A display connected to the DSI connector of Raspberry Pi 5 does not work when using Armbian. However, the display works perfectly when using the Raspberry OS.

 

My OS image is: Armbian_25.2.2_Rpi4b_bookworm_current_6.12.15_cinnamon_desktop

 

Dmesg reveals the following information:

[   13.283052] mipi-dsi 1f00118000.dsi.0: deferred probe pending: mipi-dsi: supplier 2.reg_bridge not ready
[   13.283060] platform 1.panel_disp: deferred probe pending: platform: wait for supplier /axi/pcie@120000/rp1/i2c@88000/reg_display@45

 

This forum post suggests, that the problem is due to the missing I2C driver "CONFIG_I2C_DESIGNWARE_PLATFORM": https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=375851

 

And indeed, on the working Raspberry OS image, i find the following files in the directory /lib/modules/.../kernel/drivers/i2c/busses:

- i2c-designware-core.ko.xz

- i2c-designware-platform.ko.xz

 

These files are not present on the Armbian image, I assume that these are the missing drivers.

 

Could someone please add the drivers to the build configuration, so that DSI displays will work in the future on RPi5?

 

https://paste.armbian.com/owihivazuc

In the meantime I was able to compile a customized armbian image with the Designware I2C driver enabled. This solved the problem for me

... until a kernel update was installed via apt. This made my DSI display unusable again.

 

What I did:

I used the official buildsystem from https://github.com/armbian/build.

In the kernel config menu, I selected "Device Drivers / I2C support / I2C Hardware Bus support / Synopsis DesignWare I2C adapter" to be included as a module ("<M>").

 

This led to the line "CONFIG_I2C_DESIGNWARE_CORE=m" being present in the kernel configurafion file 'linux-bcm2711-current.config'.

Finally I recieved the working armbian image with the modules 'i2c-designware-core.ko' and 'i2s-designware-platform.ko' being present under /usr/lib/modules/...

 

To be able to perform kernel updates in the future, it would really be helpful to have the drivers already in the official armbian builds.

What can I do to improve the situation? I came here to seek the 'standard' support. Should I try to raise an issue on github instead? 

 

I would really like to assist with this topic, but I am not familiar with the required processes and, at the end, do not want to create more confusion than it's worth.

1 hour ago, CaWeissWz said:

it would really be helpful to have the drivers already in the official armbian builds.

 

Welcome to submit PR here:

https://github.com/armbian/build/tree/main/config/kernel

Best to all those configs:

I am pleased to confirm that DSI is now working with the official images (Tested Armbian 25.8.1 Trixie minimal). 👍