An unofficial Debian Installer for Pinebook Pro
Quick note for those who are running mesa-git...
https://tracker.debian.org/news/1151678/...o-testing/

mesa-git will (always) be more up to date but I think these new Debian packages will fix most of the reliability problems that mesa-19 brought. I have been running 20.x mesa packages from Debian Experimental on my laptop (instead of mesa-git) and finally the last blocker bug in the Debian packaging was squished!
PineTime: wasp-os and MicroPython, Pinebook Pro:  Debian Bullseye
(06-09-2020, 07:43 AM)moonwalkers Wrote:
(06-08-2020, 11:39 PM)crypt17 Wrote: I been loving running debian on the PBP but war wondering if there is any news of a new kernel.

Well there is 5.6 kernel in Debian Sid and 5.7-rc5 in Experimental, but neither is usable. You can try using xmixahlx's script to build your own kernel, but my own attempt at 5.7 didn't yield much improvement over the linux-image-5.5.0-1-pinebookpro-arm64 by danielt, with PBP still freezing/panicking at every opportunity it gets if I actually use the GL acceleration.

Is PBP not supposed to be supported in mainline 5.7? If not, do you know what is missing?
(06-09-2020, 08:25 AM)xmixahlx Wrote: i dont have any stability issues at all, and both speed and usability are vastly improved.

even moreso with an nvme ssd (minus suspend not working with nvme...)
Admittedly, the one I built myself was the last RC of 5.7, not the actual release. I've also ran it with latest mesa-git. No luck with stable GL acceleration, the only way I could avoid kernel panic is by setting LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE. I haven't yet tried the actual 5.7 release.
(06-09-2020, 10:01 AM)mkjmkj Wrote:
(06-09-2020, 07:43 AM)moonwalkers Wrote:
(06-08-2020, 11:39 PM)crypt17 Wrote: I been loving running debian on the PBP but war wondering if there is any news of a new kernel.

Well there is 5.6 kernel in Debian Sid and 5.7-rc5 in Experimental, but neither is usable. You can try using xmixahlx's script to build your own kernel, but my own attempt at 5.7 didn't yield much improvement over the linux-image-5.5.0-1-pinebookpro-arm64 by danielt, with PBP still freezing/panicking at every opportunity it gets if I actually use the GL acceleration.

Is PBP not supposed to be supported in mainline 5.7? If not, do you know what is missing?
AFAIK it is supposed to be fully supported. And, unlike with 5.6 or 5.5, the machine does start properly and is usable. But I've been unable to get working GL acceleration so far, and unless my unit is somehow defective again (the original Pinebook I got kept crashing when RAM usage was going above the mark of about 1.25GiB, IIRC) I have no good idea why.
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can you expand upon your GL acceleration comments? working fine for me, including GLES3 on mesa-git, linux 5.7+hwaccel, and sway

several of tsys' kernel patches have yet to make it upstream. you can see all of them in his repo:
https://gitlab.manjaro.org/tsys/linux-pi...mits/v5.7/
(06-09-2020, 03:00 PM)xmixahlx Wrote: can you expand upon your GL acceleration comments? working fine for me, including GLES3 on mesa-git, linux 5.7+hwaccel, and sway

several of tsys' kernel patches have yet to make it upstream. you can see all of them in his repo:
https://gitlab.manjaro.org/tsys/linux-pi...mits/v5.7/

I'm very happy that it's working fine for you, without any sarcasm. But unless I have LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE defined in /etc/environment I get randomly first everything freezing and then caps lock indicator flashing red soon afterwards. Or at least I assume that flashing red indicator is to show kernel panic. And sometimes it'll work only few seconds after logging in, sometimes it'll work for most of the day, but usually unless I render everything strictly in software I will have to reboot at least once in a day, whereas with LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE I can go on for the whole week without any reboots. My setup - Debian Sid, kernel I tried building last time was from https://gitlab.manjaro.org/tsys/linux-pi...e/v5.7-rc7, mesa-git from whatever was last commit at the time, I don't remember. I don't use Sway or Wayland, I use KDE Plasma on good'ol X11 - some apps I use don't play nice with Wayland yet. In /var/log/messages I can see only some traces around VM_BUG_ON_PAGE and Panfrost, perhaps some conflict between the video driver and zram?
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After running bullseye from the SD card for nearly a month, last night I finally broke down and installed it via the method in the first post here to the mmc.

the only hoop I had to jump through this time was fixing the brightness keys, and bluetooth, and the wiki solutions seem to have worked.
Good job!

