[fedora-arm] Orange Pi PC/Zero/Mini

[Fabian Affolter]

Hi all,

As Peter requested :-)

During the last three weeks I attended two conferences. In India we
wanted to have actual hardware to allow the participants of the training
to do their exercises and the attendees of the crypto currencies village
see how it works.
I'm going to split it. Covering the Orange Pi devices here and the
Raspberry Pi and the UDOO Neo in another message.

I decided to go with three Orange Pi Zero. They are easy to carry
around, have a physical NIC, are cheap and with a big powerbank we were
able to survive the power outages with are happening from time to time
there.

Of course, we wanted to run Fedora but I ended up using Armbian. I was
using fedora-arm-image-installer to create the cards.

# fedora-arm-image-installer \
--image=Fedora-Server-armhfp-27-1.6-sda.raw.xz
--target=orangepi_zero --media=/dev/mmcblk0 --resizefs

To get some feedback I connected a serial converter to the Orange Pi
Zero. The output is visible but minicom doesn't allow me to log in aka
doesn't accept any input no matter of minicom's settings. Same result
with a different adapter. My guess is that it would work if you know how
to do it as in a lot of cases it's the only way to get the details or
perform the initial setup.

According to the serial output the Orange Pi Zero should be available
over the network. It doesn't show me its IP address but that's fine. OK,
if are not using network which you have some sort of control over it
then it would be handy if you get the IP address from the serial output.

In the meantime were three SD card ready with Armbian and I stopped. The
reason is simple: Armbian is more plug-and-play than Fedora. The initial
configuration can be done over SSH and I don't wanted to waste more time
on getting Fedora running without any indication of success.

The next one was an Orange Pi PC. Reason to use was the HDMI output
which would make it possible to attach the unit to a projector.
Workstation image instead of Server this time.

# fedora-arm-image-installer \
--image=Fedora-Workstation-armhfp-27-1.6-sda.raw.xz \
--target=orangepi_pc --media=/dev/mmcblk0 --resizefs

Device starts running, no graphical output. Perhaps broken...no, works
fine with Armbian. Perhaps is the screen not playing nice with Fedora.
Other screen, same result.

Let's test the Orange Mini (that one is approx. the same age as the
Orange Pi PC). Same image, different target. After a couple of seconds
the LED went on but not HDMI output.

Kind regards,

Fabian

[Peter Robinson]

Hi Fabian,

Post by Fabian Affolter
As Peter requested :-)

Thanks for this, response and details in line.

Post by Fabian Affolter
During the last three weeks I attended two conferences. In India we
wanted to have actual hardware to allow the participants of the training
to do their exercises and the attendees of the crypto currencies village
see how it works.

Interesting, is there details about the crypto currencies side of this
somewhere?

Post by Fabian Affolter
I'm going to split it. Covering the Orange Pi devices here and the
Raspberry Pi and the UDOO Neo in another message.
I decided to go with three Orange Pi Zero. They are easy to carry
around, have a physical NIC, are cheap and with a big powerbank we were
able to survive the power outages with are happening from time to time
there.
Of course, we wanted to run Fedora but I ended up using Armbian. I was
using fedora-arm-image-installer to create the cards.
# fedora-arm-image-installer \
--image=Fedora-Server-armhfp-27-1.6-sda.raw.xz
--target=orangepi_zero --media=/dev/mmcblk0 --resizefs
To get some feedback I connected a serial converter to the Orange Pi
Zero. The output is visible but minicom doesn't allow me to log in aka
doesn't accept any input no matter of minicom's settings. Same result
with a different adapter. My guess is that it would work if you know how
to do it as in a lot of cases it's the only way to get the details or
perform the initial setup.

The serial support here should just work, the AllWinner stuff has been
pretty stable for ages and is basically the same across all devices.
There have been reports of the Zero working just fine with serial
consoles. I personally tend to use screen here because minicom's
general attempts to init modems and the like has caused me problems in
the past. "screen /dev/ttyUSB0 115200" should work, the only time I've
ever had issues with RX and no TX was when then TX was pinned wrong.

I would be very interested in debugging this with you if you have the interest.

Post by Fabian Affolter
According to the serial output the Orange Pi Zero should be available
over the network. It doesn't show me its IP address but that's fine. OK,
if are not using network which you have some sort of control over it
then it would be handy if you get the IP address from the serial output.

Suggestions on how to implement this would be welcome, the server
image does this already via cockpit.

