Support for A10/A20

**jernej** · February 6, 2020 at 6:22 PM Official Post

Quote from myxal

A note to self, or possibly others running into the panic on boot: try the rootwait nousb kcmd options or combinations thereof.

Can anyone test that? other SoCs don't need that.

myxal · February 6, 2020 at 6:53 PM

Quote from jernej

Can anyone test that? other SoCs don't need that.

Just did moments ago, didn't help anything.

roel · February 6, 2020 at 8:47 PM

Quote from myxal

Not quite sure what that does, but here's what looks relevant from A1000 fex file:

Code

[usbc0]
usb_used = 0
usb_port_type = 0
usb_detect_type = 0
usb_id_gpio =
usb_det_vbus_gpio =
usb_drv_vbus_gpio = port:PB09<1><0><default><0>
usb_host_init_state = 0

[usbc1]
usb_used = 1
usb_port_type = 1
usb_detect_type = 0
usb_id_gpio =
usb_det_vbus_gpio =
usb_drv_vbus_gpio = port:PH06<1><0><default><0>
usb_host_init_state = 1

[usbc2]
usb_used = 1
usb_port_type = 1
usb_detect_type = 0
usb_id_gpio =
usb_det_vbus_gpio =
usb_drv_vbus_gpio = port:PH03<1><0><default><0>
usb_host_init_state = 1

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OK usbc0 is disabled in the fex. So dtb should be OK. I don't see any differences.

myxal · February 7, 2020 at 9:48 AM

Quote from roel

OK usbc0 is disabled in the fex. So dtb should be OK. I don't see any differences.

Hmm, maybe this is the problem - what would be the DTS equivalent of usb_host_init_state in FEX?

Quote

various: Set usbc2 usb_host_init_state to 1

Code

usb_host_init_state for usbc2 needs to be 1 for the wifi driver to properly
auto-load. I don't have these boards to verify, but these are 512Mb RAM
variants of 1Gb boards I do have, so it is safe to assume this is necessary
with their 512Mb counter-parts too.

Signed-off-by: Hans de Goede <[email protected]>

roel · February 7, 2020 at 7:37 PM

jernej

it seems to activate a lcd screen it has to happen in uboot. So if I build a new custom uboot, can I use a already flashed image and just dd the new uboot to the sd-card like this:

Code

dd if=u-boot.bin of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1024 seek=32

**jernej** · February 7, 2020 at 8:54 PM Official Post

Quote from roel

it seems to activate a lcd screen it has to happen in uboot.

simple-fb (U-Boot initialized screen) is not useful for LibreELEC.

Quote from roel

So if I build a new custom uboot, can I use a already flashed image and just dd the new uboot to the sd-card like this:

you can.

roel · February 8, 2020 at 12:20 PM

Quote from jernej

simple-fb (U-Boot initialized screen) is not useful for LibreELEC.

So I have this projector running android on a A20. In the fex file, hdmi is disabled and lcd is enabled. So it seems the projector works through the lcd interface. On the sunxi pages it is mentioned that a custom u-boot should be build and the data in the fex file should be converted to u-boot config. But now you say this will not work on LE because it doesn't us simple-fb? How can I make LE picture through the projector then?

Would you say: don't bother, don't waist your time. Because this would means that LE will not work on any tablet, right?

myxal · February 8, 2020 at 12:39 PM

I've tried the ready-made image linked here, which should be a mainline kernel, albeit an old one: Mainline Debian HowTo - linux-sunxi.org (image link). I didn't go into installing UBoot and full-featured boot - I think that nukes the onboard android, which I don't want to do yet (want to back up the partitions first, and don't have an ADB cable yet). But the pre-install environment did boot successfully, with even the USB ports working (there was no driver for the onboard wifi, but it did show up in lsusb.

What would be a simple way to prevent jernej's build from loading the Realtek wifi drivers, to check if that's the culprit here?

**jernej** · February 8, 2020 at 1:25 PM Official Post

Quote from myxal

What would be a simple way to prevent jernej's build from loading the Realtek wifi drivers, to check if that's the culprit here?

The easiest that I could think of it to edit DT and remove USB node connected to wifi.

Quote from roel

But now you say this will not work on LE because it doesn't us simple-fb?

Problem is that Kodi expects full DRM driver in order to work correctly. simple-fb is fbdev driver. You would see LibreELEC splash screen but I don't think Kodi would start.

Quote from roel

How can I make LE picture through the projector then?

Would you say: don't bother, don't waist your time. Because this would means that LE will not work on any tablet, right?

Anything can run LE if it uses DRM driver and GPU driver which supports GBM interface. You just need to figure how to properly describe LCD panel in device tree. But I'm not right person to help you with that, I don't have experience with any output besides HDMI.

roel · February 10, 2020 at 4:07 PM

Quote from jernej

Anything can run LE if it uses DRM driver and GPU driver which supports GBM interface. You just need to figure how to properly describe LCD panel in device tree. But I'm not right person to help you with that, I don't have experience with any output besides HDMI.

