Hi!

 

I thought, I might save some energy by using a Sinovoip Banana Pi M2+EDU

(it is like the M2+ but no WiFi and no display (EDIT: I mean 8 GB EMMC) and 512MiB DRAM)

instead of an Atom N270.

 

Here at armbian.com/download I only found "legacy" 3.4 images, which work nicely...

 

I wonder, if it is a good idea to stick somelhing into public internet with a 3.4 kernel...

So I tried to install lhe latest archlinuxarm kernel tar ball with a git clone of u-boot (using Sinovoip_BPI_M2_plus_defconfig) and it boots nicely, but:

1. There is no eth0 (so it is much safer from the public inet, than I like)

and

2. there is no cpufreq (so it gets quite warm and i can't even find temperature sensors in sysfs).

 

Should I continue to use my trusty old Atom?

Or is 3.4 safe enough?

Are there security fixes within short time after the CERT alert?

 

Btw:

Did somebody find the 4th pair of USB data lines somewhere on that board

(according to the schematics: CON1, footprint: SIP2-254)?

Is it possibly on the bottom side (the bottom side silk screen shows frames only (around the parts), I think...)?

 

Thx.

 

Bye

Arne

I wonder, if it is a good idea to stick somelhing into public internet with a 3.4 kernel...

 

Our 3.4 kernel is relatively in good shape, it's updated and contain lot's of fixes. Despite its old you can't just break into the system because of that. Most of routers uses even older kernel ... There is / will be alternative soon. Kernel v4.9 is about to became stable - its working fine on all (tested) H3 based boards while it crashes on Sinovoip Banana Pi M2+ on reboot ... yep. Crazy  we haven't found source of the problems yet and there are small chances that we will waste any more time into this device.

 

BTW: you chosen one of the worse board. It's prone to overheating, it has bad vendor support, wrong or no documentation, ...  

 

Did you try our beta M2+ image: https://image.armbian.com/betaimages/

Kernel v4.9 is about to became stable [...] it crashes on Sinovoip Banana Pi M2+ on reboot [...]

 

BTW: you chosen one of the worse board. Bad vendor support, wrong or no documentation, ...  

 

1.

On my board archlinux's 4.9.0-1-ARCH can reboot nicely and it can even do `#halt -p` and turn that red LED off in lhe end...

2.

How can I test ur 4.9 kernel?

How did u enable eth0 and cpufreq?

3.

The board was the cheapest I could find... 

The seller did not say, that it can't reduce its Vcpu, and that it is not supported by mainline linux kernels...

 

-Arne

Did somebody find the 4th pair of USB data lines somewhere on that board

 

Sure, since the vendor is too dumb/lazy to document stuff accordingly we tried it out ourselves: http://forum.banana-pi.org/t/possible-header-configurations-and-rtc-question/1862/14

 

It's now documented at least in linux-sunxi wiki: http://linux-sunxi.org/Banana_Pi_M2%2B#USB (unfortunately the morons writing 'official documentation' don't care about stuff like that. Even BPi M2+ schematics are confirmed to be wrong but of course the morons don't update them)

The seller did not say, that it can't reduce its Vcpu, and that it is not supported by mainline linux kernels...

 

Well, clueless vendor, clueless seller. Unfortunately also a lot of clueless customers who get tricked into believing the various 'Banana Pi' would be compatible.

 

We started using a few BPi M2+ in productive use in April 2016 with mainline kernel (just check the linux-sunxi page). Of course they're replaced in the meantime (Orange Pi Plus 2E) but to get mainline kernel working you could use our build system or the betaimages section Igor already mentioned (but please don't ask me why nightly builds aren't built any more).

 

We use a repo which contains a patched linux source tree (so cpufreq and Ethernet are working) with some patches as well. No idea about those reboot problems, I will not invest a single second again in anything related to this board (already wasted too much time with this lousy documented overheating thingie).

1,2,3: Do some research around our website, forum, Github, sunxi-linux, ... Most of those questions has been answered many times. 

 

Never trust the seller. Never. 

i found that link to the betaimages now... 

 

with Armbian_5.24.161226_Bananapim2plus_Ubuntu_xenial_4.9.0.img i can use the ethernet...

it is even slightly faster than with kernel 3.4 (937Mbit/sec instead of 933Mbit/sec)...

the sysbench CPU test is even 10% better (210sec instead of 233sec)...

 

but cpufreq does not work in that beta version, although it worked good in 3.4...

 

and: it can't do `#halt -p`, but archlinux's 4.9 could do that... *face palm*

 

so i should better send it back to the seller, because: there will be no sufficient support due to design flaws?

 

-Arne

but cpufreq does not work in that beta version, although it worked good in 3.4...

 

Unfortunately not that simple. Some functions in mainline kernel were written from scratch by community / folks. Cpu scaling is just coming to H3 boards and it's not enabled on all boards yet. Hanging at power off / reboot is known (current) problem ... probably Archlinux uses some older or strictly unpached mainline kernel, without advanced functionalities and those problems are not manifesting. Hard to tell. Mainline support for those boards is considered development - in all possible Linux distributions.

 

so i should better send it back to the seller, because: there will be no sufficient support due to design flaws?

 

All of their boards gets their "support". You have to try it to see the difference. I have a feeling they don't care if we support the board or not ... even they directly lost customers because of that. I doubt you will succeed in anything - the board works according to their standards. It's a toy and you can play with it ...

[...] I doubt you will succeed in anything - the board works according to their standards. It's a toy and you can play with it ...

I bought it on a german internet marketplace, so that i can send it back within 14 days... 

 

but i m not sure, because: with 3.4 i could accomplish my mission...

 

-arne

I bought it on a german internet marketplace, so that i can send it back within 14 days... 

 

Than don't waste time and send it back. Get this for example or that. Hardware without decent support is a paperweight.