Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy LTS for Libre Computer Boards

[bilditup1]

Probably a stupid question, but is it safe to run the flashtool directly on booted system (with the target being the SD card that the booted system is running off of, I mean)?

[librecomputer]

Yes, it is completely safe. libretech-flash-tool disables flashing the boot device unless you use the “force” parameter.

[bilditup1]

I finally returned to the premises yesterday and tried the tool–it did in fact resolve my issues. One quick note, if you are flashing on the device itself, most likely your root device will be named “mmcblk1”. Using the force parameter just involves appending ‘force’ to the end of the flash command, which is otherwise the same as written in the readme.

[librecomputer]

Force enables it to write to devices that are otherwise blocked for safety.

[rubicat]

Hello,

I will be installing the server version on a AML-S905X-CC this weekend. I purchased a heatsink with the board. You say that you recommend a heatsink with the desktop version. Is a heatsink totally unnecessary for the server version? I will be installing it into a Raspberry Pi 3 case that has a fan.

The reason I ask is that I’m planning another project using the desktop version, so I could save the heatsink for it, if it is not needed for the server project, or buy a second one if it is.

[angus]

I’d use one personally, but you can test to see if you need it. You can monitor heat with cat /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp. Divide by 1000 for degrees Celsius. By default you start getting throttled at 60℃.

More on heat here:

Le Potato - Long Term Process Heat

Hello fellow builders and tinkerers. tldr; On Le Potato, if your project requires a long-running 25% or higher CPU using process you will need to take cooling into consideration. By default, when the CPU hits 60 the board drops to 100MHz core speed. This occurs very quickly (less than 5 minutes) if you have a process which is running on the cpu. For me that is direwolf, which processes audio to data and uses about 15% of a core at max frequency. So, 15% usage of one core at full clock speed…

[rubicat]

Thanks angus. I probably can get away without the heatsink because this board will be idle most of the time, but just to be on the safe side, I’ll use it since I have it. The fan will probably be fine at 3V too.

[El_Ray]

Seems to be affected by this issue

systemd unresponsive for certain services when built with -ftrivial-auto-var-init=zero

systemd-hostnamed kills wireless connection on incoming connection to apache2 from wan.

Compilation options & dbus implicated in above.

[librecomputer]

This is an Ubuntu bug. Please report it to them and it will be fixed if they release a fix.

[roger-f]

Hi librecomputer, Thanks for building a great Raspberry Pi alternative! I just received my 4gb Renegade board today and have already gotten the Ubuntu desktop up and running successfully. I was even able to use my Edimax N150 Wifi adapter without issue. I intend to use this computer as a means for my tech-challenged mother to watch YouTube and Twitch videos on her TV. I am finding that even in it’s current form it is mostly usable for this purpose. However, I have been unable to get Chromium to use the GPU for rendering videos, which would significantly improve the playback, and thus her experience. I read a comment on your “In-Depth Technical Overview” YouTube video that indicated that this was more of a browser issue than a Linux issue, and is therefore not something you have much control over. With all that in mind, I would like to ask you if there is anything I can do as a user to potentially work around the issue, improve the playback, or at least star the relevant bug on the chromium project website. I am using a heatsink and fan, which seems to help somewhat. Is there anything else I could try in the meantime? I wouldn’t mind using an older version of Chromium while the problem is worked on, but I don’t know how/where to find such a version. I have also tried installing v4l2loopback-dkms which didn’t seem to have any effect. I also remember from your technical overview video that you mentioned something about adding this functionality into an open-source software stack somewhere, but I was left wondering what, (if anything), you installed to make it work in the browser. I also tried fiddling with the command used to run Chromium and some browser flags to no avail. Anyhow, any other help/advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks,

[librecomputer]

This should be enabled in Chromium 110 but we have not had the bandwidth to test it yet. We are looking to release updated images by the end of the month with lots of updates and we will test this path.

[roger-f]

Thanks for the update librecomputer! With that in mind, I’ll work on other aspects of the project while I wait for the new images and perhaps see if I can get Chromium 110 to work. I’ll post anything interesting that I discover. Thanks,

[vuptt]

I’m running ubuntu-22.04.2-preinstalled-server-arm64+roc-rk3328-cc.img.xz, after flashing to sd card, I’m using a USB UART with minicom to get the boot log but it returned unreadable characters.

I followed the instruction at https://forum.loverpi.com/discussion/1106/developer-guide-for-roc-rk3328-cc-renegade

Any ideas for my problem? Thank you

[librecomputer]

Your baud rate is incorrect. Rockchip stuff use 1500000.

[vuptt]

The baud rate is correct. I use this command “minicom -b 1500000 -D /dev/tty.usbserial-110” and disable the flow control with the PL2303TA.

[librecomputer]

Do you have the ground cable connected properly? Please upload a photo of the connection.

[vuptt]

This is my setup.

[librecomputer]

@librecomputer

1500

That is correct. Can you provide a screenshot of the command and output on serial?

[vuptt]

this is the output

[librecomputer]

Everything looks correct. We have the same setup in our lab with PL2303TA and it works fine. We’re not using Mac though. Try it on another computer.