Odroid C1+ and Kernel 4.x

[mad_ady]

Hello everyone,

I'm trying to boot kernel 4.4-rc2 on Odroid C1+. I followed the guide here: https://github.com/umiddelb/armhf/wiki/ ... ARM-device to compile the kernel.

I modified boot.ini and changed the console parameter to this: "console=ttyAML0,115200n8" in order to get serial console working.

When I try to boot the kernel (from emmc), it boots, loads initramfs but fails to load the root filesystem (ALERT! /dev/disk/by-uuid/e139ce78-9841-40fe-8823-96a304a09859 does not exist. Dropping to a shell!). Also it sees only one CPU.

I've tried with both uInitrd from the default 3.10 kernel and with the one generated from the 4.4 kernel tree.

Complete bootlog and a few ls'es are here: http://pastebin.com/gvVx369G

I'd like to ask if emmc is supported in 4.4 for C1, or if I should try with an SD card instead.

[memeka]

change in boot.init rootfs=UUIDe139ce78... to rootfs=/dev/mmcblk0p2

[mad_ady]

I have tried this. Still doesn't fully boot but I seem to have broken my cheap usb-to-ttl adapter and can't get the exact output at the moment. Will update as soon as possible.

[hhh1]

I have tried this. Still doesn't fully boot but I seem to have broken my cheap usb-to-ttl adapter and can't get the exact output at the moment. Will update as soon as possible.

Can you please be so kind and tell me how did you manage to run 4.x kernel on C1 at all?

I spent 2 days of my life trying to run it with kernel.org kernel 4.6 and 4.7 and linaro kernel 4.6.
But all I got on linaro kernel was a freeze on "Uncompressing Linux... done, booting the kernel."
And on kernel.org:
[ 0.770483] VFS: Cannot open root device "mmcblk0p1" or unknown-block(0,0): error -6
[ 0.778237] Please append a correct "root=" boot option; here are the available partitions:
[ 0.786615] 0100 65536 ram0 (driver?)
...
[ 0.857191] 010f 65536 ram15 (driver?)
[ 0.861945] Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)

Looks like it doesn't see eMMC/SD card at all.
I feel myself trapped.
Please tell me what config did you use? multi_v7_defconfig?
Any additional options?
And dtb was meson8b-odroidc1.dtb, right?

[daemon32]

Hi, I've been following the efforts to mainline support for the AMlogic SOCs that are used in the odroid-c1 and I've found these resources very useful:

The linux-meson project (the mainlining effort):
http://linux-meson.com/doku.php

The linux-meson mailing list:
http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/list ... ux-amlogic

A website that displays build information about various kernels on various boards, including mainline C1 support:
https://kernelci.org/boot/meson8b-odroidc1/

Where the linux-meson patches usually come from/end up:
https://github.com/carlocaione/linux-meson

Some attempt at porting the odroid-c1 to upstream u-boot:
https://github.com/carlocaione/u-boot

There's no display/audio (hdmitx) or GPU support yet, but nearly everything else is there from what I can tell.

[lavorrick]

@mad_ady my experience is almost identical to yours, except I compiled a 4.7-rc7 kernel, and my C1+ has an SD card in it, rather than an eMMC. I used multi_v7_defconfig without any other options for the build. The kernel starts up fine, but cannot see any trace of the SD card and so is unable to mount root partition, just like you.

What I have noticed is that the meson8b-odroidc1.dtb that came out of my kernel build is very small (3,283 bytes) vs the one that is supplied with hardkernel's Ubuntu 14.04 image (meson8b_odroidc.dtb - 19.257 bytes)

The links supplied by @daemon32 are very interesting, particularly the one with the boot status of various boards, where 4.7-rc7 (amongst other versions) is show to be "successful" on the C1, though when you read through the actual boot log, it doesn't look like they even attempt to load a root filesystem, if I'm interpreting it correctly. I guess "success" is defined as the kernel being able to start and run, regardless of whether or not any of the hardware peripherals can be accessed.

My current goal is to get a headless Ubuntu distribution on my board, I don't care about the GPU/HDMI support. I only need USB, GPIO, Ethernet and obviously SD/eMMC support right now. Has anybody achieved this?

[mad_ady]

I'm sorry guys, I have completely missed this thread and your replies. I haven't tried booting 4.x in a while, but I might try again either with NFS rootfs or with usb rootfs. It might be interesting to look into the efforts to boot 4.x on the C2 - those also required extensive uboot updates.

[gügü]

Can we revive this thread and the effort all together champions?

[mad_ady]

Wow, I don't even remember creating this thread. I wonder why I was experimenting with kernel 4.x on the C1? Oh, well.