Now my sd card slot is free for pictures/music/videos, whatever

Thanks, again.
(06-11-2020, 12:56 AM)moonwalkers Wrote:
(06-09-2020, 03:00 PM)xmixahlx Wrote: can you expand upon your GL acceleration comments? working fine for me, including GLES3 on mesa-git, linux 5.7+hwaccel, and sway

several of tsys' kernel patches have yet to make it upstream. you can see all of them in his repo:
https://gitlab.manjaro.org/tsys/linux-pi...mits/v5.7/

I'm very happy that it's working fine for you, without any sarcasm. But unless I have LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE defined in /etc/environment I get randomly first everything freezing and then caps lock indicator flashing red soon afterwards. Or at least I assume that flashing red indicator is to show kernel panic. And sometimes it'll work only few seconds after logging in, sometimes it'll work for most of the day, but usually unless I render everything strictly in software I will have to reboot at least once in a day, whereas with LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE I can go on for the whole week without any reboots. My setup - Debian Sid, kernel I tried building last time was from https://gitlab.manjaro.org/tsys/linux-pi...e/v5.7-rc7, mesa-git from whatever was last commit at the time, I don't remember. I don't use Sway or Wayland, I use KDE Plasma on good'ol X11 - some apps I use don't play nice with Wayland yet. In /var/log/messages I can see only some traces around VM_BUG_ON_PAGE and Panfrost, perhaps some conflict between the video driver and zram?

i occasionally use x11 in testing, but don't have gnome or kde installed (i use i3 for that...). could very well be a mesa problem. yes the red flashing caps lock is kernel panic. i know the manjaro folks are tracking what kde apps don't work in wayland - could seek out that thread for more info.

i also don't use zram, but zswap and build into the kernel.

curious to know what you are doing when you get the kernel panic.
(06-11-2020, 11:08 PM)xmixahlx Wrote: curious to know what you are doing when you get the kernel panic.
I haven't been able to discern any specific pattern, except it seems to be more likely to happen when some transparent GUI effect is being drawn, or I start an app that may be using OpenGL like mpv.
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After running the installer on a microSD card using the default settings (bullseye, no encryption) and without installing a desktop environment, I get the following message on every boot (although it disappears after 1 second):

Code:
[    1.857940] debugfs: File ':interrupt-controller@fee00000' in directory 'domains' already present!
     ....
[    1.858165] debugfs: File ':interrupt-controller@fee00000' in directory 'domains' already present!
[    2.490179] rockchip-pcie f8000000.pcie: PCIe link training gen1 timeout!
[    2.791708] OF: graph: no port node found in /i2c@ff3d0000/fusb30x@22
[    2.955949] vcc_sdio: unsupportable voltage range: 3300000-3000000uV
[    3.960782] rockchip-dp ff970000.edp: no DP phy configured

There are 10 debugfs lines in total.

Is this something to be concerned about? (Complete Linux noob here.) I subsequently installed MATE core and LightDM, and everything seems to be working fine, but the message above still appears on every boot.

Otherwise it's great, everything is running smoothly with much less lag than the stock Debian. Infinite thanks to danielt! The only other issue is with the audio (controlled by alsa-utils, pavucontrol, and mate-media); it seems quieter than before, and there is always a very loud popping noise shortly after any audio has stopped playing (even when I have muted the volume controller).

If the batch is relevant, my Pinebook Pro was ordered Nov 2019 and arrived Jan 2020.
(06-13-2020, 04:22 AM)yawnoc Wrote: The only other issue is with the audio (controlled by alsa-utils, pavucontrol, and mate-media); it seems quieter than before, and there is always a very loud popping noise shortly after any audio has stopped playing (even when I have muted the volume controller).

I've figured out that the low volume is mainly due to different settings for DAC in alsamixer:
  • 100<>100 [dB gain: 0.00, 0.00] in Debian stretch (stock OS), which is VERY loud
  • 32<>32 [dB gain: -30.00, -30.00] in Debian bullseye (via danielt's installer)
I got comfortably loud audio by setting DAC to 60<>60 [dB gain: -13.50, -13.50] and Headphone Mixer to 50<>50 [dB gain: -6.00, -6.00].

This doesn't fix the popping noises, whose loudness is independent of any settings in alsamixer, and which seem to occur whenever audio switches from inactive to active or vice versa.


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