Orange Pi Prime is back to stock now!

jafcobend

calinp replied at 2018-6-1 02:28
Hi, I recommend you tu use Armbian H2/H3 devices are very well supported from peripheral and power m ...

FYI: Initial power-on of Armbian did not provide i2c bus devices either. I need to go do other things. But I'll play with it a bit more.

igorpec

Initial power-on of Armbian did not provide i2c bus devices either.

I2C bus is not enabled by default.
https://docs.armbian.com/User-Guide_Allwinner_overlays/

You can also use armbian-config -> system -> hardware and enable what you need.

jafcobend

calinp replied at 2018-6-1 02:28
Hi, I recommend you tu use Armbian H2/H3 devices are very well supported from peripheral and power m ...

I gave Armbian a try. After I discovered armbian-config I was able to turn on the i2c bus and it made the appropriate device files and they worked as expected. It has a low RAM footprint but a large disk footprint. In general I'm pleased with it. Probably would be good if OrangePI provided this image on their downloads page. But it does seem to have a faulty ethernet driver.  It pauses once in a while and that didn't seem to happen with the OrangePI supplied images.

jafcobend

igorpec replied at 2018-6-3 03:26
I2C bus is not enabled by default.
https://docs.armbian.com/User-Guide_Allwinner_overlays/

Thanks for the info. I discovered this. I read the manual. I think their philosophy makes sense. I'll probably be using Armbian as my primary OS going forward with OrangePIs.

igorpec

It pauses once in a while and that didn't seem to happen with the OrangePI supplied images.

I know that not everything is perfect with H5/A64 kernel support. We still label it "experimental" which indicates that it mostly works, but it is not well tested and there might be hidden bugs. It is a kernel with active development, while on legacy kernel, which is used in stock images, is stalled for years. There is virtually no involvement from the community side. It's a static source drop from Allwinner. Not to mention that hardware properties are changing in some complex proprietary way.

but a large disk footprint

It's a minimal Debian userspace with essentials. It's hard to go below this unless you don't want to do anything with the board ... but until you need Perl/Python, compiler and working wireless (firmware), this is it. Also, a kernel is not the smallest and can be shrunk, but we tend to have big hw support out of the box ... and you have to build your own dedicated kernel if you like. We provide rock solid tools for recreating it.

RootFS is around 1G, while it's hard to find and better not to use SD card smaller than 32Gb. Not just because of size but because of speed and reliability. Old small cards can be easy 50-100x slower.

jafcobend

igorpec replied at 2018-6-4 14:33
I know that not everything is perfect with H5/A64 kernel support. We still label it "experimental" ...

Thanks for the feedback. I'd point out the Zero, which is what I wrote about, is H2. That's what I'm having network issues with. I think I read on the linux-sunxi site that this is a known issue. I was actually suprised I didn't run into it with the stock firmware... which is obviously older.

It's a minimal Debian userspace with essentials. It's hard to go below this unless you don't want to do anything with the board ...

I'm very familiar with trimming Debian. I reduced the stripped "Jessie" install for the NTC C.H.I.P. from its nearly 800MB down to about 350MB. When I figure out which direction I want to go I'll probably prune for my use and backup the image. Its easy enough to clone to additional uSD chips.

... better not to use SD card smaller than 32Gb.

Seems to me 32GB is the max on this board. But I have noticed things work much faster on my 32GB uSD than they do on the 8GB one. Both are high quality Samsung... but the 32GB is newer. I need to order up a bunch more.

igorpec

Thanks for the feedback. I'd point out the Zero, which is what I wrote about, is H2. That's what I'm having network issues with. I think I read on the linux-sunxi site that this is a known issue. I was actually suprised I didn't run into it with the stock firmware... which is obviously older.

H2 = H3 - 4k. They are the same chips. The only diff is 4k video decoding options which is irrelevant for most use cases. Our H2/H3 support is far superior than stock. For H3 we also provide bug fixed stock kernel, not only a modern kernel. At least with H2/H3 you have more options.

I'm very familiar with trimming Debian. I reduced the stripped "Jessie" install for the NTC C.H.I.P. from its nearly 800MB down to about 350MB.

Good. Then you know what I am talking about. Well, for general purpose usage we can't provide such stripped image and ... installing/writing small files is worse/slow on SD media.

Its easy enough to clone to additional uSD chips.

Or build from sources and stay with latest improvements? There are many of them on all levels. We wanted to add a build option "TINY_IMAGE=yes" or something, but so far ... it's just a plan If you have time, you are welcome to help out in this.

Seems to me 32GB is the max on this board. But I have noticed things work much faster on my 32GB uSD than they do on the 8GB one.

128GB works, 256G probably as well.

If you are interested to find out more about SD cards in details:
https://forum.armbian.com/topic/954-sd-card-performance/