OK, I will see if I can get further with this, I see in the pinephone dtb these lines that refer to the screen:

Code

&dsi {
	vcc-dsi-supply = <&reg_dldo1>;
	#address-cells = <1>;
	#size-cells = <0>;
	status = "okay";

	panel@0 {
		compatible = "xingbangda,xbd599";
		reg = <0>;
		reset-gpios = <&pio 3 23 GPIO_ACTIVE_LOW>; /* PD23 */
		backlight = <&backlight>;
	};
};

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So probably it will be something regarding dsi. For the moment I don't find a specific A20 dtb for tablets using mainline.

**jernej** · February 10, 2020 at 4:21 PM Official Post

roel note that tablets can use parallel, DSI or LVDS interface. You have to check fex file to see which one is actually used on your device.

roel · February 11, 2020 at 9:19 AM

jernej seems its parallel. It's certainly not LVDS is this one is not enabled. The fex section describes it as lcd_para so I assume this means parallel. I think this is out of my league but maybe I find a site with some good explanation. I already found this: ST Community

but I'm still confused about this drm/kms stuff.

myxal · February 12, 2020 at 8:06 PM

Am I doing this right? I decompiled the DTB, set status="disabled" on the first enabled usb node (and the phy which the subsequent attempt to boot complained about), compiled and replaced sun4i-a10-a1000.dtb. Diff:

Display Spoiler

Code

                phy@1c13400 {
                        #phy-cells = <0x1>;
                        compatible = "allwinner,sun4i-a10-usb-phy";
                        reg = <0x1c13400 0x10 0x1c14800 0x4 0x1c1c800 0x4>;
                        reg-names = "phy_ctrl", "pmu1", "pmu2";
                        clocks = <0x2 0x7d>;
                        clock-names = "usb_phy";
                        resets = <0x2 0x1 0x2 0x2 0x2 0x3>;
                        reset-names = "usb0_reset", "usb1_reset", "usb2_reset";
-                       status = "okay";
+                       status = "disabled";
                        usb1_vbus-supply = <0x1c>;
                        usb2_vbus-supply = <0x1d>;
                        phandle = <0x1a>;
                };
 
                usb@1c14000 {
                        compatible = "allwinner,sun4i-a10-ehci", "generic-ehci";
                        reg = <0x1c14000 0x100>;
                        interrupts = <0x27>;
                        clocks = <0x2 0x1b>;
                        phys = <0x1a 0x1>;
                        phy-names = "usb";
-                       status = "okay";
+                       status = "disabled";
                };
 
                usb@1c14400 {
                        compatible = "allwinner,sun4i-a10-ohci", "generic-ohci";
                        reg = <0x1c14400 0x100>;
                        interrupts = <0x40>;
                        clocks = <0x2 0x7b 0x2 0x1c>;
                        phys = <0x1a 0x1>;
                        phy-names = "usb";

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That did get rid of detecting the USB wifi (didn't have anything else attached), but the error message is the same:

Quote

[ 4.084220] Run /init as init process

[ 4.095837] Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init! exitcode=0x00000004

[ 4.109445] ---[ end Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init! exitcode=0x00000004 ]---

jernej, which /init is this referring to? This one?

**jernej** · February 12, 2020 at 8:59 PM Official Post

Quote from myxal

Am I doing this right? I decompiled the DTB, set status="disabled" on the first enabled usb node (and the phy which the subsequent attempt to boot complained about), compiled and replaced sun4i-a10-a1000.dtb.

yes, seems good.

Quote from myxal

but the error message is the same:

So wifi just appears to be last driver loaded, but not the cause.

Quote from myxal

jernej , which /init is this referring to? This one?

Yes.

myxal · February 13, 2020 at 9:33 PM

Quote from jernej

> which /init..

Yes.

Is there a way to check that it (and busybox executable) is actually on the built image..? (My understanding is that this is the early rootfs - like initramfs on a PC Linux distro - and on these images, that's embedded in the KERNEL image file.) I tried the binwalk method of extraction, but for every xz file it finds in the KERNEL file, unxz reports it as corrupted.

