[ARM Stable Update] 2021-04-27 - Firefox, KDE Frameworks, RPI Imager, Uboots and Kernels

ARM Stable Updates
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Hello ARM community.

ICU had an update, so many things needed to be rebuilt, thus here’s a big update!

rpi-imager-manjaro
rpi-imager-manjaro726×497 56.6 KB

Manjaro ARM is now present in the rpi-imager!

Some highlights:

  • Most of our kernels got updated
  • Firefox updated to 88.0
  • Most of our Uboot packages are now updated to 2021.04
  • KDE Frameworks updated to 5.81
  • We also included the RPI-Imager into our repository
  • Lots of updated packages for our Mobile offerings
  • The regular Python updates
  • And regular updates from upstream

How to use the new Kodi RPI on Manjaro ARM (by @Darksky)

If anyone wants to test kodi on the rpi:
Change to the unstable or testing branch and install kodi packages:

sudo pacman -S kodi-rpi kodi-rpi-dev kodi-rpi-eventclients kodi-rpi-tools-texturepacker linux-rpi4

Boot straight into Kodi

This means the kodi.service file need to replace whatever login manager you have installled. In my case I would:

sudo systemctl disable lightdm.service
sudo systemctl enable kodi.service

Also by default it uses the vc4-kms-v3d which means fbturbo is not installed.
They recommend removing custom configs in config.txt. We ran into an issue if a value was set with gpu_mem=.

My config.txt with a bit of overclocking:

over_voltage=5
arm_freq=2000
#gpu_mem=64     #disable this
initramfs initramfs-linux.img followkernel
kernel=kernel8.img
arm_64bit=1
disable_overscan=1

#enable sound
dtparam=audio=on
hdmi_drive=2

#enable vc4
dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d,cma-512
#max_framebuffers=2    #disable cause kodi uses more
dtoverlay=rpivid-v4l2
disable_fw_kms_setup=1

Some notes:

The default user will be kodi.
Kodi home directory will be /var/lib/kodi.
So put test video in /var/lib/kodi/Videos so you can get to it after setting up the video directory in kodi.

Upstream Notifications:

Older notifications

Chromium will loose sync support in early March:
Arch Linux - News: Chromium losing Sync support in early March

ghostpcl>=9.53.2-2 and ghostxps>=9.53.2-2 updates require manual intervention:
https://www.archlinux.org/news/ghostpcl9532-2-and-ghostxps9532-2-updates-require-manual-intervention/

The nss and zn_poly packages requires manual intervention:
https://www.archlinux.org/news/nss3511-1-and-lib32-nss3511-1-updates-require-manual-intervention/
https://www.archlinux.org/news/zn_poly-092-2-update-requires-manual-intervention/

The packages hplip and firewalld requires manual intervention:
https://www.archlinux.org/news/hplip-3203-2-update-requires-manual-intervention/
https://www.archlinux.org/news/firewalld081-2-update-requires-manual-intervention/

Package changes:

(Tue Apr 27 20:24:40 CEST 2021)

  • arm-stable community aarch64: 1083 new and 1012 removed package(s)
  • arm-stable core aarch64: 58 new and 59 removed package(s)
  • arm-stable extra aarch64: 655 new and 650 removed package(s)
  • arm-stable kde-unstable aarch64: 351 new and 349 removed package(s)

See all the package changes here!

Testers needed on arm-testing branch

We are in need of testers for our arm-testing and arm-unstable branches.
So if you are adventurous and want newer software quicker, we would love for you to help us test out the new packages in arm-testing branch.

All you have to do to switch to this branch is:

  • Run this command to switch branch: sudo pacman-mirrors -aS testing && sudo pacman -Syyu. This will generate a new mirrorlist for you, sync your databases with the new mirror and update your system using the arm-testing branch.

We would then love for you to give feedback in our update posts in #manjaro-arm:arm-testing-updates. That way we can better find and fix bugs, before they hit arm-stable branch. Thank you!