Post by Fabian Affolter
In the meantime were three SD card ready with Armbian and I stopped. The
reason is simple: Armbian is more plug-and-play than Fedora. The initial
configuration can be done over SSH and I don't wanted to waste more time
on getting Fedora running without any indication of success.

There's an explicit reason we don't allow ssh before setting
username/passwords, security. I've heard from another distro on a well
known board which has a passwordless root login to allow config like
this that their devices have been used in known bot nets. The general
consenus here is that the best way to stop this is to force usernam
creation and password setting on the console, else people tend to be
lazy and leave it at the defaults. We have some functionality here
with the --addkey= option of arm-image-installer which unlocks the
root account and adds a ssh key. Suggestions on how to improve this
experience while keeping a high level of security again would be
welcome, or details of how armbian does it.

Post by Fabian Affolter
The next one was an Orange Pi PC. Reason to use was the HDMI output
which would make it possible to attach the unit to a projector.

The H3 (all the H-series and A64 SoCs) don't have any level of
upstream support for HDMI at all. In the 4.13 kernel that shipped with
F-27 this would have been well over 100 non upstream (not even
accepted upstream) patches to maintain across a number of kernel
cycles and constantly rebase. Even when they do land upstream, some
went into 4.16 and a lot more will be in 4.17, with luck this should
be complete in 4.18, there won't be accelerated graphics to run with
Workstation because the GPU is MALI and there's not yet an open driver
for it. Best we'll be able to hope for in the medium future here is
something like XFCE.

Post by Fabian Affolter
Workstation image instead of Server this time.
# fedora-arm-image-installer \
--image=Fedora-Workstation-armhfp-27-1.6-sda.raw.xz \
--target=orangepi_pc --media=/dev/mmcblk0 --resizefs
Device starts running, no graphical output. Perhaps broken...no, works
fine with Armbian. Perhaps is the screen not playing nice with Fedora.
Other screen, same result.

There is no upstream support at all for HDMI, what kernel does Armbian
use? It must be either a heavily patched upstream or a vendor BSP
kernel.

Post by Fabian Affolter
Let's test the Orange Mini (that one is approx. the same age as the
Orange Pi PC). Same image, different target. After a couple of seconds
the LED went on but not HDMI output.

Same, I'm actually got on my list to look at the patch set for HDMI to
give us basic text console output on 4.16 in F-28, I think to do that
across H3/H5/A64 SoCs we're looking at around 60 patches on top of
4.16 across clock/gpu and other areas of the kernel. It's a lot to
maintain, it's actually more than all our patches for ARM* combined
ATM but should be mostly gone for 4.17. All those devices should work
with serial console with network and USB though if that's deemed
useful.

Peter
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[Nuno Dias]

Hi,

The best option for OrangePi PC is to use Fedora 28 (yes I know is not
released yet, but images are available to test) and because has a
more recent kernel, HDMI works out of the box (no acceleration
thought), right now in my tests everything seams to work fine.

Nuno

Post by Peter Robinson
Hi Fabian,

Post by Fabian Affolter
As Peter requested :-)

Thanks for this, response and details in line.

Post by Fabian Affolter
During the last three weeks I attended two conferences. In India we
wanted to have actual hardware to allow the participants of the training
to do their exercises and the attendees of the crypto currencies village
see how it works.

Interesting, is there details about the crypto currencies side of this
somewhere?

Post by Fabian Affolter
I'm going to split it. Covering the Orange Pi devices here and the
Raspberry Pi and the UDOO Neo in another message.
I decided to go with three Orange Pi Zero. They are easy to carry
around, have a physical NIC, are cheap and with a big powerbank we were
able to survive the power outages with are happening from time to time
there.
Of course, we wanted to run Fedora but I ended up using Armbian. I was
using fedora-arm-image-installer to create the cards.
# fedora-arm-image-installer \
--image=Fedora-Server-armhfp-27-1.6-sda.raw.xz
--target=orangepi_zero --media=/dev/mmcblk0 --resizefs
To get some feedback I connected a serial converter to the Orange Pi
Zero. The output is visible but minicom doesn't allow me to log in aka
doesn't accept any input no matter of minicom's settings. Same result
with a different adapter. My guess is that it would work if you know how
to do it as in a lot of cases it's the only way to get the details or
perform the initial setup.

