210508-01 - new images for the odroid u3 (u2, x, x2) and mc1 (xu4 and maybe xu3, hc1)

• based on the new imagebuilder framework
• based on ubuntu 20.04 focal (debian 11 bullseye support will most probably be added after it is released)
• supported systems: odroid_u3 - odroid u3 (default), odroid u2, x & x2 (requires adjustments in the /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf) ... odroid xu4 - odroid mc1 (default), odroid xu4 and maybe xu3 and hc1 (requires adjustments in the /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf)
• using zstd compressed btrfs as root fs, this way a full system including xorg can run from a 4gb sd card, 8gb even has some space, 16gb is plenty of space this way :)
• the new images use the open source lima gpu driver now on the odroid u3, for the xu4 still the legacy mali blob is included as the open source panfrost driver does not yet support its gpu
• in /scripts are some useful scripts to change or extend the installation - please read them before using them, as they are very basic
• lots of fixes and improvements here and there

210321-01 - updated beta images for arm chromebooks from the experimental branch

an updated set of beta images - for more details see also the comment from the last release ... all images were test booted once to make sure they are working

changes:

• kernel v5.10.25 for all images (i.e. nyan goes from v5.4 to v5.10 finally)
• the snow image has a new u-boot which is less sensitive to different sd card types
• audio fix script for snow in /scripts due to strange alsa device naming
• minor fixes here and there

errata discovered so far (there are for sure more):

• elm: the network manager is not shown in the menu bar (but wlan device mlan0 seems to be there)
• kukui: cursor is very slow - this can easily be fixed by setting SWcursor in the xorg.conf
• kukui: for some usb disks the boot seems to hang at some point - just removing the the usb drive and reconnecting it might help - for other usb disks it works just fine
• nyan: console sometimes stay blank on boot - if this happens then x11 should appear after about 1-2 minutes
• veyron speedy: requires another u-boot image to be written to the first partition, it is in the extra dir of the boot partition
• if an image does not boot, maybe try another sd card brand as well

210314-01 - some beta images for arm chromebooks from the experimental branch

IMPORTANT NOTE: i have two reports that the nyan image does not boot properly - i'm looking into it and will hopefully provide a new image soon ... until then better use the older ubuntu image from here: https://github.com/hexdump0815/imagebuilder/releases/200526-01 which so far worked for everyone

these are some test images from the experimental branch which all should work for the corresponding systems - i test booted them and they all boot fine to x11 and should work quite well, but there might still some fine tuning open here and there ... as usual the default username/password are linux/changeme ... those images are currently more ment as a starting point for people who want to run and explore linux on arm chromebooks then as enduser only images with full support

some notes about the experimental branch:

• only ubuntu focal for now, as soon as debian bullseye is out i plan to add support for it as well
• btrfs with zstd compression is used for the root filesystem, so that the images can work with sd cards or usb disks of 4gb or larger (there is a script included to extend the root filesystem to the full size of the medium used) - due to the compression a lot less disk space is used by the system and data without any noticable performance impact
• a swap file is used instead of a swap partition as this is much more flexible to extend by just adding more swap files
• there are some useful scripts in /scripts - please read them before using them
• the build scripts for the images have been substantially reworked

some notes about the images and supported chromebooks:

• in general suspend is only suspend to idle, i.e. it will keep alive for about a day until the battery is empty - full suspend does not work well for any of the arm chromebooks as far as i know
• all images use mainline linux kernels (v5.10 or v5.4 for nyan)
• snow: samsung xe303c12 (snow) - rev4 and rev5 are both supported, the usb3 port and the webcam are not working, audio is a bit tricky but should be working - there is only legacy gpu support available for the gpu
• veryon: medion s2013 (jaq) & s2015 (mighty) and asus c201 (speedy) are tested to be working - speedy requires the corresponding u-boot to be written to the first partition - all hardware should kind of work, audio is a bit tricky but should be working ... there are a lot of other veyron chromebooks which might work as well more or less - the gpu can be made working with panfrost
• nyan: acer cb5 311 (nyan-big) - it looks like all models (2/4gb, hd/full hd) seem to work - all hardware should kind of work - there is a hack in place to bring back the display after suspend which only works for the default user (linux) currently and sometimes fights a bit with the screen saver - the gpu can be made working partially with a hack for the tegra/nouveau driver in mesa
• elm: acer r13 (elm) and acer c202xa (elm-hana) seem to work quite well and there are a few more elm chromebooks (mostly lenovo) which might work maybe too or not - the hardware is quite well supported, only for the gpu there will most probably no acceleration available as there is no open source driver for it
• kukui: lenovo duet (krane) - this one is just basically working (i use it with a usb-c port replicator with ethernet and a usb stick plugged in as root device) - some drivers will be added soon (wifi) or are not ready yet (sound and bt i think) - latest mesa (2.1+) has panfrost support for the gpu (g72) - suspend is not working at all (not even supsend to idle)
• kevin: acer c101pa (bob) should work quite well with the elm image and maybe it even works for the samsung chromebook plus (kevin)

good luck and best wishes - hexdump

200823-01 - updated odroid u3/x2/x images and amlogic meson8 test image

• odroid x is now supported (did not work before in u-boot) - dtb and APPEND line in extlinux.conf need to be adjusted (see comment in the file)
• odroid u3 and odroid x2 are supported as before and maybe odroid u2 and odroid u might work as well with either the u3 or x dtb (not tested)
• the kernel is now at v5.4.58
• ubuntu focal build of my dev branch
  • ubuntu focal instead of bionic
  • uses a swapfile instead of a swap partition (for more flexibility and smaller images)
  • uses zswap to compress pages before swapping them out to reduce disk-io including zswap-stats.sh script to make visible how many disk writes are saved and how much memory is kind of gained
  • no more libreoffice installed by default (too big and not everyone really needs it out of the box)
  • uninstall snapd by default
• amlogic meson8 test image - no hdmi, v5.6.19 kernel, works on my mxq and my mx3 box, but cannot guarantee more yet :)

200724-01 - rk322x mk809iv tv stick

• rk322x mk809iv tv stick

200719-01 - odroid xu4/xu3/hc1/mc1, odroid u3/u2/x2/x, allwinner h3 tv box

• odroid xu4/xu3/hc1/mc1: mainline u-boot (v2020.07) with uEnv.txt support
• odroid u3/u2/x2/x: new u-boot (v2020.07) with uEnv.txt support
• allwinner h3 tv box: initial image, mainline u-boot (v2020.07) with uEnv.txt, hdmi output and usb keyboard input support

200702-01 - linux kernel v5.6.13 rockchip rk3328

initial ubuntu test image defaulting to a t9 rockchip rk3328 tv box

200701-01 - linux kernel v5.4.35 odroid xu4 xu3 hc1 mc1

initial ubuntu test image defaulting to odroid mc1

200628-01 - linux kernel v5.6.13 allwinner h6 tv box images

• initial support for some allwinner h6 tv boxes (tested with eachlink mini and q-plus - they have nearly as much cpu power as the raspberry pi 4, but they run very hot and thus need a lot of extra cooling, which is not easy to achieve)

200623-01 - linux kernel v4.19.118 raspberry pi 4 images

v4.19 kernel because with the v5.6 & v5.7 kernels there were problems with rpi4's with more than 1gb of ram - with v4.19 everything seems to work except wifi and bt - to be investigated another time :)