Code

binwalk /mnt/LEcard/KERNEL

DECIMAL       HEXADECIMAL     DESCRIPTION
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
36            0x24            Linux kernel ARM boot executable zImage (little-endian), load address: "0x00000000", end address: "0x00855668"
82818         0x14382         SHA256 hash constants, little endian
1001768       0xF4928         Certificate in DER format (x509 v3), header length: 4, sequence length: 4688
4588447       0x46039F        Certificate in DER format (x509 v3), header length: 4, sequence length: 773
5235356       0x4FE29C        mcrypt 2.5 encrypted data, algorithm: "H", keysize: 3625 bytes, mode: "T",
5486560       0x53B7E0        xz compressed data
5563871       0x54E5DF        Unix path: /505V/F505/F707/F717/P8(
6313659       0x6056BB        Unix path: /usr/share/plymouth/splash.png
6314139       0x60589B        Copyright string: "Copyright (c) 2018-2019 Cosmin Truta%"
6502906       0x6339FA        Copyright string: "copyrighted by many authors between 1998-2015."
6519234       0x6379C2        xz compressed data
6579912       0x6466C8        ELF, 32-bit LSB processor-specific, no machine,
6850378       0x68874A        Certificate in DER format (x509 v3), header length: 4, sequence length: 5384
7286238       0x6F2DDE        ELF, 32-bit LSB processor-specific,
7543244       0x7319CC        Certificate in DER format (x509 v3), header length: 4, sequence length: 9476
7864179       0x77FF73        Copyright string: "Copyright (C) 2019 Free Software Foundation, Inc."
8605147       0x834DDB        Unix path: /virtual/graphics/fbcon/5

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**jernej** · February 13, 2020 at 9:52 PM Official Post

Quote from myxal

Is there a way to check that it (and busybox executable) is actually on the built image..?

Not sure, but currently initramfs is in cpio archive, which starts with "070701" string.

myxal · February 14, 2020 at 2:00 PM

Well.. there are ~15 CPIO signatures in there

While there seems to be something compressed in there, trying to extract it results in a lot of cpio errors, not finding "member names" (file names?)

Display Spoiler

cpio: Malformed number 0^A

cpio: Malformed number 3A609B^V

cpio: Malformed number 3103

cpio: Malformed number 4

cpio: Malformed number 18;

cpio: Malformed number t

cpio: Malformed number ^A

cpio: Substituting `.' for empty member name

drwxr-xr-x 200752 root 61213104 0 Jan 1 1970 .

cpio: warning: skipped 133997 bytes of junk

cpio: Malformed number nN_81ED0

cpio: Malformed number ^A

cpio: Malformed number 0468A8^V

cpio: Malformed number #03

cpio: Malformed number <A0>bin/bus

cpio: Malformed number ybou^w^?E

cpio: Malformed number LF^A^A^A<94>^S^Q

cpio: Malformed number (<9C>

cpio: Malformed number <80><87>0<C0>d^D<FD>

cpio: Malformed number <C1>^E4

cpio: Substituting `.' for empty member name

?--------- 4622976 root 87884364 0 Jan 1 1970 .

cpio: warning: skipped 189365 bytes of junk

cpio: Malformed number <E5>(_41ED0

cpio: Malformed number ^A

cpio: Malformed number 4621E^V

cpio: Malformed number 103

cpio: Malformed number ^D^T8

cpio: Malformed number <libx

cpio: Malformed number ^\

cpio: Malformed number `

cpio: Malformed number 1x

cpio: Malformed number ss_dns.s

cpio: Malformed number o.<B5>^T ^R

cpio: Substituting `.' for empty member name

?--------- 4144 root 4596192 0 Jan 1 1970 .

cpio: warning: skipped 54839 bytes of junk

cpio: Malformed number 0^A

cpio: Malformed number 346102

cpio: Malformed number B6784^V

cpio: Malformed number 03

cpio: Malformed number ^D^T1

cpio: Malformed number r/lib^D

cpio: Malformed number rt.so

cpio: Malformed number ELF^A^A^A<AB>

cpio: Malformed number 1^C

cpio: Malformed number ^W

cpio: Malformed number b%^A<C1>^E4

cpio: Substituting `.' for empty member name

-rwxr-xr-x 11958336 root 54923296 0 Jan 1 1970 .

cpio: warning: skipped 706213 bytes of junk

cpio: Malformed number <FE><E9>_81ED0

cpio: Malformed number ^A

cpio: Malformed number 04CE48^V

cpio: Malformed number #03

cpio: Malformed number <96>!ib<87><CA>

cpio: Malformed number <96><D5>1.1.0

cpio: Malformed number ^?ELF^A^A^A<A0>

cpio: Malformed number t^Pp<F5>E<E1>^D

cpio: Malformed number ^E4

cpio: Substituting `.' for empty member name

?--------- 5039232 root 87884544 0 Jan 1 1970 .