Donation

Please consider supporting Manjaro ARM directly via Patreon, Ko-Fi or Open Collective.
You can also donate to our upstream, which is Arch Linux ARM.

Poll

  • No issue, everything went smoothly
  • Yes there was an issue. I was able to resolve it myself.(Please post your solution)
  • Yes i am currently experiencing an issue due to the update. (Please post about it)

0 voters

Check if your mirror has already synced:

2 Likes
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Known Issues and Solutions

This is a wiki post, please edit it when you find a solution to an issue you encountered

Old Issues

Kwin crashes on startup on Pinebook Pro
This seems to be related to Mesa 20.3 and the Pinebook Pro support in kernel 5.10, as this does not seem to happen on other devices.
It does not impact 3d performance as far as I can tell. Just the OpenGL compositing in Kwin.
Fixed with mesa 20.3.2-2.

My VPN no longer connects
OpenVPN 2.5.0 changed how VPN routes work.
Workaround is to downgrade to previous version (2.4.9):

sudo pacman -U /var/cache/pacman/pkg/openvpn-2.4.9*

DP Alt Mode no longer works on Pinebook Pro
This is a known issue, the hacky patch we had to enable this has broken in recent kernels.
@tsys and Ayufan are looking into it.
As a workaround you can install linux-pinebookpro again.
FIXED with linux-5.9.12-4 and linux-rc-5.10-rc7-2 and above.

brcm-patchram-plus and pi-blueooth are in conflict
See this post for workaround:
[ARM Testing Update] 2020-11-16 - Bitwarden, Mesa-Git, Pacman and kernels - #10 by Darksky

Plasma Mobile Keyboard
The plasma mobile onscreen keyboard does not work with QT 5.15.0.
This is fixed by updating to kwin 5.19.3-1.1.

PinePhone uboot
This update to the PinePhone Uboot package (2020.04-2), changed how the DTS is loaded from the kernel, since the Kernel DTS for the Pinephone also changed. When doing this update on the PinePhone images from Alpha5 and back, please make this change to the /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf before rebooting:

  • sun50i-a64-pinephone.dtb to sun50i-a64-pinephone-1.2.dtb
  • root=LABEL=ROOT to root=LABEL=ROOT_MNJRO

Manual interventions:
The nss and zn_poly packages prior to version 3.51.1-1 and version 0.9.2-2 respectively, were missing a soname link each. This has been fixed in 3.51.1-1 and 0.9.2-2 of these packages, so the upgrade will need to overwrite the untracked files created by ldconfig. If you get any of these errors

nss: /usr/lib/p11-kit-trust.so exists in filesystem
zn_poly: /usr/lib/libzn_poly-0.9.so  exists in filesystem

when updating, use

pacman -Syu --overwrite /usr/lib/p11-kit-trust.so --overwrite /usr/lib/libzn_poly-0.9.so

to perform the upgrade.

Device stopped booting after Uboot update
The uboot update included a change to the extlinux.conf file. This change will be incompatible with the old 1 partition layout of some devices.
So if you are updating installs made with images 20.02.1 or older, you need to apply this fix before rebooting!
To fix this please edit your /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf file and add 2 periods in front of each first slash, like so:

KERNEL ../Image
FDT ../dtbs/ #etc.
APPEND initrd=../initramfs-linux.img #etc.

Save the file and reboot.

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Thanks a million for the update! It’s highly appreciated!

May I ask a presumably stupid question?

I received this error “brcm43438.service: Failed with result ‘exit-code’.” and found an old solution in the wiki post. The link provided there suggests installing brcm-patchram-plus-pi400. Unfortunately, that does not seem to exist any longer.

# pacman -S -dd  brcm-patchram-plus-pi400 firmware-raspberrypi
error: target not found: brcm-patchram-plus-pi400

Is there an alternative?

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Install brcm-patchram-plus.

