Support for Orange Pi board

[jeancf]

Hi,

I just bought an Orange Pi board and I am trying to run arch on it. Based on the hardware specs (Allwinner A20 dual-core, Wi-Fi) I created and SD card based on the PCDuino3 instructions.

I guess my approach must be naive because when I power up the board with the SD Card inserted nothing happens, the screen does not even wake up.

I did manage to boot and run the board with a bananian image before though.

This looks to me like a bootloader issue. Can somebody point me in the right direction?

Thanks,

/~JC

[WarheadsSE]

You can't just slap a random uboot on an pray it will work.
Also, why are you assuming that HDMI will work out of the box?
Have you hooked up a serial line to see what, if any, output is present?

[jeancf]

I am totally new to this and I am trying to figure out what to.

So I need a custom u-boot for that particular platform, right? I am going to check with the vendor to see if I can get something from them.

I will also try to figure out out to hook up a serial cable to the board.

Thanks,

/~JC

[jeancf]

OK, so I have done my homework: I have obtained the .fex file from the board developer. I compiled the sunxi u-boot and kernel with the right config. I then created an image with my u-boot, my kernel and the arch root filesystem. with that configuration everything ran fine.

But when I try to use the arch kernel (Linux-3.4.103-5-ARCH) however, the ethernet adapter does not work. It is a Realtek RTL8211E.

The sunxi documentation (http://linux-sunxi.org/Ethernet#Realtek_RTL8211E) mentions that "Generic PHY support is enough to make it work."

How can I find out is the arch kernel is compiled with this support enabled? I have searched /proc/config.gz on the running arch kernel and could not find anything Realtek related.

Thanks.

[WarheadsSE]

Consider trying linux-armv7. You loose mali, but get up to date kernel, mainline support, and a lot more benefits.

[jeancf]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')onsider trying linux-armv7

[WarheadsSE]

If you think you need to build it yourself, I suppose.
Have you got the right module loaded for it? sunxi_gmac maybe?

[pietrondo]

same problem. I just bought one orange pi plus and now I'm looking to run on it archlinuxarm.

[eatmorepets]

Well according to this:
http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining ... ed_for_4.2

OrangePi probably doesn't work with a stock kernel. You'll have to wait for 4.2 I guess.

[jeancf]

It does. I managed to compile the linux-sunxi kernel (generic linux-sunxi lightly modified for the bananaPi) and get it to run on the OrangePi with all features working.

But I still have not managed to identify the differences between the configuration of this kernel and the arch kernel that cause the ethernet adapter to not be recognized. They are both version 3-4.103.

In the meantime I run arch with my custom kernel and things are OK.