cpio: warning: skipped 178282 bytes of junk

cpio: Malformed number 0^A

cpio: Malformed number 346102^P

cpio: Malformed number ^R5^V

cpio: Malformed number

cpio: Malformed number #ldl9<A0>ar

cpio: Malformed number mhf.so.3

cpio: Malformed number <^PLd.so<94>

cpio: Malformed number <94>

cpio: Malformed number ibpth<8F><

cpio: Substituting `.' for empty member name

lrwxrwxrwx 0 root 54923296 0 Jan 1 1970 . ->

cpio: warning: skipped 40665 bytes of junk

cpio: Malformed number 0^A

cpio: Malformed number 3461D5

cpio: Malformed number #44'

cpio: Malformed number 3

cpio: Malformed number ^T9

cpio: Malformed number /lib^D

cpio: Malformed number armmem-v

cpio: Malformed number 7l.so

cpio: Malformed number ELF^A^Ai^A1

cpio: Malformed number ^C

cpio: Malformed number <EC>^Z!8A-^A<CD>

-rwxr-xr-x 0 root 54926672 0 Jan 1 1970 p\227K\376\252\252

cpio: warning: skipped 92411 bytes of junk

cpio: Malformed number 0^A

cpio: Malformed number 346102^P

cpio: Malformed number ^R8^V

cpio: Malformed number ^Pt<E7>$^A^\^S^D

cpio: Malformed number ^N

cpio: Malformed number _595A4<8C>

cpio: Malformed number ^T^_0<8C>

cpio: Malformed number .KA^M^PZ2^C

cpio: Substituting `.' for empty member name

lrwxrwxrwx 0 root 54923296 0 Jan 1 1970 . ->

cpio: warning: skipped 221172 bytes of junk

cpio: Malformed number ^A

cpio: Malformed number 46102^L

cpio: Malformed number 790C^V

cpio: Malformed number 3

cpio: Malformed number ^T6

cpio: Malformed number /lib^D

cpio: Malformed number pthread.

cpio: Malformed number so

cpio: Malformed number ^A^AO ^Q(<A0>

cpio: Malformed number "<BC>O<80>^Z!^Lt

cpio: Malformed number <A9>^A<C0>^E4

?--------- 495808 root 4591648 0 Jan 1 1970 \260\227K\376\252\252

cpio: warning: skipped 49590 bytes of junk

cpio: Malformed number 00941

cpio: Malformed number ^?00A1FF0

cpio: Malformed number ^A

cpio: Malformed number 4621E^O

cpio: Malformed number 1^G

cpio: Malformed number ^_27

cpio: Malformed number (^BJ' ^N

cpio: Malformed number .1.0<98>

cpio: Malformed number ^P_42C7C<98>

cpio: Malformed number blkid<8A>

cpio: Substituting `.' for empty member name

?--------- 16 root 4596192 0 Jan 1 1970 .

cpio: warning: skipped 158525 bytes of junk

cpio: Malformed number 0^A

cpio: Malformed number 346102

cpio: Malformed number B45D8^V

cpio: Malformed number 03

cpio: Malformed number ^D^T6

cpio: Malformed number ib^D

cpio: Malformed number ss_dns.s

cpio: Malformed number o

cpio: Malformed number 1^C

cpio: Malformed number

<D0>!!<C8>A^A^A

cpio: Malformed number <CE>^E4

cpio: Substituting `.' for empty member name

-rwxr-xr-x 11820416 root 54923296 0 Jan 1 1970 .

cpio: warning: skipped 373903 bytes of junk

cpio: Malformed number 0^A

cpio: Malformed number 003E294^V

cpio: Malformed number ^Dusr/sbi

cpio: Malformed number n/iscsis

cpio: Malformed number tartd/gE

cpio: Malformed number LF^A^A^A^X^\^R

cpio: Malformed number (^X^X^R<A3><C8>^T!

cpio: Malformed number <E4><DD>^E^P<E3>^E4

cpio: Substituting `.' for empty member name

-rwxr-xr-x 4073792 root 38130246 7 Jan 1 1970 .

cpio: warning: skipped 135758 bytes of junk

cpio: Malformed number 0^A

cpio: Malformed number 3461DA

cpio: Malformed number BB724^V

cpio: Malformed number 03

cpio: Malformed number ^D^E^X

cpio: Malformed number <C1><CD><F7>^Afsck

cpio: Malformed number .fat

cpio: Malformed number F^A^A^A<86><83>^Q(

cpio: Malformed number <9C>

cpio: Malformed number ^B^R<B2><BB>l<B1>4

cpio: Substituting `.' for empty member name

-rwxr-xr-x 12284480 root 54926752 0 Jan 1 1970 .

cpio: premature end of file

Checked the init script, and will try booting with debugging in the kcmd, hopefully will get more clues what's wrong. If not, I reckon the intramfs is somehow broken.

myxal · February 14, 2020 at 6:17 PM

Quote from myxal

will try booting with debugging in the kcmd, hopefully will get more clues what's wrong.

Nope, that didn't yield anything. Any ideas? May as well start setting up a build environment at this point...