Successfully running VyOS on BPI-R4

Banana Pi Router design BPI-R4/BPI-R4 Pro(MT7988)
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Update: Please visit GitHub - KawaiiNetworks/vyos-bpi-r4: VyOS for BPI-R4 for more details.

Because 6.12 has some problems with 6Ghz Wifi, I upgrade the kernel to 6.17.

After several days of effort, I finally succeeded in running Vyos on BPI-R4.

Very nice board :wink:

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image2164Ɨ986 115 KB

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hope you can show more about this .:slight_smile:

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Iā€™m organizing a document, and it might take a few days. Iā€™ll get it done as soon as possible.

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Wow, thatā€™s a nice attempt!

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Which vyos image did you used? Can you share?

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Please visit GitHub - KawaiiNetworks/vyos-bpi-r4: VyOS for BPI-R4

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Hello,

I create a github repo to share the process and image:

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Awesome work! :grinning: I will be following this thread.

Does it work properly with hardware flow offloading too? VyOS should support that if the driver support is there in the kernel. Iā€™d be curious to know if you tried it? :slight_smile:

If I just want to try your builds, can I just download the iso and use the generate_img.sh script to create the sdcard?

Also, your VyOS update instructions mention tar.gz files that are not available under releases despite what the instructions claim. :slight_smile:

Finally, is flashing u-boot to SPI flash necessary to boot from the sdcard or only from the built-in NAND and eMMC storage?

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Interesting that vyos also uses debian packages. And you build kernel from my source :slight_smile:

If you found any patches useful for others i maybe can integrate it in my repo. Have only seen it in the script.but patches applied on my source look not interesting,maybe defconfig changes.

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VyOS is based on Debian (as was Vyatta which it was originally forked from years ago), so thatā€™s not surprising. :slight_smile:

Itā€™s indeed nice to see the kernel being pulled from your repo and built from source, so that we get to benefit from the great work you are doing to get these working well on more standard Linux distros than OpenWrt, as well as the mainlining work. :slight_smile:

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Thank you very much for your kernel/u-boot source! I list them on the readme.

My repository is essentially just a place for building images, and it doesnā€™t actually contain many modifications to the kernel or the VyOS build scripts. Iā€™m still fairly new to Linux kernel development, but if I find useful patches in the future, Iā€™ll try submitting PRs to your repository.

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What you saw before was probably the ISO image I created for x64 devices.

For BPI-R4, please try Release 2025.11.08-1112-rolling-6.17.0-bpi-r4 Ā· KawaiiNetworks/vyos-bpi-r4 Ā· GitHub . You can flash the .img file to SD card.

they are created from different branches.

I havenā€™t test the hardware flow offloading but I guess If I use the correct kernel source, it should work properly?

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Ah yes, youā€™re right. I didnā€™t read properly, as it clearly says amd64 in the file name for the first github release. :smile: My bad.

Nice. Iā€™ll try the sdcard image once I have some time to play around with it. :slight_smile: I want to try OpenWrt on the BPI-R4 first for a few days to see how it behaves on a ā€œstableā€ release. I only switched over from my Qotom Intel Atom C3758 based VyOS router a few hours ago.

I guess it should be fairly obvious if the hardware offloading is working with some speed tests once I test it. :slight_smile: As long as PPE support has been implemented in the kernel, it should presumably just work, yes.

I assume that I need to use the serial console to access it and configure basic networking as well as enable SSH on it?

Being able to toggle between booting VyOS (on sdcard) and OpenWrt (on eMMC or NAND) using a hardware switch is pretty sweet. :grinning: