Rock 5B+ Debian build

#21

As for the network configuration not taking effect, just run sudo systemctl disable --now NetworkManager before installing it

#22

Please use our latest image https://github.com/radxa-build/rock-5b-plus/releases/download/rsdk-b2/rock-5b-plus_bookworm_kde_b2.output.img.xz to install omv8 instead of not omv6

#23

OMV8? I think OMV7 is now latest stable.

#24

Chen, I have spent many many hours with rbuild and rsdk. I have built multiple images with cli. As I’m sure you know openmediavault runs a check to see if you have a desktop installed and if it thinks you do, stops install. So, the kde build that you have fails 100% of the time. This is why my focus is on a cli image which Radxa does NOT support. The frustrating thing is that I have finally managed to make a cli build which is a lot smaller than the kde version. But it also fails the OMV checks. In my build environment I have manually removed all the desktop components I can find in the src files. Still no omv build success.

I have found a web page where somebody has taken the time to decode the actual check that OMV runs. It is quite basic but offers an opportunity to get a result. It checks the installed OS for anything with the following strings: gdm3|sddm|lxdm|xdm|lightdm|slim|wdm.

https://medium.com/@imamdev_/openmediavault-desktop-environment-detected-is-a-problem-468e711b381

Running the command dpkg -l | grep -Ew “gdm3|sddm|lxdm|xdm|lightdm|slim|wdm” on my build returns a single item “radxa-sddm-theme”. I am now trying to remove it, without success. Too many errors. So I have asked support to let me know where I can find it in the source so that I can remove and run a fresh build.

1 Like
#25

My mistake, I did install omv7.

#26

I used the official manual install tutorial and had no problems with check failures, if you need to uninstall radxa-sddm-theme you just need to run the sudo apt purge radxa-sddm-theme command

#27

The apt purge and apt remove were the first things I tried. Both ran for a while then stopped with “too many errors”.

BUT, I did manage to get a build made without the theme and now have a cli only build with no hidden desktop packages. I have omv7 loaded and running. It’s about 3gb smaller than the kde image. So that is great progress. Performance on the 5b+ looks pretty good. And it seems stable without the crashes I was getting in omv6 on the bullseye build that I spent a lot of time removing packages to make work. Network changes, timezone etc don’t cause problems, all seems normal.

The next challenge is to get the image in to emmc so I can run from there instead of the microsd card. I have been using the latest rkdevtool and following step by step it just fails and sometimes crashes. The various test in the tool fail and there is a consistent fail when I try a build and the tool switches storage.

The process is different between 5B and 5B+ where the tool ‘sees’ the 5B+ without needed to press the maskrom switch. I have tried that as well.

#28

When there is no storage available for booting, the SBC will automatically enter maskrom mode. In addition, if you need to perform other operations, you need to download the loader first.

#31

Hey Bruce, I’m having the exact same problem as you, the only difference is I’m using a Rock 5C. Can you give some information on how to build an image without the radxa-sddm-theme package?

#32

I think I found the culprit for the errors when trying to uninstall radxa-sddm-theme.
The post-remove script of the package, found in /var/lib/dpkg/info/radxa-sddm-theme.postrm is:

#!/bin/sh
set -e

case $1 in
remove)
    conflicts="breeze"
    for i in $conflicts; do
        rm "/usr/share/sddm/themes/$i/Main.qml"
        dpkg-divert --package radxa-sddm-theme --rename --remove "/usr/share/sddm/themes/$i/Main.qml"
    done
    ;;
esac
exit 0

On the CLI image (at least in my OS) there is no /usr/share/sddm/themes folder, so the script returns an error. I tried putting a check inside the for (which doesn’t even make sense tbh) to see if the file trying to be removed exists, and executing the two operation inside it. This made possible to remove the package using apt or dpkg. I think this is how it should be done in the first place and this script should be updated by Radxa. Also, if this package is unnecessary, it shouldn’t be installed on the CLI image in the first place.

Anyways, if anybody is trying to uninstall this package to install OMV just change this script and it should work.

PS: When uninstalling this package with apt, it suggested some packages to be removed with sudo apt autoremove. When I ran this command, one of the packages suggested for removal was radxa-system-config-rockchip which gave me the same error as radxa-sddm-theme. Out of curiosity, I went to check this package post-remove script and it had the same problem as the sddm theme one, trying to remove inexistent files (in this case /usr/share/wayland-sessions/plasmawayland.desktop and /usr/share/gdm/gdm.schemas). In this case the use of a for made sense. Seems like a broken template was used for the post-removal scripts. Radxa should check their package scripts to fix those issues and avoid future problems.

