Notes and files related to Orange Pi
So, I got an Orange Pi 4b the other day, and all their documentation was outadted and partially wrong. I stumbled my way through a lot of basic setup to get Ubuntu on there, and some of these notes might help someone else.
They still don't have a case for it. I might have to make one in Thingverse or something.
The Orange Pi 4b is a step up from the Orange Pi 4. Like the rest of the line from Shenzhen Xunlong Software CO., Limited, it's an open-source single-board computer (SBC) that can run Android 8.1, Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 18.04, and, Debian 9e. It uses the Rockchip RK3399 (6-core ARM 64-bit processor, main frequency speeds up to 2.0GHz), and equipped with Dual 4GB LPDDR4, 16GB eMMC flash, and it's got a Mali-T864 GPU. You can attach peripherals, like SDHC, 2x USB, 2x cameras, and other stuff. All the specs are here if you want the nitty gritty. This also has a SPR2801S, adopt MPE and APiM unique AI architecture for an NPU, which is why I got it.
But just getting Ubuntu 18.04 to work on it was a mess. First, I got the image here, which is on a Google Drive and took forever to download. I might Bitorrent this later. Three hours! We can do better.
You unzip, then unzip again, and burn the IMG file to an SDHC using something like Etcher or Rufus. I had a 32gb card, but the image takes up about 5gb, so you have to expand it.
I loaded it onto the card, made a crude case out of some scraps of retail packaging I had lying around (really), hooked it up, and spun her up. Thankfully, openssh-server was already installed. I got in via the LAN port, and wireless was operational, but not set up properly. A lot of their documentation went off the rails right after this, partly because it was based on Ubuntu 14.04, but also because of poor spelling, a mix of pathnames, and just general vague comments. But, I have a lot of experience with SBCs, mainly RaspberryPi, and some other boards like Sokris, Le Potato, and Fitlet. Here are some steps to just get basic Ubuntu 18.04 LTS working on an Orange Pi 4b, but who knows, might help someone with another Orange Pi board:
Change OrangePi user to not ask for a sudo password. This drove me nuts. I also needed it for an ansible push later on for setup. You'll have to log back in for changes to take effect.
sudo echo "orangepi ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL" > /etc/sudoers.d/orangepi
For some reason, all of /etc is owned by orangepi, which causes weird errors when the environment expects it to be owned by root.
chown root /etc
Next, you'll barely have a few MB of space left to do anything, including download programs.
orangepi@OrangePi:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/root 5.0G 4.7G 39M 100% /
devtmpfs 1.9G 0 1.9G 0% /dev
tmpfs 1.9G 0 1.9G 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 1.9G 17M 1.9G 1% /run
tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock
tmpfs 1.9G 0 1.9G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs 385M 4.0K 385M 1% /run/user/107
tmpfs 385M 0 385M 0% /run/user/1000
The way they set it up is that you have several block devices:
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
mmcblk1 179:0 0 14.6G 0 disk
mmcblk1boot0 179:32 0 4M 1 disk
mmcblk1boot1 179:64 0 4M 1 disk
mmcblk1rpmb 179:96 0 4M 0 disk
mmcblk0 179:128 0 29.8G 0 disk
├─mmcblk0p1 179:129 0 4M 0 part
├─mmcblk0p2 179:130 0 4M 0 part
├─mmcblk0p3 179:131 0 32M 0 part
└─mmcblk0p4 179:132 0 5.2G 0 part /
Documentation states, "if it's not automatically done, please run resize-helper." That file does not exist. I found it here, but it didn't work. Long story short, the image itself was not written correctly, so even resize2fs didn't work properly at first. I had to do combinations of:
- touch /forcefsck [and reboot]
- Use cfdisk to fix the partition, [needs to be written]
- sudo resize2fs -f /dev/mmcblk0p4
Before it "took."
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/root 30G 4.2G 24G 15% /
Now I could fix other things.
DNS doesn't work. This might be because of /etc above, not sure. But I had to put their own mirror server in the /etc/hosts file just so that it could get packages:
127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.1.1 orangepi
101.6.8.193 mirrors.tuna.tsinghua.edu.cn
# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
::1 localhost ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
fe00::0 ip6-localnet
ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
Next, run "unminimize" to fix the "minimized packaging setup", and this will take a while:
sudo unminimize
While the package iw is installed, wireless-tools and wpasupplicant is not, and you can't fix wireless until you do:
sudo apt install wireless-tools wpasupplicant
Now you have to disable all the bratty NetworkManager stuff:
sudo systemctl disable NetworkManager-wait-online NetworkManager-dispatcher NetworkManager
Search for your wireless networks (and make sure it works):
orangepi@OrangePi:~$ sudo iwlist wlan0 scan | grep ESSID
ESSID:"Abraham Linksys"
ESSID:"Omega-K2SO"
ESSID:"DIRECT-roku-411"
ESSID:"Wi-Fight the Inevitable"
ESSID:"It Burns When IP"
ESSID:"NETGEAR64"
ESSID:"FBI Surveillance Van 12"
ESSID:"Wireless-AC"
ESSID:"Puggalicious-5G"
Create the wpa_supplicant config file; note the space before the command, or the password will be stored in your bash history file.
wpa_passphrase your-ESSID your-wifi-passphrase | sudo tee /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
If your wireless router doesn’t broadcast ESSID, then you need to add the following line in /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf file below "psk=": scan_ssid=1
Stop Network Manager:
sudo systemctl stop NetworkManager
Test, should have "wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-CONNECTED" listed. Control+C to stop.
sudo wpa_supplicant -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -i wlan0
Successfully initialized wpa_supplicant
wlan0: Trying to associate with 00:02:6f:8e:38:51 (SSID='KatanaTikiKoi' freq=2437 MHz)
wlan0: Associated with 00:02:6f:8e:38:51
wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-SUBNET-STATUS-UPDATE status=0
wlan0: WPA: Key negotiation completed with 00:02:6f:8e:38:51 [PTK=CCMP GTK=CCMP]
wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-CONNECTED - Connection to 00:02:6f:8e:38:51 completed [id=0 id_str=]
You can now run it it background in another window
sudo wpa_supplicant -B -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -i wlan0
Get an IP address for your wireless connection
sudo dhclient wlan0
To automatically connect to wireless network at boot time, we need to edit the wpa_supplicant.service file.
sudo cp /lib/systemd/system/wpa_supplicant.service /etc/systemd/system/wpa_supplicant.service
sudo vim /etc/systemd/system/wpa_supplicant.service
Change the ExecStart line to this and comment out the Alias:
ExecStart=/sbin/wpa_supplicant -u -s -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -i wlan0
[...]
# Alias=dbus-fi.w1.wpa_supplicant1.service
Enable the service at boot
sudo systemctl enable wpa_supplicant.service
Create a new service to get an IP address:
sudo vim /etc/systemd/system/dhclient.service
Put in the following:
[Unit]
Description= DHCP Client
Before=network.target
After=wpa_supplicant.service
[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/sbin/dhclient wlan0 -v
ExecStop=/sbin/dhclient wlan0 -r
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Enable THAT service:
sudo systemctl enable dhclient.service