Banana Pi F3 with 16 GB RAM constantly freezing [SOLVED]

I wanted to mention a couple things. I just bought a Sipeed Lichee pi 4A with 16gigs of ram. I did notice there’s a different file for the EMMC, one that takes in to consideration 16 Gigs of RAM.

I found that odd so I thought I would mention it. One thing you can do is stop the boot from the console and run ‘printenv’ and see what it says.

The other option is you use my method, burn Ubuntu 24.04 Server edition to M.2 and Boot from SD card. All you need to do is replace the initrd with mine. I’m going to upload that tonight to my githib.

Franco

I tried yesterday with GitHub - rcman/BPI-F3: Working with my banana-pi F3 board and figuring it out instructions and reached the same issue Ubuntu load stuck at ldo5:disabling status · Issue #1 · rcman/BPI-F3 · GitHub.

The actual init is in my files directory with-in bpi-f3, I burned the server image to the m.2 and mine boots just fine. I will double check, the image you need to download which is linked there is the one you’re supposed to use.

So another question. Have you completely deleted boot flashes and emmc and only boot from SD card?

Franco

I have only SD card booting enabled, as I never flashed the EMMC (because I could not with dd, as it freezed when trying). I think your how to has some missing bits and typos, and maybe some chmods required, but I think I did a good job filling in the gaps. It might be the case as you said, that this version of 16GB RAM needs some other workflow.

I was thinking of doing a live stream on Youtube both my RISC machines. I need to do that soon.

At least let people they’re not alone in their quest. Franco

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checked, it loads, doesn’t freeze, 16 GB of memory available

@mara can you try running sudo mkdir -p /tmp/tmpfs && sudo mount -o size=12G -t tmpfs none /tmp/tmpfs && sudo dd of=/tmp/tmpfs/test if=/dev/random bs=1M count=8000 status=progress?

yes, it freezes when running.

big oof. Do you happen to know at which MB mark? Mine freezes after writing around 1.4GB, @haurog’s at around 750MB mark.

update: there is a new image uploaded today with bianbu desktop, which works so far. No issues seen with the RAM freezes, applications work great and everything looks to be very snappy.

There were new bianbu images uploaded a few hours ago (release 20240802). No freezes or any other issues. These images work reliably. I guess it will take some time until the other images are updated. So with the 16GB version using this bianbu release is the way to go for the moment.

Hi If you don’t me asking how much did you pay for your 16gig board and where did you buy it?

Thanks Franco

I bought it trough one of their official aliexpress stores (Bipai). A link to the shop is at the bottom of the docs: Banana Pi BPI-F3 | BananaPi Docs

I paid 131$ plus 10$ shipping plus then VAT and import tax in my country which added another about 30$ for me.

the problem is localized to u-boot, in the latest version there are many changes in the settings of ddr memory.
changes

8388608000 bytes (8.4 GB, 7.8 GiB) copied, 141.805 s, 59.2 MB/

Thanks for the info. We still have issues when building Rust projects on our Banana Pi F3s. They fail with a SIGSEGV errors randomly. The board does not freeze anymore though. But it still looks like there needs to be improvements for the 16GB version of the boards. Lets hope they iron these problems out with future releases.

I wrote about the patch, it is applied in my kernels.

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I will try it out, thanks alot, your work is amazing!

Currently, the SIGSEV build errors are not a real issue, as I can retry the build until it gets finished.

One big ask - do you know how can I overclock the CPU? I need a few more Mhz if possible. I am aware and it is my full responsibility if something goes wrong.

Thanks alot.

compare dtb k1 and m1

The best way to do this is through an overlay

everything is at your own risk

--- a/k1-x_opp_table.dtsi	2024-08-10 23:20:48.433989554 +0300
+++ b/k1-x_opp_table.dtsi	2024-08-10 23:25:03.735156581 +0300
@@ -11,6 +11,14 @@
 		clock-names = "ace0","ace1","tcm","cci","pll3";
 		cci-hz = /bits/ 64 <614000000>;
 
+		opp1800000000 {
+			opp-hz = /bits/ 64 <1800000000>, /bits/ 64 <1800000000>;
+			tcm-hz = /bits/ 64 <900000000>;
+			ace-hz = /bits/ 64 <900000000>;
+			opp-microvolt = <1160000>;
+			clock-latency-ns = <200000>;
+		};
+
 		opp1600000000 {
 			opp-hz = /bits/ 64 <1600000000>, /bits/ 64 <1600000000>;
 			tcm-hz = /bits/ 64 <800000000>;

Sorry for my noobiness, but how do I install docker and docker compose v2 on Irradium?