A true mainline Linux Kernel for the Pinebook Pro

[tsys]

Hey all,

I've migrated bluetooth to the hci_uart driver and after hours of debugging managed to get it fully stable. Any stability issues reported with hciattach should be fixed, too.

I might have also fixed the instable WiFi in the process. Please let me know if you do still encounter instabilities.

[Der Geist der Maschine]

What .config did you use?

There is a pinebook_pro_defconfig you can use with

Code:

make pinebook_pro_defconfig

As a reference, hereby attached is the /proc/config.gz of the current kernel version 5.4.0-0.7-MANJARO-ARM (= the .config with which it was compiled).

Thank you tsys and DrYak. I built the kernel (and device tree) with DrYak's .config file. When booting, the screen remains black. Perhaps I would see some logs on the serial console - but I don't have one.

Could I see your extlinux/extlinux.conf?

I give up trying to get the 5.4 kernel booting on Debian. Thanks guys for your suggestions. I hope someone else will be more successful.

[tsys]

What .config did you use?

There is a pinebook_pro_defconfig you can use with

Code:

make pinebook_pro_defconfig

As a reference, hereby attached is the /proc/config.gz of the current kernel version 5.4.0-0.7-MANJARO-ARM (= the .config with which it was compiled).

Thank you tsys and DrYak. I built the kernel (and device tree) with DrYak's .config file. When booting, the screen remains black. Perhaps I would see some logs on the serial console - but I don't have one.

Could I see your extlinux/extlinux.conf?

I give up trying to get the 5.4 kernel booting on Debian. Thanks guys for your suggestions. I hope someone else will be more successful.

I've not tried that yet. @manawyrm did though. He might be able to help you.

[Solra Bizna]

I give up trying to get the 5.4 kernel booting on Debian. Thanks guys for your suggestions. I hope someone else will be more successful.

I'm actively working on getting it working myself. I'm in the same spot as you, except that in a few days I'll have a debugging cable, and I'll be able to see why it's failing. I'll post here if I make any progress.

[DrYak]

I might have also fixed the instable WiFi in the process. Please let me know if you do still encounter instabilities.

Saddly, yes.

Arrived back home after a busy week, saw the post at Manjaro about the latest preview, upgraded everything with pacman:
- bluetooth now works (after enabling it in /etc/bluetooth/main.conf), yay!
- and wifi crashed a couple of time (each time I restarted it with the hardware switch + unbind/rebind)

[tsys]

Saddly, yes.

- and wifi crashed a couple of time (each time I restarted it with the hardware switch + unbind/rebind)

Oh wow. That is very unexpected. I didn't have a single crash since fixing the power sequence.
You might be using different firmware though. I'm currently using https://gitlab.manjaro.org/tsys/pinebook...aster/brcm. Please try that one.

[DrYak]

You might be using different firmware though. I'm currently using https://gitlab.manjaro.org/tsys/pinebook...aster/brcm. Please try that one.

Oh, right. Mine was still the original provided by 'community/ap6256-firmware 2019.08-4'.

I checked your version out. We'll see how it goes.

---

Seems stable with the latest firmware from Git.

[DrYak]

@tsys : One more question regarding the upstream kernel - do you currently enable 32bit userland ?

Would it be possible to run a 32bits chroot (such as the official Debian) for the things which aren't available on aarch64 yet ?
e.g.: Widevine is only available on arm7 exclusively  as of now (Thank you, Google!~~) so chromium in a 32bit chroot is the only possible way to watch Netflix.


All my current attempt end up with:

Code:

$ sudo mount /dev/mmcblk2p2 /mnt/
$ for D in run tmp sys proc dev; do sudo mount -B "/${D}" "/mnt/${D}"; done
$ sudo chroot /mnt
chroot: failed to run command ‘/bin/bash’: Exec format error

...which is the typical error message for wrong arch (running x86_64 userland on i686 kernel).

[Arwen]

@tsys & @DrYak, I too would like both 32 and 64 bit userland.

Most everything can stay at 32 bit. But, somethings may work better at one or the other.

[Hexxeh]

Trying to boot this kernel with the stock Debian image that comes pre-installed. I built the defconfig, copied the Image and DTB onto /boot, modules into /lib/modules. It starts to boot, and then I see serial output, but suddenly after the following, it becomes garbage:

[ 12.051588] OF: graph: no port node found in /i2c@ff3d0000/fusb30x@22
[ 12.065983] OF: graph: no port node found in /i2c@ff3d0000/fusb30x@22/connector
[ 12.068329] OF: graph: no port node found in /i2c@ff3d0000/fusb30x@22/connector

Has anyone else seen this? I'm using the 1500000 baud rate, and that works fine for u-boot output and early kernel output until this point. I've tried a few other common baud rates at this point, but nothing shows reasonable output.