GPU Accelerated Odroid N2/C4 in ArchLinuxARM

Custom packages to enable gpu acceleration of Odroid N2 on ArchLinuxARM, based on the packages done for Ubuntu 20.04 by tobetter.

Note: The supplied Mali binary drivers for bifrost (which is the code name of the G52 gpu model found on the Odroid N2), does not supports X11 so the gpu acceleration will only work on wayland compositors. There is work on a compatibility layer to make the OpenGL ES part of the Mali binary driver work under X11 by OtherCrashOverride. More details can be read on this post at the Odroid Forum.

What Works?

Here is a list of what has been tested so far divided in 4 categories:

YES = Usable and supports Xwayland + runs glmark2-es2-wayland
PARTIALLY - Usable but Xwayland or glmark2-es2-wayland may not work
SLOW - Seems to run but really slow (wayland not properly loaded?)
NO - Doesn't starts

List of Environments

Environment	Status	Notes
GNOME	YES	Everything seems to work now!
Weston	YES	Everything seems to work! Don't forget to enable xwayland on weston.ini
Sway	PARTIALLY	Crashes when running X applications.
Enlightenment	PARTIALLY	X applications run but, glmark2-es2-wayland segfaults on a regular user account, under root strangely works so something is wrong on the permissions system.
KDE	SLOW	Kwayland and Xwayland processes running but everything is slow
Wayfire	NO

Requirements

First you will need to install linux-aarch64 package or more up to date linux-aarch64-rc which are both supported and a requirement by the latest Mali kernel driver (dkms-mali-bifrost) which was patched by tobetter to work on these latest kernel versions which are 5.6 and 5.7rc repectively:

sudo pacman -S linux-aarch64-rc

Then modify your /boot/boot.ini file to be able to boot from this kernel, here is a working boot.ini example:

ODROIDN2-UBOOT-CONFIG

# System Label
setenv bootlabel "ArchLinux"

# Default Console Device Setting
setenv condev "console=ttyAML0,115200n8"

# Boot Args
setenv bootargs "root=/dev/sda2 rootwait rw mitigations=off ${condev} ${amlogic} no_console_suspend fsck.repair=yes net.ifnames=0 clk_ignore_unused"

# Set load addresses
setenv dtb_loadaddr "0x20000000"
setenv loadaddr "0x1080000"
setenv initrd_loadaddr "0x3080000"

# Load kernel, dtb and initrd
load mmc ${devno}:1 ${loadaddr} /Image
load mmc ${devno}:1 ${dtb_loadaddr} /dtbs/amlogic/meson-g12b-odroid-n2.dtb
load mmc ${devno}:1 ${initrd_loadaddr} /initramfs-linux.uimg

# boot
booti ${loadaddr} ${initrd_loadaddr} ${dtb_loadaddr}

Don't forget to modify the root device from:

root=/dev/sda2

To the device that matches your setup.

GPU Acceleration

Now we proceed to clone this repository:

git clone https://github.com/jgmdev/archlinux-odroid-n2

The first package that needs to be installed is the Mali kernel driver which should be the dkms-mali-bifrost package:

cd dkms-mali-bifrost
makepkg
sudo pacman -U dkms-mali-bifrost-24.0-1-aarch64.pkg.tar.xz

Then you will need to install the user space binary driver known as libMali.so, which interacts with the kernel driver part and is provided by the odroid-n2-libgl-wl package:

cd odroid-n2-libgl-wl
makepkg
sudo pacman -U odroid-n2-libgl-wl-r16p0-1-aarch64.pkg.tar.zst

After installing these two packages you may restart the system to make sure that the changes will take effect. After reboot you should be able to use one of the working environments listed before. You can refer to the ArchLinux Wayland wiki entry for installation instructions. The most lightweight experience so far is with running weston. But the most complete desktop environment would simply be GNOME.

GNOME Performance Tips

Things you can do to decrease RAM usage of gnome and improve CPU usage when the system is idle.