1 Like
#34

I had a LOT of correspondence with tech support who ended up creating a video which shows the step by step process. It’s shown here:

https://radxaos-sdk.github.io/rsdk/install/devcontainer.html

There are some glitches. I built the rsdk environment on a couple of different platforms with different hardware. Both kicked up errors at the end of the build that said the secondary partition went outside the limits, blah blah…but the primary partition is ok. This on a 4tb nvme with nothing else installed but debian and rsdk. I copied the .img files to sdcard and then booted up. All good.

Another glitch is the tech’s video shows a check he did to see that json was present. I found that just typing the letters I saw on the screen in my install gave no result. But when I typed “jsonnet” all was as needed. This is at the 20:17 mark of the video.

If you follow the instructions on the webpage exactly, on a clean debian install you will be able to create the command line rsdk builder - the devcontainer only option from the rsdk webpage above.A small detail… I found that if you build the rsdk environment and then logout of your system and come back later you have to run the instructions from the line …

cd rsdk
npm install @devcontainers/cli
export PATH="$PWD/src/bin:$PWD/node_modules/.bin:$PATH"
rsdk devcon up
rsdk devcon

I seem to remember running as root, but not 100% on that.

Then you can use a command such as:

“rsdk build rock-5b-plus bookworm cli”

Be prepared to wait, sometime 25minutes with nothing happening. Maybe an hour in total. Just be ready to look at a blinking cursor.

The command above will still compile the image with all of the kde etc stuff. There are a couple of ways to make a lightweight build. One is to manually edit the rootfs.jsonnet file and change from true to false the following line “vendor_packages = true”. I don’t recall which subdirectory of rsdk it sits in but it’s not hard to find. Also be aware that rsdk builds a cache so search the entire tree for the file.

See this link:

Make the change then save the file, then run the rsdk build command and there will be no desktop or other Radxa applications. rsetup will still be there. So also will the theme I mentioned above. So how to solve that? Well, it appears there are numerous command line modifiers for rsdk.

The theme in question is in a file on github that you can’t modify in your environment but you can at the build stage.

But you only need to do the modification if you have already made a build where the theme is used - the rsdk build environment creates a cache and that theme gets put in the cache and will appear in future builds. So either do a fresh install or tell the build system to ignore the cache.

So you issue a build command like this:

“rsdk build rock-5b-plus bookworm --no-cache cli”

Now, if you haven’t yet made a build and you have changed the .jsonnet file as above, that theme won’t get put in to the cache since it ONLY gets loaded as part of the vendor packages. So if the vendor packages have never been included in a build, the theme won’t be in the cache. Personally, I think it’s better to just use the --no-cache modifier each time to be on the safe side.

I think there is another way of creating a build without going in to the .jsonnet file mentioned above. And that is to make the tweaks with rsdk build modifiers. Apparently, rsdk follows the rbuild structure. So you can ‘probably’ use stacked modifers to take care of the vendors-packages tweak. So 'maybe" a command such as…"“rsdk build rock-5b-plus bookworm --no-cache --some_additional_modifier cli” - but what the exact text is for that modifier I don’t know. Would be good to have that info on the Radxa webpage.

#35

Thanks for the debug, I will add a judgment to fix the error

1 Like
#36

Regarding the fact that this omv installer checks for packages that are desktop related, I would recommend modifying the omv installer to ignore this package (radxa-sddm-theme) instead of breaking the system dependencies, or following the official omv tutorial(https://docs.openmediavault.org/en/stable/installation/on_debian.html) to install omv manually.

#37

Yes, the tutorial/manual install does work. The problem is there are numerous automated scripts on github and the omv forum that get trapped by the check.

A better solution would be for Radxa to follow the approach of OrangePi and FreindlyElec and publish a lite or server version of the os. I’ve lived in Silicon valley for over 30years, ‘in the industry’ - it’s the software that makes or breaks you.

If Radxa wants to offer a great user experience they need to make their ‘platform’ comprehensive. For each os you don’t support, you lose more of your potential customer pool.

2 Likes