CubieBoard Forum

Odroid is a competitor to Cubieboards, so I avoid talking about it here.  Much.  But I like the design/features of the HC1, the only Odroid I have worked with.  I look at the HC1 to be an excellent platform for my next mailserver.  You can see about all my ARM SOC works at:

http://www.htt-consult.com/arm.html

There are links to installing CentOS7 on Cubies (2 and Truck) and a Odroid HC1 (needs the 4.19 kernel).

Also link to my work-in-progress on a replacement mailserver.  My current server is a Cubietruck running Redsleeve6 plus the standard fare of Postfix/Postfixadmin/Myaql/Dovecot/Amavis-new/Clamav/Spamassisin/Rouncubemail.  Amavis-new is a real load on a Cubietruck.  Need more processors.  But this box has been running since 5/14 (really needs the upgrade).

So I went shopping for 4 core or more with good sata, and decided on the HC1.

My replacement Samba DC (Nethsever) will be a CubieTruck.

My DNS and web servers are Cubieboard2s.

That about covers it.

Oh with the mailserver, I have to get the newer password hash (MD5 -> SHA512) and quota system along with a backup solution solved before I launch.  Probably a few weeks (got a trip to Beijing coming up getting in the way of stuff like this).

Further, look here:

https://linux-sunxi.org/Mainlining_Effort

The place to ask about this is on the sunxi list.

With both Fedora and Centos, using current uboot, I only have uboot on the uSD, and all partitions on the sata drive.  As long as there are no partitions on the uSD, uboot tries elsewhere for the partitions.

I have been meaning to ask on the Fedora-arm list about putting uboot on NAND, this is the incentive to do that...

what you are up against is the sunxi uboot work has not provided vga support.  none of the distros that use it can drive vga as a result.  and there is no plan to add it.

look for an hdmi-to-vga converter.

I have not been sucessful with these an Fedora/centos.

Again, the Linaro user list.  This is Linaro specific.  There are many other A10 boards out there with similar installation challenges and you will get more help there.

But please share your experiences here to help other people searching for Cubieboard help.

Sorry I can't be of more help, but I am in the Fedora/Centos camps and you will find me a regular there in their arm user lists!

I could never figure the C2-dualboard out.  Always thought it was a special project for some big Hadoop customer (or other server farm) that they decided to commercialize.

Nothing really supports it.  No uboot for it from sunxi, unless you somehow boot both?  Never really looked into it; never considered investing the money in one.

Yes, this forum board is basically dead as is the Cubieboard mailing list.  I still heavily use Cubies (2 and truck) with Fedora and Centos and now working with Nethserver to see it gets ported to Centos-armhfp.  But I am one of the last repliers here.  The Russian forum sometimes shows some activity.

There are still problems with the Cubieboard5 and uboot from sunxi.  Seems to be getting close.  Maybe by Fedora 30 it will work.  But then I have been considering a BananaPi based on the Allwinner R50 and find out that sata support for that chip won't happen until the 4.20 kernel (F29 is shipping with 4.18).  So I can't even jump ships to get a working quad board!  Also the Cubieboard5 is not native sata, but they emulate it off of USB and that is one of the problems.

I have no problem using generic uSD cards I get at the counter of my local Micro Computer Center.  But I use the Fedora installer, or direct dd of the provided Centos or Nethserver image onto a uSD card and take it from there.

Hope you get what you have working well enough for you.

Oh, one final note, if you will.  The wonderful Mali GPU is not supported in the sunxi uboot.  This means GTK3 goes into hw emulation mode and you get terrible graphics (read desktop gui) performance.  I have been told GTK2 is dead.  So Mali GPU is dead until someone contributes the needed code to the sunxi work.  Thus great for servers, but not for desktops.

I put

einstein-s500 schematic

Into google and got quite a bit of information including a pointer back here:

http://dl.cubieboard.org/som/Einstein-S500/datasheet/Einstein-S500%20SOM%20datasheet%20EN_V0.3.pdf

Try google yourself...

What would I specify on ebay to get some more power cables.

This USB to 4mm cable is really handy.  I have been using them for other things and now I need a few more...

thanks