VisionFive 2 Debian Image 202303 Released

@dtometzki Danke.

I presume you are running the “cat /proc/mtd” from a 202303 image?

Regards

Aubrey

PS In the 202303 image information blurb, it states that with this image release, a firmware upgrade is not necessary.

Hello @Stromkiller
it isnt the image but the kernel and U-boot and opensbi from this new image.

I use the new kernel,u-boot and opensbi with the old image.

Damian

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Now it does and it was my fault that reboot and reset did not work as expected.

As I wrote in an earlier post, I am always investigating the interaction between USB QC and PD chargers and my various SBCs.

When I noticed the behaviour described, I had set up an NVMe as the root filesystem and connected a third USB power monitor, which I had ordered previously. In the course of the tests, I ordered other USB cables. With these, I destroyed the second USB power monitor on the VF2 after a shutdown. In the meantime, I ordered a fourth USB power monitor. With the latest USB power monitor and the new USB cables, the VF2 behaves completely normally.

Some may wonder if all the power supplies, cables and USB power monitors weren’t quite expensive. I can only say that yes, they were, but I am prepared to pay almost any price if it means I can learn something. But since I only really enjoy learning when I can give a talk about it afterwards, I will report in detail about my new USB-C PD experiences in the next few days.

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Good attitude! I’m curious to hear your experiences.

I have to congratulate the riscv team for this new release and in such a short time they have done a good job. the bugs that I had reported in previous releases are finally gone. i mean double login and inability to shut down or restart after the first login.

this image started right away and I must say that the splash screen and the boot writings make the board even more interesting as far as the next developments are concerned.

I have the previous release on eMMC and the new one on SD and I can play with both using the boot dip switches, great job guys!

in my specific case I report the pink screen problem solved with the script and unfortunately I use an old VGA monitor with 1440x900 resolution and a hdmi vga adapter and I haven’t been able to use the correct resolution but I only see 1980 or 1280 as available resolutions.

I hope soon it will be possible to have an image with the XFCE GUI for those like me who don’t like gnome and an image without GUI obviously both bootable from SD and eMMC, I can wait…

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I’ve used both XFCE and i3 on mine, both run well.

apt install xfce4 is all you need, this will also bring in lightdm and ask if you want to use it instead of GDM during the install.

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For me, the wayland debian image 202303 released failed to install xfce4 and gnome desktop. I don’t even have a nautilus file browser. I was only able to literally install starfive’s firefox and libreoffice. When I attempted to fix broken packages with aptitude to install xfce or gnome I got into dependency hell where certain packages simply could not be installed since they were unavailable yet.

easytarget were you using the sdcard.img?

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No; I am using the vanilla 202303 Wayland minimal image from google driveI, I then did the initial needed apt update, but not upgrade! Then I installed the additional pre-built packages as instructed in the release docs, followed by the xfce4 and i3 installs.
Note that I did not attempt to do any ‘dist upgrades’ to the image, everything is installed from the default preconfigured snapshot.

I have also installed a whole load of other utils, meld, scummvm, gnome-games, tuxcart, and development tools for building my own kernel etc… This has all ‘just worked™’.

Ok, I was able to repeat some of your success.

The following wipes the sdcard, writes to the sdcard, then I fix the gpt and resize the respective partition holding root fs.

wipefs --all /dev/sdb
dd if=./starfive-jh7110-VF2-SD-wayland.img of=/dev/sdb bs=4M status=progress conv=fdatasync
gparted /dev/sdb

Afterwards I boot it up:

sudo bash
vi /etc/apt/sources.list
passwd
passwd user
sync
wget https://deb.debian.org/debian-ports/pool/main/d/debian-ports-archive-keyring/debian-ports-archive-keyring_2023.02.01_all.deb
dpkg -i debian-ports-archive-keyring_2023.02.01_all.deb
apt update
wget https://www.ports.debian.org/archive_2022.key
apt-key add archive_2022.key
apt update
apt-get install aptitude
shutdown -h now
apt-get install task-xfce-desktop
clinfo
shutdown -h now
wget https://github.com/starfive-tech/Debian/releases/download/v0.7.0-engineering-release/install_package_and_dependencies.sh
chmod u+x install_package_and_dependencies.sh 
sudo ./install_package_and_dependencies.sh 
clinfo

Please note my sources.list was modified to resolve the key issue:

cat /etc/apt/sources.list
deb [trusted=yes] https://snapshot.debian.org/archive/debian-ports/20221225T084846Z unstable main

So after I installed xfce desktop my clinfo was ok and a platform was detected.
After installing the firefox/libreoffice using install_package_and_dependencies.sh, clinfo displayed 0 platforms available.
After 3 power ups/downs, I finally saw my desktop again. I tried clinfo again and yes clinfo gave me a platform.

There is a lot of complexity in what you are doing, imho unnecessary. All the messing around with keys etc is not needed. And you need to use the 0.7.1 debian downloads with the 202303 release (not 0.7.0 from your steps).

My equivalent of the steps you listed is:

apt update
wget https://github.com/starfive-tech/Debian/releases/download/v0.7.1-engineering-release-wayland/install_package_and_dependencies.sh
chmod u+x install_package_and_dependencies.sh 
sudo ./install_package_and_dependencies.sh
apt install xfce4

PS; as someone who has been building, releasing and administering unix then linux systems for a loong time; I beg you not to use aptitude. It’s rubbish (in a very complex way).

It’s possible I used the 0.7.1 .sh script. I downloaded it from livinglinux youtube url.

With respect to aptitude, I have found it useful over the years when there are broken packages, aptitude provides alternative steps in a menu to make it easy to deal with. It’s usually able to overcome the issues in this way. It’s some exceptional to use however. In most cases it’s more convenient to use apt-get install, but there are circumstances for me when packages are broken where I find using aptitude helps. What would you use instead?

I have no equivalent tool like this one in dnf or rpm-ostree land to fix broken packages. I either have to rollback or remove packages in those circumstances. What would you use instead in fedora land?

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myClinfoOutputAfter.txt (22.0 KB)

I am posting this from the vf2 firefox!

Here is my clinfo output after everything was installed. I’m very happy to see this detected. I wish there were easier documentation to follow to ensure we have everything we need to develop with opencl and gles and vulkan on visionfive 2. I’ll try to build the demos for each again and report back.

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Installing the image on a 32GB SD Card. System boots and can be accessed via SSH
But on the display (4K HDMI Display with 3840x2160) there will only be shown a mouse cursor. The cursor cannot be moved by mouse, but system itself stays accessible via ssh.

Which resolutions via HDMI are hardcoded in the image? The I can test it on a more appropriate display? Or are ther any hints to bring it up on the 4K display?

Thanks

Uwe

Attached to a TV with FullHD - display works and I can login now!

@zash1958 Have a look at this thread for 4k.

Thanks! I now can log in to the GUI session :slight_smile:

Another question: I have ordered the board with the additional ESWIN6600 USB-Wlan adapter. As the kernel of debian does not officially support this module I would aks if someone has already compiled a loadable .ko module for it.

I would dismiss the hours-lasting recompilation of the kernel

Somebody has a running kernel extension for it?

TIA

Uwe

The StarFive kernel for this release has the driver built-in.

No need to recompile it, although that only takes 40mins for this kernel on the machine itself.

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But the USB Wifi Adapter is not shown with ifconfig -a ???
Maybe there is some other step missing?

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Redone all from scratch and flashed new on the SD. Now the Wifi adapter was shown properly as he should and could be configured with nmtui :slight_smile:

Problem solved.

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Pink screen here also. Is this a function of the new image only? Is this affecting everyone?