Disable Trackers - The most important change

Settings -> Search -> Turn Off

Uninstall evolution data server

sudo pacman -Rcs evolution-data-server

Uninstall gnome software

sudo pacman -Rcs gnome-software

Those changes should leave you a stable system.

Weston

Weston is a limited desktop environment but it supports Xwayland which makes it capable of running any application you may use. Make sure to create a weston.ini file to enable it with xwayland=true and install xorg-server-xwayland, here an example:

~/.config/weston.ini

[core]
xwayland=true
idle-time=0

[terminal]
font=monospace
font-size=20

[keyboard]
keymap_rules=evdev
keymap_layout=us
keymap_variant=intl
keymap_model=pc105
numlock-on=true

[shell]
background-image=/path/to/some/background
background-type=scale
num-workspaces=4
cursor-theme=Adwaita
cursor-size=48

[launcher]
icon=/usr/share/icons/Adwaita/24x24/legacy/system-search.png
path=GDK_BACKEND=wayland PATH=/usr/bin:/home/alarm/Applications/bin /usr/bin/xfce4-appfinder

[launcher]
icon=/usr/share/icons/Adwaita/24x24/legacy/utilities-terminal.png
path=/usr/bin/weston-terminal

[launcher]
icon=/usr/share/icons/Adwaita/24x24/places/folder.png
path=GDK_BACKEND=wayland /usr/bin/thunar

[launcher]
icon=/usr/share/icons/hicolor/24x24/apps/firefox.png
path=GDK_BACKEND=wayland MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 /usr/bin/firefox

[launcher]
icon=/usr/share/icons/hicolor/24x24/apps/chromium.png
path=GDK_BACKEND=x11 /usr/bin/chromium

[launcher]
icon=/usr/share/icons/hicolor/32x32/apps/geany.png
path=GDK_BACKEND=wayland /usr/bin/geany

[launcher]
icon=/usr/share/icons/Adwaita/24x24/devices/audio-headset.png
path=GDK_BACKEND=wayland /usr/bin/pavucontrol

Note: I added environment variables to the launcher icons because it seems that the weston launcher bar doesn't reads them from the environment.

You can create a custom launcher script that initializes the neccesary variables needed to run QT and GTK applications in wayland mode and set a specific GTK and icon theme for you. Here is another example:

west.sh

#!/bin/bash

export GDK_BACKEND=wayland
export QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland
export QT_STYLE_OVERRIDE="kvantum"
export SDL_VIDEODRIVER=wayland
export CLUTTER_BACKEND=wayland
export COGL_RENDERER=egl_wayland
export MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1

gnome_scheme=org.gnome.desktop.interface

gsettings set $gnome_scheme gtk-theme 'Arc-Dark'
gsettings set $gnome_scheme icon-theme 'Papirus-Dark'
gsettings set $gnome_scheme cursor-theme 'Adwaita'
gsettings set $gnome_scheme cursor-size '48'
gsettings set $gnome_scheme font-name 'Sans 16'

weston

Also notice, for QT applications I added QT_STYLE_OVERRIDE="kvantum" to the example launcher script in order to have the same look as the GTK ones. You have to install kvantum-qt5 package, then launch kvantummanager and select the theme you want to match with the GTK applications.

You can read more about configuring weston on the ArchLinux Wiki.

Troubleshooting

Monitor screen resolution is not properly set with mainline kernel and instead a lower resolution is used.

You can pass a parameter to the kernel to force a screen resolution as explained on the ArchLinux Wiki. First you need to retrieve the proper display connector name by executing the following code on your terminal emulator:

for p in /sys/class/drm/*/status; do con=${p%/status}; echo -n "${con#*/card?-}: "; cat $p; done

This code would return something like:

HDMI-A-1

Then edit your /boot/boot.ini and append to your bootargs a line like:

video=HDMI-A-1:1920x1080@60

Which should look similar to:

setenv bootargs "root=/dev/sda2 rootwait rw mitigations=off ${condev} ${amlogic} no_console_suspend fsck.repair=yes net.ifnames=0 clk_ignore_unused video=HDMI-A-1:1920x1080@60"

astralaster / archlinux-odroid