This release is for banana pi R2 board which is based on MTK7623N, and it just includes Ubuntu image which is based on Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS Mate Desktop with Linux kernel 4.4.70, we can get the Linux kernel 4.4.70 from the link https://github.com/BPI-SINOVOIP/BPI-R2-bsp.
The file system is based on Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS Mate Desktop, the default user name/password are pi/bananapi , root/bananapi.
What’s new in this release
Support HDMI audio
Support onboard WIFI module(MT6625)， The wifi interface is enabled by default in latest image which is released by banana-pi please use command “echo 0>/dev/wmtWifi” to turn it off and use the command “echo 1>/dev/wmtWifi” to enable it.
Enable EMMC
Change the DDR frequency from 1.3GHZ to 1.6GHZ
Both PWM4 and PWM5 work
Add the utility iperf to this image
Known limitations
BT isn’t supported
MIPI interface doesn’t work
Sometimes Linux kernel 4.4.70 can’t boot successfully
We see there is a code to support AP function, but looks like it doesn’t work so far, we will try to support this feature if the code provided by vendor is good to support AP.
@frank-w, yeah exactly. In fact I was not sure why @garywang advised me to use larger SD card when I try to write image to emmc. It is interesting that the same image fits fine to 8GB SD card but not to 8GB emmc. Actually only 7.28GB fits there. Couldn’t it be because I have already LEDE written to emmc? But I suppose it should be overwritten when writing new image. Or am I wrong? Should I somehow erase emmc before writing new image there? If so, how?
BTW thank you for pointing me at image shrinking. But I’m not sure if it would help me because, if I remember well, there is only approx. 0.4GB unused space on 8GB SD card after writing image there. But approx. 0.7GB is missing for writing the same image to emmc right now.
Thank you for the image shrinking advise. It does the trick. Now I finally boot Ubuntu from emmc! I already know why the original 8GB image doesn’t fit into 8GB emmc. It is because there is 250MB large boot partition on emmc which is used for booting instead of the boot partition on the image I suppose. For writing image to emmc there is roughly only 7.3GB of space available. Maybe except of shrinking the image the boot partition it contains could be removed (or shrinked to almost zero size) as well. Just an idea, not tested yet.
Don’t you write full sd to full emmc,only root-partition?
Hmm, yes I do. I write full SD to emmc. I follow the instruction on the referenced page. Step 5 says:
5. bpi-copy /path_to_your_image/xxx.img.zip
So I so with the image that is provided on the same page… I’m sorry if I’m missing something, but there is clearly no evidence that it has to be customised image with the root partition only.
I see dd above writes to mmcblk1,so the full emmc…partition-layout should be same as sd
Yes, it was also my initial understanding that it overwrites the whole emmc with the whole SD image and preserved its structure (ie. partitions in SD image). But in the preceding step (hope already existing) emmc boot partition /dev/mmcblk1boot0 is written with the BPI-R2-EMMC-boot0-0k.img image. And this boot partition takes some 250MB from 8GB emmc. Therefore 8GB SD image could never fit in the remaining space.
writing a larger boot-partition needs to move root-partition.where do you have the info about boot-0k.img?
=> OK, Step 4 in manual behind your link “bpi-bootsel BPI-R2-EMMC-boot0-0k.img.gz /dev/mmcblk1boot0 #write once”
but this is done before bpi-copy which semms to overwrite that previous bootloader.
https://github.com/BPI-SINOVOIP/bpi-tools/blob/master/bpi-copy from line 311
Out of space error occours in first step (full image write). I assume that emmc is only a bit smaller than sd-image.
you write direct on the pi,right? Where lies the image? You must have space for the zip on sdcard…extraction should be done direct to dd (without needing disc space).
Making the images smaller is much more work, but that prevents errors like that and reduce downloadsize and disk-space. Also on my debian image there are kernels for different devices and some old logs (full syslog from other devices).
unused data (other kernels,modules for other devices) can be deleted if image is only for one device.
personal data (users/login,homedir-content) must be cleaned
logs should be cleared (echo -n “”>logfile to preserve rights)
tmp/cache,backup-files cleared
free space should be overwritten by 0-bytes (no restore and better packing)
All can be done in img-file mounted as loop-device
Yes, I write directly on BPI and have the image on USB flash.
It seems you are right that bpi-copy overwrites the whole emmc. Below is the comparison of the shrinked image file structure (first pic) with the emmc structure (second pic) after writing that image with bpi-copy into it.
Structures are the same. Then I really don’t understand why my first attempt on writing the original (not shrinked) 8GB image failed because out of space error as soon as only some 7.3GB has been written. At that point there still had to be some 0.7GB space available on emmc. And I also don’t understand why bpi-bootsel step nr. 4 has to be done when the next bpi-copy step overwrites what it does. Strange…
But never mind. Thanks to you I can shrink image and write it on emmc when I need.
Frank, you are right. EMMC is really smaller than the original SD image 2017-09-04-ubuntu-16.04-mate-desktop-bpi-r2-sd-emmc-v1.2.0.img (not shrinked). Even more I compared it with the previous Ubuntu Mate image and with Raspbian image too. All these are the same size as emmc! See the sizes below:
Will this work onthe Latest version of R2? I tried to boot it but it is getting stuck as
root password for maintenance and when I enter root password then it logs me in to the boot and not the os itself.
It also says press Control + D to continue and when I press that it gets stuck.
Anyone ?
so the image is to large for emmc