The serial support here should just work, the AllWinner stuff has been
pretty stable for ages and is basically the same across all devices.
There have been reports of the Zero working just fine with serial
consoles. I personally tend to use screen here because minicom's
general attempts to init modems and the like has caused me problems in
the past. "screen /dev/ttyUSB0 115200" should work, the only time I've
ever had issues with RX and no TX was when then TX was pinned wrong.
I would be very interested in debugging this with you if you have the interest.

Post by Fabian Affolter
According to the serial output the Orange Pi Zero should be
available
over the network. It doesn't show me its IP address but that's fine. OK,
if are not using network which you have some sort of control over it
then it would be handy if you get the IP address from the serial output.

Suggestions on how to implement this would be welcome, the server
image does this already via cockpit.

Post by Fabian Affolter
In the meantime were three SD card ready with Armbian and I
stopped. The
reason is simple: Armbian is more plug-and-play than Fedora. The initial
configuration can be done over SSH and I don't wanted to waste more time
on getting Fedora running without any indication of success.

There's an explicit reason we don't allow ssh before setting
username/passwords, security. I've heard from another distro on a well
known board which has a passwordless root login to allow config like
this that their devices have been used in known bot nets. The general
consenus here is that the best way to stop this is to force usernam
creation and password setting on the console, else people tend to be
lazy and leave it at the defaults. We have some functionality here
with the --addkey= option of arm-image-installer which unlocks the
root account and adds a ssh key. Suggestions on how to improve this
experience while keeping a high level of security again would be
welcome, or details of how armbian does it.

Post by Fabian Affolter
The next one was an Orange Pi PC. Reason to use was the HDMI output
which would make it possible to attach the unit to a projector.

The H3 (all the H-series and A64 SoCs) don't have any level of
upstream support for HDMI at all. In the 4.13 kernel that shipped with
F-27 this would have been well over 100 non upstream (not even
accepted upstream) patches to maintain across a number of kernel
cycles and constantly rebase. Even when they do land upstream, some
went into 4.16 and a lot more will be in 4.17, with luck this should
be complete in 4.18, there won't be accelerated graphics to run with
Workstation because the GPU is MALI and there's not yet an open driver
for it. Best we'll be able to hope for in the medium future here is
something like XFCE.

Post by Fabian Affolter
Workstation image instead of Server this time.
# fedora-arm-image-installer \
--image=Fedora-Workstation-armhfp-27-1.6-sda.raw.xz \
--target=orangepi_pc --media=/dev/mmcblk0 --resizefs
Device starts running, no graphical output. Perhaps broken...no, works
fine with Armbian. Perhaps is the screen not playing nice with Fedora.
Other screen, same result.

There is no upstream support at all for HDMI, what kernel does
Armbian
use? It must be either a heavily patched upstream or a vendor BSP
kernel.

Post by Fabian Affolter
Let's test the Orange Mini (that one is approx. the same age as the
Orange Pi PC). Same image, different target. After a couple of seconds
the LED went on but not HDMI output.

Same, I'm actually got on my list to look at the patch set for HDMI to
give us basic text console output on 4.16 in F-28, I think to do that
across H3/H5/A64 SoCs we're looking at around 60 patches on top of
4.16 across clock/gpu and other areas of the kernel. It's a lot to
maintain, it's actually more than all our patches for ARM* combined
ATM but should be mostly gone for 4.17. All those devices should work
with serial console with network and USB though if that's deemed
useful.
Peter
_______________________________________________

--
Nuno Dias <***@gmail.com>
_______________________________________________
arm mailing list -- ***@lists.fedoraproject.org
To unsubscribe send an email to arm-***@lists.fedorapro

[Peter Robinson]

Post by Nuno Dias
Hi,
The best option for OrangePi PC is to use Fedora 28 (yes I know is not
released yet, but images are available to test) and because has a
more recent kernel, HDMI works out of the box (no acceleration
thought), right now in my tests everything seams to work fine.

That's some what surprising. The support hasn't landed upstream yet in
4.16, although the clocks support has so maybe that's enough to light
up the output even though I believe it would more by luck than design.

Post by Nuno Dias

Post by Peter Robinson
Hi Fabian,

Post by Fabian Affolter
As Peter requested :-)

Thanks for this, response and details in line.

Post by Fabian Affolter
During the last three weeks I attended two conferences. In India we
wanted to have actual hardware to allow the participants of the training
to do their exercises and the attendees of the crypto currencies village
see how it works.

Interesting, is there details about the crypto currencies side of this
somewhere?

