July 6, 20251 yr I am having trouble with my SPI LCD, which uses driver panel-mipi-dbi It works great when I use a minimal Armbian image, but with a desktop image it doesn't work. This is because package "plymouth" does something in the ko loading order: it loads panel-mipi-dbi too early. Plymouth provides a graphical boot animation. The driver depends on a binary file /lib/firmware/panel-mipi-dbi-spi.bin (but the file name could change depending on the DTS) At boot time, I saw that the panel-mipi-dbi.ko is loaded BEFORE the EXT4 in the microSD is mounted... and the binary file is not in the initrd.img-version (checked with lsinitramfs) Is it possible to add something in /etc/initramfs-tools/ to include /lib/firmware/panel-mipi-dbi-spi.bin ? With my Raspberry Pi (Raspbian) I don't have this problem, because the panel-mipi-dbi driver is loaded AFTER EXT4-fs (and it also uses plymouth) I found that when plymouth is not installed, usr/lib/modules/6.15.0-edge-sunxi64/modules.dep doesn't have this line kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/tiny/panel-mipi-dbi.ko: kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/drm_mipi_dbi.ko Also, in Raspbian, the same file has the dependency line, but changed with 5 more dependencies kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/tiny/panel-mipi-dbi.ko: kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/drm_dma_helper.ko kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/drm_mipi_dbi.ko kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/drm_kms_helper.ko kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/drm.ko kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/drm_panel_orientation_quirks.ko kernel/drivers/video/backlight/backlight.ko And this is confirmed with modinfo drm_mipi_dbi: 1 dependency in armbian and 5 dependencies in raspbian... could this be the reason why the ko is loading too early? Edited July 7, 20251 yr by robertoj
July 7, 20251 yr I found some sample initramfs hooks that might give you some clues how to achieve your goal: https://github.com/simonschiele/initramfs-hooks
July 7, 20251 yr Author Thank you, I found the manual for initramfs-tools and hooks ... it looks like I can do it
July 8, 20251 yr Author Currently trying to follow the manual https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/bionic/man8/initramfs-tools.8.html#configuration hook scripts I want to include this file: Spoiler roberto@orangepizero3:/etc/initramfs-tools/hooks$ ls -l /lib/firmware/panel-mipi-dbi-spi.bin -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 100 Dec 25 2024 /lib/firmware/panel-mipi-dbi-spi.bin Creating this file: Spoiler roberto@orangepizero3:/etc/initramfs-tools/hooks$ cat include-lcd-bin.sh #!/bin/sh PREREQ="" prereqs() { echo "$PREREQ" } case $1 in prereqs) prereqs exit 0 ;; esac . /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hook-functions # Begin real processing below this line copy_exec /lib/firmware/panel-mipi-dbi-spi.bin chmod +x include-lcd-bin.sh Then I updated the initrd: Spoiler roberto@orangepizero3:/etc/initramfs-tools/hooks$ sudo update-initramfs -u update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-6.13.7-edge-sunxi64 update-initramfs: Armbian: Converting to u-boot format: /boot/uInitrd-6.13.7-edge-sunxi64 Image Name: uInitrd Created: Tue Jul 8 08:48:49 2025 Image Type: AArch64 Linux RAMDisk Image (gzip compressed) Data Size: 12430475 Bytes = 12139.14 KiB = 11.85 MiB Load Address: 00000000 Entry Point: 00000000 update-initramfs: Armbian: Symlinking /boot/uInitrd-6.13.7-edge-sunxi64 to /boot/uInitrd '/boot/uInitrd' -> 'uInitrd-6.13.7-edge-sunxi64' update-initramfs: Armbian: done. Then I checked, and the desired file was included Spoiler roberto@orangepizero3:/etc/initramfs-tools/hooks$ lsinitramfs -l /boot/initrd.img-6.13.7-edge-sunxi64 |grep panel -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 100 Dec 25 2024 usr/lib/firmware/panel-mipi-dbi-spi.bin drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Jul 8 08:48 usr/lib/modules/6.13.7-edge-sunxi64/kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/panel -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 58928 Mar 31 20:06 usr/lib/modules/6.13.7-edge-sunxi64/kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/panel/panel-edp.ko -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 136552 Mar 31 20:06 usr/lib/modules/6.13.7-edge-sunxi64/kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/panel/panel-simple.ko I will repeat this with the actual armbian OS with plymouth, tomorrow.