I think I remember reading around the forum that amlogic has released/was releasing a 4.x (4.8 maybe?) for the S805. But I haven't experimented with it.

[gügü]

I'm fiddling around running the latest mainline kernel 4.12-rc7 with Odroid C2.
I wanted to run some docker swarm features on the Odroid C1 which requires higher than 3.18 as kernel configs.

[gügü]

Did someone managed to run a headless server with basic I/O, ethernet, External USB HD ? I also don't care about Video GPU and Desktop stuff I just need to have the required Docker settings in the kernel to run Swarm.

[lavorrick]

I did get a kernel to boot up on mine, last year sometime I think, maybe version 4.8 or so. But hardly any of the peripherals were working I don't think, including the MMC slot. Hardkernel themselves don't seem to be interested in anything unless graphics support is there, which I think is a mistake - I'm sure there's huge numbers of use cases out there for these boards which don't involve using any graphical output.

I keep a close eye on these guys at http://linux-meson.com/doku.php who seem to be making headway on it, gradually.

[olace]

Anyone knows if HDMI will be supported on newer versions?
Because in http://linux-meson.com/doku.php have only 'no' in cell for HDMI.

[lavorrick]

Anyone knows if HDMI will be supported on newer versions?
Because in http://linux-meson.com/doku.php have only 'no' in cell for HDMI.

They have a couple of references to the display in the TODO section of that page:

"Add Display support for pre-GX SoCs
Add HDMI support for pre-GX SoCs, Unknown HDMI Controller IP"

pre-GX refers to the meson8 and meson8b etc. as I understand it.

I expect it'll be a long time before they get to this though.

[itsmaxdd]

Do we have any news?

[lavorrick]

I compiled and ran a kernel from the amlogic integ branch, which reports to be some version of 4.17. It runs fine and can access my SD card and ethernet and USB drive. I haven't tried an MMC card and I found that the USB OTG port does not work. The CPU governer also appears to be inoperative, so I assume the cores are running at full bore the whole time. It's definitely substantial progress! One puzzling thing is that you cannot reboot from any other kernel version into this new one - it hangs on boot if you try. You have to pull the power plug out and cold boot into this 4.17 one and then it works.

[mad_ady]

That's great news. Can you post the link to the kernel/build instructions?

[lavorrick]

The problem is that what I've done is such a hack that I would be here all day telling you what I've done. Also I'm no expert at this stuff, I daresay there's plenty of better ways to do things than I have done.

Anyway I have uploaded the kernel that I have built http://mreeve.com/odroid/c1-kernel/ which you can feel free to grab and have a go with if you like. You'll need the kernel (uImage), the ramdisk (uInitrd), the device tree binary (meson8b-odroidc1.dtb) and the kernel modules tarball (modules.tar). It's a long time since I've used a hardkernel bootloader, but I think you'll need to put the kernel, ramdisk and device tree binary under /media/boot, unpack the modules into the root directory, then modify the bootloader to set suitable filenames and kernel parameters. The really important takeaways from this are that the device tree binary filename is subtly different from version 3, and the console is on ttyAML0 and not ttyS0.

The config for this kernel is just multi_v7_defconfig plus CONFIG_BLK_DEV_DM built as a module, which I need as my root filesystem is on a logical volume on a USB stick.

In terms of building, I use my XU4 as it's a lot faster. Also, my C1 is running debian on an external USB stick with the U-571 bootloader on an SD card. This was all assembled with z2d https://github.com/umiddelb/z2d but I modified it to have a separate /boot partition which resides on the SD card. For the sake of simplicity though I'll instead assume you're running a stock hardkernel Ubuntu image here on which you will do the build.

git clone -b integ git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/khilman/linux-amlogic.git

cd linux-amlogic

make multi_v7_defconfig
make -j4
make LOADADDR=0x00208000 uImage

cp arch/arm/boot/uImage /media/boot
cp arch/arm/boot/dts/meson8b-odroidc1.dtb /media/boot

make modules_install

kver=`make kernelrelease`
cd /boot
update-initramfs -c -k ${kver}
mkimage -A arm -O linux -T ramdisk -a 0x0 -e 0x0 -n initrd.img-${kver} -d initrd.img-${kver} uInitrd-${kver}
cp uInitrd-${kver} /media/boot/uInitrd

Then modify the bootloader config as described earlier.

Good luck!

[mad_ady]

Thanks!

[ranseyer]

Hi,

does somebody has a working boot.ini for the Kernel x.x ?

