build/documentation/H3_mini_faq.md

Armbian H3 mini FAQ -- 5.06

Important to know

• 1st boot takes longer (up to 5 minutes). Please do not interrupt while the red LED is blinking, the board reboots automatically one time and the green LED starts to blink when ready
• our User documentation (one exception currently: use h3disp to adjust display settings)
• our Geek documentation (in case you want to build your own images)
• CPU frequency settings are 648-1200 MHz on OPi One/Lite and 480-1296 MHz on the other boards (cpufreq governor is interactive therefore the board only increases CPU speed and consumption when needed)
• In case you experience instabilities check your SD card using armbianmonitor -c $HOME and think about installing RPi-Monitor for H3 to get an idea whether you suffer from overheating (sudo armbianmonitor -r will install everything needed)
• In case you're unsure whether to test a desktop or CLI image simply try out the GUI version since you can always get 'CLI behaviour' by running sudo update-rc.d -f nodm disable later (this disables the start of X windows and desktop images behave like those made for headless use afterwards. If you're experienced you could also reclaim disk space by removing the libxfce4util-common package and doing an apt-get autoremove later)
• especially for desktop images the speed of your SD card matters. If possible try to use our nand-sata-install script to move the rootfs away from SD card. The script also works with USB disks flawlessly (some background information)

#OS images with legacy Kernel (3.4.111)

Armbian started beginning with release 5.04 to support all available H3 based Orange Pi boards (including One and Lite when available).

Changes in 5.06 (not released yet)

• increase kernel version to 3.4.111
• headers auto creation while install (eases kernel/driver compilation)
• improved SD card partitioning to help old/slow cards with wear leveling and garbage collection
• Possible to use Ubuntu Xenial Xerus as target
• changed behaviour of board leds (green == power, red == warning)
• speed improvements for 1st automated reboot
• Integrates OverlayFS backport

Changes in 5.05

• Auto detection for the Orange Pi 2 does work now
• Mali acceleration works for all users not only root
• verbose boot logging on 1st boot and after crashes (you can toggle verbose logging using sudo armbianmonitor -b)
• more WiFi dongles supported due to backported firmware loader patch
• all 3 USB ports on Orange Pi One (Lite) available (2 of them need soldering)
• I2S possible on all Orange Pis (compare with the mini tutorial since you need to tweak script.bin)
• default display resolution set to 720p60 to fix possible overscan issues on 1st boot
• HW accelerated video decoding works for most formats
• Booting from eMMC on OPi Plus now possible

Changes in 5.04 compared to pre-releases

• HDMI/DVI works (bug in boot.cmd settings)
• Reboot issues fixed (bug in fex settings)
• 1-Wire useable (we chose to stay compatible to loboris' images so the data pin is 37 by default. You're able to change this in the fex file)
• changing display resolution and choosing between HDMI and DVI is now possible with the included h3disp tool (should also work in the stand-alone version with Debian based OS images from loboris/Xunlong). Use sudo h3disp in a terminal to get the idea.
• Ethernet issues fixed (combination of kernel and fex fixes)
• USB-to-SATA bridge on the Orange Pi Plus works
• stability problems on Orange Pi One fixed (due to undervoltage based on wrong fex settings)
• problems with 2 USB ports on the PC fixed (wrong kernel config)
• Mali400MP acceleration (EGL/GLES) works now
• suspend to RAM and resume by power button works now (consumption less than 0.4W without peripherals)
• Enforce user account creation before starting the GUI
• USB and Ethernet IRQs distributed nicely accross CPU cores
• Full HDMI colour-range adjustable/accessible through h3disp utility
• already useable as stable headless/server board

Known issues with 5.06

• Playing HEVC/H.265 video with 10 bit depth not supported

Areas that need testing/feedback

• SPI
• I2C
• GPIO in general
• Wi-Fi on OPi Plus, Plus 2 and 2
• USB wireless dongles
• user experience

What you can do to improve the situation

• improve software support for Orange Pi One by testing DRAM reliability!
• get back to us with feedback regarding our OS images
• fork our repo, fix things and send pull requests

Known to NOT work (reliably) yet

• Camera support. We included @lex' patches but miss phelum's basic patches. Fixes welcome
• live display resolution switching. Fixes welcome (anyone willing to port the stuff from the H3 OpenELEC port?)
• onboard Wi-Fi (it works somehow but chip/driver are cheap and bad -- we can't do much to improve the situation)

#OS images with vanilla Kernel (4.x)

Important: Currently no thermal readouts and no throttling/cpufreq adjustments are implemented in mainline kernel. Therefore it's possible to permanently damage your H3 when running demanding workloads on it. Keep this in mind and think about reducing maximum clockspeed in u-boot (816 MHz max for example)

Mainlining effort for H3 and Orange Pi's is progressing nicely but since Ethernet support still isn't ready we currently do not provide OS images with vanilla kernel (for the impatient: early patches here and discussion there). Our build system is already prepared, board auto detection also works with mainline kernel so as soon as Ethernet is ready we'll release OS images (in the lab an Orange Pi PC is serving files as NAS since weeks stable with kernel 4.4)

But since we collected a bunch of necessary H3 patches you're already able to build your own 4.4.x image at this time. Just choose Orange Pi Plus as target or Orange Pi H3 for PC/One/2/Lite. But please remember that you end up with a rather limited image where just SMP, UART and USB is working.

The good news: With a GbE Ethernet dongle network will be way faster on all Oranges except the Plus and since you can make use of USB Attached SCSI with mainline kernel USB performance also increases when your drive enclosure supports UAS.