July 8, 20251 yr Author I am checking now Before installing plymouth, I checked that panel-mipi-dbi-spi is still loaded late: Spoiler roberto@orangepizero3:~$ dmesg|grep panel [ 1.811708] panel@0 enforce active low on GPIO handle [ 7.677563] panel-mipi-dbi-spi spi1.0: supply power not found, using dummy regulator [ 7.677805] panel-mipi-dbi-spi spi1.0: supply io not found, using dummy regulator [ 7.854434] [drm] Initialized panel-mipi-dbi 1.0.0 for spi1.0 on minor 1 [ 8.613814] panel-mipi-dbi-spi spi1.0: [drm] fb0: panel-mipi-dbid frame buffer device I added the include-lcd-bin.sh and installed plymouth: Spoiler roberto@orangepizero3:~$ sudo apt install plymouth [sudo] password for roberto: Installing: plymouth Installing dependencies: libplymouth5 Suggested packages: desktop-base plymouth-themes Summary: Upgrading: 0, Installing: 2, Removing: 0, Not Upgrading: 0 Download size: 254 kB Space needed: 1,708 kB / 58.8 GB available Continue? [Y/n] Y Get:1 http://deb.debian.org/debian trixie/main arm64 libplymouth5 arm64 24.004.60-5 [119 kB] Get:2 http://deb.debian.org/debian trixie/main arm64 plymouth arm64 24.004.60-5 [135 kB] Fetched 254 kB in 0s (909 kB/s) Selecting previously unselected package libplymouth5:arm64. (Reading database ... 29860 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to unpack .../libplymouth5_24.004.60-5_arm64.deb ... Unpacking libplymouth5:arm64 (24.004.60-5) ... Selecting previously unselected package plymouth. Preparing to unpack .../plymouth_24.004.60-5_arm64.deb ... Unpacking plymouth (24.004.60-5) ... Setting up libplymouth5:arm64 (24.004.60-5) ... Setting up plymouth (24.004.60-5) ... update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-6.15.0-edge-sunxi64 update-initramfs: Armbian: Converting to u-boot format: /boot/uInitrd-6.15.0-edge-sunxi64 Image Name: uInitrd Created: Tue Jul 8 09:01:32 2025 Image Type: AArch64 Linux RAMDisk Image (gzip compressed) Data Size: 18468072 Bytes = 18035.23 KiB = 17.61 MiB Load Address: 00000000 Entry Point: 00000000 update-initramfs: Armbian: Symlinking /boot/uInitrd-6.15.0-edge-sunxi64 to /boot/uInitrd '/boot/uInitrd' -> 'uInitrd-6.15.0-edge-sunxi64' update-initramfs: Armbian: done. Processing triggers for man-db (2.13.1-1) ... Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.41-9) ... Checking that my bin file is there: Spoiler roberto@orangepizero3:~$ lsinitramfs /boot/initrd.img-6.15.0-edge-sunxi64 |grep panel usr/lib/firmware/panel-mipi-dbi-spi.bin usr/lib/modules/6.15.0-edge-sunxi64/kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/panel usr/lib/modules/6.15.0-edge-sunxi64/kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/panel/panel-abt-y030xx067a.ko usr/lib/modules/6.15.0-edge-sunxi64/kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/panel/panel-arm-versatile.ko usr/lib/modules/6.15.0-edge-sunxi64/kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/panel/panel-boe-bf060y8m-aj0.ko .... 60 kernel modules that have the word "panel" The LCD works with plymouth: it starts the LCD earlier, with a smaller font, then switches to normal font, showing all the boot messages My armbian is not setup yet with lightdm+openbox (x11) or greetd+gtkgreet+labwc (wayland)... I will continue tomorrow
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.