Gentoo on my 3 other Linux computers, (desktop, old laptop & media server), I'd hoped to use Gentoo as well.
You might look at the interrupt balancing that another Pinebook Pro owner has created;

https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?...3#pid52803

It's for systemd, but could be modified easily for OpenRC.


As for my experiementation with my Pinebook Pro, it's been limited at present. Too much paid work getting in the way of fun :-(.
But, I hope to use Gentoo with ZFS root, and multi-library, (32 bit & 64 bit), userland. And ZFS encryption for root pool.

Thank you. I'll give it a try when I have time.

If you're going to use Gentoo, I would advise throttling the big cores to 1800MHz and switching the small ones to powersave when compiling. Otherwise, even if the DC adapter is plugged it, it will drain current from the battery. The reported consumption was 3.5A, while the adapter only provides 3A. And compile with -j2. Just a hint

Cheers.

[pcm720]

Hi Everyone.

I'm one of those insane people who dared compiling everything on PBP. It actually hasn't been too bad. I've built the Manjaro kernel and everything I need. The problems were pretty much the same as those other people experienced here. However, I'm not sure about these:

1. Linux kernel load time is pretty long. dmesg indicates a 1 minute delay prior to executing
"cryptd: max_cpu_qlen set to 1000".

If anyone tried to do what I did, please share your experiences

Yeah, same thing here.
I built Manjaro kernel with compiled-in NVMe support for NVMe boot, and it waits for exactly one minute after registering HugeTLBs.
Looks like the issue was reported to the upstream a couple of times. I wonder why it doesn't happen on stock Manjaro kernel...
----
Okay, I was able to figure it out. According to the comment in this commit, crypto_rsa causes significant boot delays when compiled in kernel.
I looked at config that comes with PKGBUILD, and CONFIG_CRYPTO_RSA option was set to 'y'!
Changed it to 'm', recompiled the kernel — now it no longer gets stuck on cryptd!

[Arwen]

Until we can get a menu system for boot selection, (like x86/x64 Grub), then we are limited in some tests.

I've repartitioned my eMMC to include a physical swap partition as well as a place for my Gentoo tests. That's on hold until I can figure out how to boot back and forth, without using a SD card.

[VoxUnius]

Until we can get a menu system for boot selection, (like x86/x64 Grub), then we are limited in some tests.

I've repartitioned my eMMC to include a physical swap partition as well as a place for my Gentoo tests. That's on hold until I can figure out how to boot back and forth, without using a SD card.

What I did was dd the 1st 32Mb on the SD to a file, and then dd zeros to the card. That way it will boot from eMMC. Restore it back from the file to boot from the SD.

[pcm720]

Hey, you know that stock U-boot supports extlinux-style configurations?
You can use the boot partition from Mrfixit2001's Debian release and simply modify extlinux.conf to point to whatever kernel/OS you want.
And if you have access to UART console, you can easily select the OS as well.

[Arwen]

Hey, you know that stock U-boot supports extlinux-style configurations?
You can use the boot partition from Mrfixit2001's Debian release and simply modify extlinux.conf to point to whatever kernel/OS you want.
And if you have access to UART console, you can easily select the OS as well.

Yes, I am aware. That's how I created my bootable SD card backups & recovery images. After the copy, I modified the "extlinux.conf" on the SD Card to point to the SD card's OS, and modified the SD card's "/etc/fstab" as well. (I have a separate swap partition now.)

The difficultly lies with booting. I can use the SD card to point to an alternate OS image, (even on the eMMC, which I now have a partition for it). But, to switch back on a failed boot, (but not completely failed), I have to eject the SD card.

At present, I don't have the UART console cable. It's on order.