Post by Fabian Affolter
I'm going to split it. Covering the Orange Pi devices here and the
Raspberry Pi and the UDOO Neo in another message.
I decided to go with three Orange Pi Zero. They are easy to carry
around, have a physical NIC, are cheap and with a big powerbank we were
able to survive the power outages with are happening from time to time
there.
Of course, we wanted to run Fedora but I ended up using Armbian. I was
using fedora-arm-image-installer to create the cards.
# fedora-arm-image-installer \
--image=Fedora-Server-armhfp-27-1.6-sda.raw.xz
--target=orangepi_zero --media=/dev/mmcblk0 --resizefs
To get some feedback I connected a serial converter to the Orange Pi
Zero. The output is visible but minicom doesn't allow me to log in aka
doesn't accept any input no matter of minicom's settings. Same result
with a different adapter. My guess is that it would work if you know how
to do it as in a lot of cases it's the only way to get the details or
perform the initial setup.

The serial support here should just work, the AllWinner stuff has been
pretty stable for ages and is basically the same across all devices.
There have been reports of the Zero working just fine with serial
consoles. I personally tend to use screen here because minicom's
general attempts to init modems and the like has caused me problems in
the past. "screen /dev/ttyUSB0 115200" should work, the only time I've
ever had issues with RX and no TX was when then TX was pinned wrong.
I would be very interested in debugging this with you if you have the interest.

Post by Fabian Affolter
According to the serial output the Orange Pi Zero should be
available
over the network. It doesn't show me its IP address but that's fine. OK,
if are not using network which you have some sort of control over it
then it would be handy if you get the IP address from the serial output.

Suggestions on how to implement this would be welcome, the server
image does this already via cockpit.

Post by Fabian Affolter
In the meantime were three SD card ready with Armbian and I
stopped. The
reason is simple: Armbian is more plug-and-play than Fedora. The initial
configuration can be done over SSH and I don't wanted to waste more time
on getting Fedora running without any indication of success.

There's an explicit reason we don't allow ssh before setting
username/passwords, security. I've heard from another distro on a well
known board which has a passwordless root login to allow config like
this that their devices have been used in known bot nets. The general
consenus here is that the best way to stop this is to force usernam
creation and password setting on the console, else people tend to be
lazy and leave it at the defaults. We have some functionality here
with the --addkey= option of arm-image-installer which unlocks the
root account and adds a ssh key. Suggestions on how to improve this
experience while keeping a high level of security again would be
welcome, or details of how armbian does it.

Post by Fabian Affolter
The next one was an Orange Pi PC. Reason to use was the HDMI output
which would make it possible to attach the unit to a projector.

The H3 (all the H-series and A64 SoCs) don't have any level of
upstream support for HDMI at all. In the 4.13 kernel that shipped with
F-27 this would have been well over 100 non upstream (not even
accepted upstream) patches to maintain across a number of kernel
cycles and constantly rebase. Even when they do land upstream, some
went into 4.16 and a lot more will be in 4.17, with luck this should
be complete in 4.18, there won't be accelerated graphics to run with
Workstation because the GPU is MALI and there's not yet an open driver
for it. Best we'll be able to hope for in the medium future here is
something like XFCE.

Post by Fabian Affolter
Workstation image instead of Server this time.
# fedora-arm-image-installer \
--image=Fedora-Workstation-armhfp-27-1.6-sda.raw.xz \
--target=orangepi_pc --media=/dev/mmcblk0 --resizefs
Device starts running, no graphical output. Perhaps broken...no, works
fine with Armbian. Perhaps is the screen not playing nice with Fedora.
Other screen, same result.

There is no upstream support at all for HDMI, what kernel does Armbian
use? It must be either a heavily patched upstream or a vendor BSP
kernel.

Post by Fabian Affolter
Let's test the Orange Mini (that one is approx. the same age as the
Orange Pi PC). Same image, different target. After a couple of seconds
the LED went on but not HDMI output.

Same, I'm actually got on my list to look at the patch set for HDMI to
give us basic text console output on 4.16 in F-28, I think to do that
across H3/H5/A64 SoCs we're looking at around 60 patches on top of
4.16 across clock/gpu and other areas of the kernel. It's a lot to
maintain, it's actually more than all our patches for ARM* combined
ATM but should be mostly gone for 4.17. All those devices should work
with serial console with network and USB though if that's deemed
useful.
Peter
_______________________________________________

--

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To unsubscribe send an email to a