¶ Introduction
Welcome to StarFive's VisionFive 2 - Debian Wiki!
¶ Debian
Your VisionFive 2 will need an operating system to work.
Currently, StarFive provides a pre-built Debian image for users to flash into SD/eMMC cards.
Debian is an open-source GNU/Linux distribution created by the Debian community.
Debian Official WebPage: Debian
¶ 202302 Release Notes
¶ Image Information
Linux Kernel: 5.15.0 (StarFive kernel tag v2.6.0)
U-boot: StarFive uboot tag v2.10.4
Debian Snapshot date: 20221225T084846Z (sid)
¶ Enchancement and bug fixes
- SD and eMMC boot is now supported. 2 images are provided, one for SD/SPI boot, and one for eMMC boot.
- Image partition is changed from 3 partition to 4, we are trying to standardized the partition across all boot mode including buildroot image.
- Only the minimal image will be provided. A shell script is provided to get the additional packages from StarFive.
- Debian snapshot is updated from 20220616T194833Z to 20221225T084846Z
- The boot partition will now use ‘/boot/’ instead of ‘/boot/boot’
- Added ESWIN 6600U WiFi Dongle support.
- Added HDMI audio support
- OpenSSL is updated to version 3.0.7
- 'openssh-server' package is now removed from the image by default.
- libfreetype6 package in image is currently manually installed as the package from Debian snapshot lacks of the ‘FT_Get_Transform’ symbol (which is needed by some packages such as libharfbuzz). Please avoid reinstalling libfreetype6 via apt as this would potentially break some packages (including xfce4-session, the default session manager).
¶ Known Issues
- 4K resolution is not working in X
- XFCE desktop resizing slowness
- 1080p60 video playback issue
- libreoffice slowness using gtk3
- Mosaic pictures after login
- xeglinfo crashes X server
- Qt modules qtwebengine failed to build
- Firefox hardware acceleration is not working
- NWjs Filesystem access APIs failed.
- NWjs mp3 encoder failed to be detected
- Hang after awhile in dual display [MIPI+HDMI]
¶ What's Next - WIP
- Debian-Installer support - Could support both SD + eMMC boot in single image.
- ipv6 enablement
- NVMe PCIe enablement and test
- u-boot splash screen
- 4K resolution support for X and Wayland
- Improved X Desktop user experience
- Vulkan support
- Firefox hardware acceleration
- 1080p60 video playback
- Gnome Wayland Desktop for improved user experience
- virtual console via HDMI
¶ VisionFive v2 Debian Download Link
Link for Image Download: VisionFive v2 Debian
As of February 2023, the latest release is the 202302 Release, which can be found in Engineering Release/202302 in the link above.
¶ Images
There are 2 different images available for VisionFive v2 to support different boot modes, which include:
- SPI boot/SD boot: starfive-jh7110-202302-SD-minimal-desktop.img.bz2
- eMMC boot: starfive-jh7110-202302-eMMC-minimal-desktop.img.bz2
¶ Boot Mode Settings
VisionFive v2 provides pins to determine the boot mode before it is powered up. The following are the available boot modes and details.
¶ Flash Image to eMMC
Current method of flashing is to flash the image through Linux
Boot to Debian using SD image and download the eMMC image.
Using dd method to flash to the eMMC partition
dd if=starfive-jh7110-202302-eMMC-minimal-desktop.img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=4096 status=progress
To copy existing files from sd card partition, we can use dd method as well, once flashed, we would need to change the fstab to point to emmc partition.
dd if=/dev/mmcblk1p4 of=/dev/mmcblk0p4 bs=4096 status=progressedit fstab file
vi /etc/fstabChange to below
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# systemd generates mount units based on this file, see systemd.mount(5).
# Please run 'systemctl daemon-reload' after making changes here.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
/dev/mmcblk0p3 /boot vfat defaults 0 2
/dev/mmcblk0p4 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
¶ Minimal Image
The minimal image is a clean image with minimal package installation for having a small image size. Hence, you will need to download the packages with apt or apt-get .
