¶ 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 and NVME.
Debian is an open-source GNU/Linux distribution created by the Debian community.
Debian Official WebPage: Debian
¶ 202306 Release Notes
From this release onwards, we will be using Gnome Wayland as the default windowing system.
Note: Although 4K resolution is supported, there is still performance drop issue where frame rate is dropped during desktop usage. Thus, it is recommended to switch to 1080p60 resolution for a smooth desktop user experience.
¶ Image Information
Linux Kernel: 5.15.0 (StarFive kernel tag v3.1.5)
U-boot: StarFive uboot tag v3.1.5
Debian Snapshot date: 20221225T084846Z (sid)
Note: Please avoid running apt upgrade as it will override the existing customized mesa and linux-libc-dev versions provided.、
¶ Enhancement and bug fixes
Generic
- A NVMe PCIe boot image is now provided. You will need to set boot mode to QSPI boot when using the image (Refer to ‘Boot Mode Settings’ section below)
- Pink screen overlay issue is fixed and can now boot with a normal color scheme
- Resolutions such as 2K and 1024x728 are now supported
- 4K display flicker issue is fixed
- System now supports 1080p30 video playback
- Added AIC8800 Wi-Fi module support by default
Packages
- Imagination DDK is upgraded from version 1.17 to 1.19
- Mesa is updated from version 21.3.8 to 22.3.5
- Chromium is now supported
- OpenCV is now supported
- VLC (with 1080p60 playback) is now supported
- GStreamer Cogl plugin is now supported.
Note: For new packages, please refer to ‘StarFive Packages’ section below for installation details.
Misc.
- Audio devices in Gnome Desktop is now renamed from both ‘Built-in Audio’ to ‘Audio Jack’ and ‘HDMI Audio’ respectively
- libicu71 is now installed by default
- gnome-tweaks is installed by default
- Firefox on Wayland is now hardware accelerated by default
- Firefox now supports 1080p30 video playback
- Libreoffice with GTK3 performance is improved
¶ Known Issues
- Desktop with 4K resolution is a bit laggy
- 1080p60 is playable on ffplay but with framedrops
- Chromium FFmpeg is not working
- NVME image occasionally has a slow boot time
- Qt modules qtwebengine failed to build
- NWjs Filesystem access APIs failed.
- NWjs mp3 encoder failed to be detected
- VLC media player will crash when playing video in minimized mode.
- Disabled uboot splash screen temporarily.
¶ What's Next - WIP
- Debian-Installer support - Could support both SD + eMMC boot in single image.
- Vulkan support
- 1080p60 video playback
¶ VisionFive v2 Debian Download Link
Link for Image Download: VisionFive v2 Debian
As of June 2023, the latest release is the 202306 Release, which can be found in Engineering Release/202306 in the link above.
¶ Images
For this release, we will only be releasing SD boot, eMMC boot and NVME boot version.
- SD boot: starfive-jh7110-202306-SD-minimal-desktop.img.bz2
- eMMC boot: starfive-jh7110-202306-eMMC-minimal-desktop.img.bz2
- NVME boot: starfive-jh7110-202306-nvme-minimal-desktop.img.bz2
¶ Boot Mode Settings
On VisionFive 2, there are several boot modes available, which include:
- QSPI boot
- SDIO boot
- eMMC boot
- UART (recovery mode)
The following figure displays the location and the pin definitions of the boot mode settings:
¶ StarFive Packages
The Debian image provided is a rather 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)
- Chromium 103
- VLC 3.0.18
Note: For VLC configuration, make sure that this below configuration is set in the settings
- Video output module is using “gles2”
(Change in Tools > Preferences > All > Video > Output module > OpenGL for Embedded Systems 2 video ouput)
- Video Codec is using “FFmpeg”
(Change in Tools > Preferences > All > Video Codecs: In Preferred decoders list, Write “FFmpeg”)
- Video output is set to "Fullscreen" by default
(Change in Tools > Preferences > All > Video > General video settings, Check “Fullscreen video output”)
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/v0.8.0-engineering-release-wayland/install_package_and_dependencies.sh
chmod +x install_package_and_dependencies.sh
./install_package_and_dependencies.shThis 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>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/
¶ Additional References
Please refer to Debian User Guide for your reference
Please refer to JH7110 Technical Documents for your reference
¶ Tested Component
4K monitor
| Brand | Model |
| DELL | U2723QE |
| DELL | S3221QS |
| DELL | U2720QM |
| SAMSUNG | S27A800UJC |
| LG | 27UP850 |
| LG | 27UL650 |
| BENQ | PD27006U |
| Haier | MOOKA U75A6 |
| Redmi | RMMNT27NU |
| Xiaomi | L75M9-SP |
| Eimio | Eimio E16U |