Hello List,
Since about a month I have palyed a lot with two Rockhip RK 3588
machines: Radxa Rock5 and Friendlyelec nano r6s.
This was mainly to install OpenBSD on them (or an other Free OS). I have
noticed the following points:
- Only the kernel and OS provided by the manufacturer (Radxa or
Friendlyelec with the linux kernel 6.1
provided by Rockchip) work well. With that software, the machine is
perfectly usable and
quite convenient (even with a graphical desktop).
- An EFI firmware is available which allow to boot and install some other
OS (Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD).
- None of these solutions work well. I was never able to install OpenBSD
neither under EFI or u-boot directly.
An installation succeed (with EFI) but then when restarting the
installed OpenBSD, the boot stop. NetBSD
can be installed but no mac address are defined on the cards.
- The nano r6s machine seems to be suddenly broken since no display is
available any more
on hdmi (this was not the case during my first tests).
The lack of display arises with the official Linux from the manufacturer
and from
the distribution of other providers (like armbian).
- Without the official kernel, some hardware is not recognised. This can
be annoying (for instance
no emmc) or make the solution almost unusable (no network cards). It is
possible to add USB network
card but this is not very intersting if one has bought the nano r6s
specifically to use the two 2.5G
network cards.
- After a reinstallation of the SPI software on the Radxa Rock5 (with a
slightly newer version) the EFI
disk is no more bootable. However some other Linux (not necessarly the
distribution of Radxa) can be booted.
- It is possible to run OpenBSD under Qemu but with the following
restrictions:
- No SMP (only one CPU)
- Only on the A76 CPU. One has to use the "taskset" command to
start qemu.
I hope these few remarks will help.
Best regards.
On Wed, 25 Sep 2024 16:10:03 +0200
Pierre Dupond <76nem...@gmx.ch> wrote:
> Hello List,
> The Friendlyelec NanoPi r6s is indicated
> (https://www.openbsd.org/arm64.html) as an example of hardware running
> OpenBSD.
> I have downloaded the "install75.img" and the "miniroot76.img" and copied
> them on a sd card.
>
> However, the NanoPi r6s does not boot on sd card but boot directly on the
> internal emmc (where the FriendlyWRT OS is installed).
> I have downloaded the Ubuntu 22.04 from the FriendlyElec web site and write
> the image on an SD card
> and the OS boots successfuly.
>
> I have seen somewhere that the u-boot should be replaced for the unsuported
> arm Soc but all
> the examples are for other arm soc and not for the soc (Rockchip RK3588) used
> in the nanoPi R6S.
>
> Do I have missing some obvious instructions? One could notice than the
> structure of
> the SD card to boot Ubuntu OS is very different from the structure of the SD
> card where
> OpenBSD is installed.
>
> Thank you for your help,
>
> Best regards
>