Some packages particular are not available to download via apt/apt-get, and is provided by StarFive, which includes:
- Node.js 18.0.0
- v8 10.2.154.13
- libsdl2-dev
- QT 5.15.2
- Firefox 105.0
- Libreoffice 7.5
- NW.js
- FFmpeg
- GStreamer
- v4l2test (This is a custom shell script to use the CSI camera)
Debian Repo for StarFive Packages: Github Link
There is a script prepared so that you can install the packages (and its runtime dependencies) with the run of a script. You will just need to run:
wget https://github.com/starfive-tech/Debian/releases/download/v0.7.0-engineering-release/install_package_and_dependencies.sh
chmod +x install_package_and_dependencies.sh
./install_package_and_dependencies.sh
This script will help to install the packages provided by StarFive. Feel free to customize the script to suit your needs.
¶ After Booting
¶ Resizing Partition after boot
When you initially boot into the image, the rootfs partition will not be fully utilized. Hence, you will need to extend the partition size.
You can use terminal tools such as ‘fdisk’ and ‘resize2fs’ commands to resize the rootfs partition.
Please refer to this document: Extending Partition
¶ Updating U-boot
Refer to Quick start Guide for updating u-boot
¶ Updating Linux Kernel in Image
Install dependencies to build kernel
apt-get install build-essential linux-source bc kmod cpio flex libncurses5-dev libelf-dev libssl-dev dwarves bison gitClone the kernel from StarFive Github
git clone https://github.com/starfive-tech/linuxCheckout the desired kernel version
git checkout <tag version>Before building, we need to add in a patch that fixes build with newer binutils, save the below patch to patchfile and apply the patch.
diff --git a/arch/riscv/Makefile b/arch/riscv/Makefile
index 0eb4568fbd29..c18d87212177 100644
--- a/arch/riscv/Makefile
+++ b/arch/riscv/Makefile
@@ -52,6 +52,12 @@ riscv-march-$(CONFIG_ARCH_RV32I) := rv32ima
riscv-march-$(CONFIG_ARCH_RV64I) := rv64ima
riscv-march-$(CONFIG_FPU) := $(riscv-march-y)fd
riscv-march-$(CONFIG_RISCV_ISA_C) := $(riscv-march-y)c
+
+# Newer binutils versions default to ISA spec version 20191213 which moves some
+# instructions from the I extension to the Zicsr and Zifencei extensions.
+toolchain-need-zicsr-zifencei := $(call cc-option-yn, -march=$(riscv-march-y)_zicsr_zifencei)
+riscv-march-$(toolchain-need-zicsr-zifencei) := $(riscv-march-y)_zicsr_zifencei
+
KBUILD_CFLAGS += -march=$(subst fd,,$(riscv-march-y))
KBUILD_AFLAGS += -march=$(riscv-march-y)
once applied the above patch, we can continue to proceed building the kernel
Build the kernel with bindeb-pkg
cd linux/
cp arch/riscv/configs/starfive_visionfive2_defconfig .config
make ARCH=riscv olddefconfig
make ARCH=riscv -j$(nproc) bindeb-pkgOnce the compile is finished, install the .deb kernel packages
dpkg -i *.debNote: currently the dtbs are not synced once you installed a different version of kernel, you'll need to copy over the dtbs from /usr/lib/linux-image-<custom version>/ to /boot/dtbs/
¶ Enabling VF2 trng module in kernel
Please refer the above section for how to compile the kernel
To enable the trng module in visionfive2, apply this below patch when building the kernel
diff --git a/arch/riscv/configs/starfive_visionfive2_defconfig b/arch/riscv/configs/starfive_visionfive2_defconfig
index c545421012d4..0cf0c483ac0b 100755
--- a/arch/riscv/configs/starfive_visionfive2_defconfig
+++ b/arch/riscv/configs/starfive_visionfive2_defconfig
@@ -172,7 +172,7 @@ CONFIG_HVC_RISCV_SBI=y CONFIG_TTY_PRINTK=y CONFIG_VIRTIO_CONSOLE=y CONFIG_HW_RANDOM=y -CONFIG_HW_RANDOM_VIRTIO=y
+CONFIG_HW_RANDOM_STARFIVE=y
CONFIG_I2C_CHARDEV=y
CONFIG_I2C_DESIGNWARE_PLATFORM=y
CONFIG_SPI=yNote: this would be turn on by default on the next release
¶ Additional References
Please refer to JH7110 Technical Documents for your reference
¶ Tested Component
To be updated