Once apon a time I had the Armbian system working (though chrome was missing).  I have since upgraded to the kernel 3.14.79 and the console videomode seems to have extra text that I can't see at the bottom of the screen where the prompt is.  That is, I can't see when I type, I only see after I hit return a couple of times and the result scrolls up.  I have customized my videomode correctly,I think, and all this used to work, so what should I do?  

 

 

Unrelated but... From what I can tell, there seem to be a lot of issues with this hardware on Armbian for lots of people.  Wondering if I should just give up on this piece of otherwise awesome hardware and move on with my life?  Is there anyone happily using this system on Linux as a desktop?

Desktop image should work fine. I haven't notice any troubles in area of screen resolution. Are you using some nonstandard one?

 

Odroid C2 still have some rough edges but things are improving daily since it's fairly popular chip. I won't use it for mission critical server at this stage, but for desktop and multimedia is o.k.

Yes, I am using the desktop version and I have tried two different monitors.  I have also tried setting two different resolutions, but I still can't see the bottom of the screen.  

Setting the bpp to 16 from 24 in boot.ini fixed this issue!  FYI.

Still firefox has the same "fatal io error" after apt-get upgrade...

Still firefox has the same "fatal io error" after apt-get upgrade...

Do you have arm64 or armhf Firefox?

dpkg -l | grep firefox

arm64

arm64

arm64 browsers like Cromium and Firefox are currently broken, please try installing armhf one.

Execute these commands as root:

apt-get remove firefox
dpkg --add-architecture armhf
apt-get update
apt-get install firefox:armhf

Thanks for that.  Should I do that for all apps?  When do I know to use the armhf vs arm64 for something?  Does armhf mean 32 bit among other things?  

 

Might be good to pin that setting for the next armbian image rollup.

Thanks for that.  Should I do that for all apps?  When do I know to use the armhf vs arm64 for something?  Does armhf mean 32 bit among other things?  

AFAIK only modern browsers are affected. Yes, armhf is 32-bit, but it should work fine in arm64 environment.

 

Might be good to pin that setting for the next armbian image rollup.

Next prebuilt images will have this by default. For previous images manual installation is required.

Wondering if I could avoid the headache of having to deal with random stuff not working in 64 bit and just installing a 32 bit armbian distro alltogether for the odroid-c2?  I don't think I need much (or any) of the 64 bit stuff.  Is that an option?

 

Or maybe wondering if there is a clever way to pick and choose hf vs 64 packages in the aptitude/apt-get interface?

 

Thanks.

Wondering if I could avoid the headache of having to deal with random stuff not working in 64 bit and just installing a 32 bit armbian distro alltogether for the odroid-c2?  I don't think I need much (or any) of the 64 bit stuff.  Is that an option?

 

Or maybe wondering if there is a clever way to pick and choose hf vs 64 packages in the aptitude/apt-get interface?

 

Thanks.

 

I made few tests with arm64 since I was thinking to move my web server to C2. I am using quite a complex install, lots' of packages and only one minor was problematic / non-existing. All others were present and I could brought the system up. The idea was abandoned for other reasons - old kernel and not enough performance.

 

Firefox and Chromium are generally problematic on arm, 32 or 64.

 

Yes, arm64 package base is not completely polished, but good enough to be used as a base in most cases. I believe that those minor cases will be sorted out soon. Remember, arm64 was introduced with Debian Jessie, so not so long time ago.

 

Until then, you use this workaround and install things with :32 where it fails. So far I found only two cases.

Ok, thanks for the info and perspective.  

 

I also noticed byobu (a terminal app) does this funky thing where it starts and then quickly disappears from the screen within less than a second.  So maybe that's another one to add to the list....  Will post more info on this when I get to my odroid computer.