Mine dont work. (and i get no debug output on the hdmi port)

Code: Select all

# setenv m "720p"         	# 720p 1280x720
# setenv m "800p"         	# 1280x800
setenv m "sxga"         	# 1280x1024
# setenv m "1080i50hz"          # 1080I@50Hz
# setenv m "1080p24hz"          # 1080P@24Hz
# setenv m "1080p50hz"          # 1080P@50Hz
#setenv m "1080p"                # 1080P@60Hz
## setenv m "1920x1200"    	# 1920x1200

# HDMI DVI Mode Configuration
#setenv vout_mode "hdmi"
setenv vout_mode "dvi"
# setenv vout_mode "vga"

# HDMI BPP Mode
setenv m_bpp "32"
# setenv m_bpp "24"
# setenv m_bpp "16"

# Monitor output
# Controls if HDMI PHY should output anything to the monitor
setenv monitor_onoff "false" # true or false

# HDMI Hotplug Force (HPD)
# 1 = Enables HOTPlug Detection
# 0 = Disables HOTPlug Detection and force the connected status
setenv hpd "0"

# CEC Enable/Disable (Requires Hardware Modification)
# 1 = Enables HDMI CEC
# 0 = Disables HDMI CEC
setenv cec "0"

# PCM5102 I2S Audio DAC
# PCM5102 is an I2S Audio Dac Addon board for ODROID-C1+
# Uncomment the line below to __ENABLE__ support for this Addon board.
# setenv enabledac "enabledac"

# UHS Card Configuration
# Uncomment the line below to __DISABLE__ UHS-1 MicroSD support
# This might break boot for some brand models of cards.
#setenv disableuhs "disableuhs"


# Disable VPU (Video decoding engine, Saves RAM!!!)
# 0 = disabled
# 1 = enabled
setenv vpu "1"

# Disable HDMI Output (Again, saves ram!)
# 0 = disabled
# 1 = enabled
setenv hdmioutput "1"

# Default Console Device Setting
# setenv condev "console=ttyS0,115200n8"        # on serial port
# setenv condev "console=tty0"                    # on display (HDMI)
setenv condev "console=tty0 console=ttyAML0,115200n8"   # on both

# Enable/Disable ODROID-VU7 Touchscreen
setenv disable_vu7 "false" # false

# CPU Max Frequency
# Possible Values: 96 192 312 408 504 600 720 816
# 1008 1200 1320 1488 1536 1632 1728 and 1824
setenv max_freq "1536"
# setenv max_freq "1632"
# setenv max_freq "1728"
# setenv max_freq "1824"

###########################################

if test "${hpd}" = "0"; then setenv hdmi_hpd "disablehpd=true"; fi
if test "${cec}" = "1"; then setenv hdmi_cec "hdmitx=cecf"; fi
if test "${disable_vu7}" = "false"; then setenv hid_quirks "usbhid.quirks=0x0eef:0x0005:0x0004"; fi

# Boot Arguments
setenv bootargs "root=UUID=e139ce78-9841-40fe-8823-96a304a09859 rootwait ro disableuhs enabledac governor=conservative logo=osd1,loaded,0x7900000,720p,full no_console_suspend vdaccfg=0xa000 dmfc=3 cvbsmode=576cvbs    hdmimode=${m} m_bpp=${m_bpp} vout=${vout_mode}   disablehpd=true monitor_onoff=${monitor_onoff} max_freq=${max_freq} ${hid_quirks} fsck.repair=yes net.ifnames=0"

#console=ttyAML0,115200 root=UUID=bbbbcccc-bbbb-cccc-bbbb-ccccbbbbcccc rootwait rw disableuhs enabledac governor=conservative logo=osd1,loaded,0x7900000,720p,full no_console_suspend vdaccfg=0xa000 dmfc=3 cvbsmode=576cvbs hdmimode=1080p m_bpp=32 vout=hdmi disablehpd=true

#rootwait rw ${condev} no_console_suspend fsck.repair=yes vdaccfg=0xa000 logo=osd1,loaded,0x7900000,720p,full dmfc=3 cvbsmode=576cvbs  ${disableuhs} ${hdmi_hpd} ${hdmi_cec} ${enabledac} "

# Booting
fatload mmc 0:1 0x21000000 uImage
fatload mmc 0:1 0x22000000 uInitrd
fatload mmc 0:1 0x21800000 meson8b-odroidc1.dtb
fdt addr 21800000

if test "${vpu}" = "0"; then fdt rm /mesonstream; fdt rm /vdec; fdt rm /ppmgr; fi

if test "${hdmioutput}" = "0"; then fdt rm /mesonfb; fi

bootm 0x21000000 0x22000000 0x21800000"

[ranseyer]

no idea whats wrong in my ini file ?

[rooted]

no idea whats wrong in my ini file ?

Are you using HDMI to VGA?

[igorpec]

HDMI support on 4.x is n/a: http://linux-meson.com/doku.php

[rooted]

I somehow missed the 4.y

[olace]

Maybe @hardkernel could help us who own Odroid C1 to have HDMI working with new kernel?

[igorpec]

Maybe @hardkernel could help us who own Odroid C1 to have HDMI working with new kernel?

Hardkernel has nothing to do with a new kernel.

I am not familiar with a technical details regarding video part on this chip/board but it could be a complex ... and expensive problem.

[olace]

Maybe @hardkernel could help us who own Odroid C1 to have HDMI working with new kernel?

Hardkernel has nothing to do with a new kernel.

I am not familiar with a technical details regarding video part on this chip/board but it could be a complex ... and expensive problem.

This is not good.

[joy]

Thank you for sharing the instructions.
Good to know the news about kernel 4.x for ODROID-C1+!
I wanna run it on my C1+ board and will try it.

[igorpec]

Thank you for sharing the instructions.
Good to know the news about kernel 4.x for ODROID-C1+!
I wanna run it on my C1+ board and will try it.

https://www.armbian.com/odroid-c1/

Below are images with 4.18.y ... make sure you check "kernel issues".

[joy]

Thank you for sharing the instructions.
Good to know the news about kernel 4.x for ODROID-C1+!
I wanna run it on my C1+ board and will try it.

https://www.armbian.com/odroid-c1/

Below are images with 4.18.y ... make sure you check "kernel issues".

Thanks!!!

[ujsrwidc]

Does Hardkernel work on making official releases with mainline kernel where graphics is working? The 3.10 Kernel is unsupported for about a year and thus it does not get any security kernel updates. This makes it unusable for many usecases (if you dont want to loose your job because you used a known EOL insecure software).

[mad_ady]

Well, to be fair, the odroids are not actually marketed and sold to enterprise customers where security is crucial. They're marketed toward hobbyists..,

[OverSun]

what's exact real-life example project of odroid board with working graphics in enterprise environment?

[ujsrwidc]

what's exact real-life example project of odroid board with working graphics in enterprise environment?

Advertisement screen in train tunnel stations in europe. The advertisement shown on the screen is been changed over the internet connection. Internet connection is simple on those places, because many of those have public wifi for already - so internet is already down there.

Well, to be fair, the odroids are not actually marketed and sold to enterprise customers where security is crucial. They're marketed toward hobbyists..,

Really? This here sounds for me more then just a hobby: viewtopic.php?f=117&t=32273


Are odroids really devices that should not be used in production/professional environment? Could Hardkernel confirm that?

[OverSun]

what's exact real-life example project of odroid board with working graphics in enterprise environment?

Advertisement screen in train tunnel stations in europe. The advertisement shown on the screen is been changed over the internet connection. Internet connection is simple on those places, because many of those have public wifi for already - so internet is already down there.

I believe this is called "screen output", not "graphics", and this works most of the time on boards on newer kernels (not sure about C1 though, things are getting obsolete pretty fast). "Graphic acceleration" is somewhat problematic due to proprietary blobs needed for that, but not screen output.

[ujsrwidc]

I believe this is called "screen output", not "graphics", and this works most of the time on boards on newer kernels (not sure about C1 though, things are getting obsolete pretty fast). "Graphic acceleration" is somewhat problematic due to proprietary blobs needed for that, but not screen output.

I dont get it. The GPU create the "graphics" that is then been output to the "screen" that is been connected over hdmi.
Here is a Video of the developer explaining the amlogic gpu output: viewtopic.php?f=140&t=30724&start=50#p237182

I asked about recent state of c1 support. Maybe he would respond in near future.

Are those proprietary blobs still needed with latest mainline kernel? In the video the developer is telling that this is been released under GPL by amlogic.

[OverSun]

I believe this is called "screen output", not "graphics", and this works most of the time on boards on newer kernels (not sure about C1 though, things are getting obsolete pretty fast). "Graphic acceleration" is somewhat problematic due to proprietary blobs needed for that, but not screen output.

I dont get it. The GPU create the "graphics" that is then been output to the "screen" that is been connected over hdmi.
Here is a Video of the developer explaining the amlogic gpu output: viewtopic.php?f=140&t=30724&start=50#p237182

I asked about recent state of c1 support. Maybe he would respond in near future.

Are those proprietary blobs still needed with latest mainline kernel? In the video the developer is telling that this is been released under GPL by amlogic.

There is HDMI output, there is GPU acceleration, there is VPU decoding, there is video layer (also a thing that is separate from screen output and GPU, although connected to HDMI).