Then enable attach-bluetooth.service

1 Like
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Hi,

Odroid N2 and C2 kde up to date, small graphic bug with pamac but fully functional, sorry I don’t report to the dev for the moment…

What’s news with the graphic drivers ?

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Beelink GT King Pro-XFCE-linux-5.11.16-1 update to Stable-Update 2021-04-27 so far no issues except cannot reboot or shutdown cleanly (Keyboard LED light still on).

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Not much as far as I’m aware. At least for G52/G31.

1 Like
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Waybar is crashing with an unhandled exception…

** (waybar:2134): ERROR **: 08:50:29.876: 
unhandled exception (type std::exception) in signal handler:
what: argument not found

==> ERROR: Cannot fetch updates
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Is it using Pamac to check for AUR updates?

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japp…

 │     "custom/pacman": {
 172   │         "format": " {}",
 173   │         "interval": 3600,
 174   │         "exec-if": "[ $(checkupdates | wc -l) -gt 0 ]",
 175   │         "exec": "pamac checkupdates | wc -l",
 176   │         "on-click": "pamac-manager --updates",
 177   │     },
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That might be why. Pamac was blocked from AUR API because of excessive querying. :slight_smile:

Should be enabled again though.

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looks like its related to a crash in bluetooth module: Bluetooth module causes crash (even with default settings) · Issue #1086 · Alexays/Waybar · GitHub

workaround: open .config/waybar/config and comment the line for bluetooth module

30 │ // "bluetooth",

1 Like
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also looks like the system got slower when rebooting and during the login process :frowning:
I’m still investigating it

EDIT: the slow down is mostly noticeable when booting the system. the background screen for the greetd is already visible but it can take up to 5 secs before the login dialog is shown… greetd hasn’t been touched, but sway and wlroots have been updated, so might be side effects… after login the performance is as usual

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Pinebook Pro question: there is a lot of confusion over how to get “deep sleep” working correctly so that battery consumption while sleeping would be less than 10% per day, but it seems to need a custom older kernel or something, plus possible uboot changes, etc. Is there any clarification anyone has on how to do it right? I am on 5.11.x kernel and battery will drain about 40% (minimum) while sleeping overnight??

1 Like
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True “deep sleep” as you call it, requires badly written Rockchip drivers to be in the kernel, and the uboot to contain Rockchips blobs.

The uboot blobs are still available via uboot-pinebookpro-bsp, but the kernel drivers have not been patched into the kernel since 5.8 or 5.9. We dropped them, because they had no way of getting into mainline kernel.

But, there is a patch for TF-A (Trusted Firmware - ARM) that starts implementing the functionality into mainline uboot, which would work together with a proper mainline kernel. It’s not merged into TF-A yet and it’s not optimized yet. But work is being done to get it working.
I’ve read in dev chats, that it gets the battery drain down to 25% over 12 hours.

2 Likes
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That sounds awesome, thanks for the update!

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Pinebook 1080p won’t boot into sway after update.
It freezes on manjaro boot/splash screen with the dots rotating, doing nothing. Before it lauched right into sway (I have set greetd to autologin some time ago).

I found out, that it’s not frozen completely and after “ctrl+alt+f2”, I’m able to login to terminal. Later I will check the logs, to see what’s gone wrong. Any sugestions where & what to look for?

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Hi. Seamonkey is crashing on my PinebookPro post-update:

First error:

[tjh@PineBookPro ~]$ seamonkey
XPCOMGlueLoad error for file /usr/lib/seamonkey/libxul.so:
libicui18n.so.68: cannot open shared object file: No such file or 
directory.  Couldn't load XPCOM.

When I fix that with

ln -s libicui18n.so.69.1 libicui18n.so.68

Then I get the error

[tjh@PineBookPro lib]$ seamonkey
XPCOMGlueLoad error for file /usr/lib/seamonkey/libxul.so:
libicuuc.so.68: cannot open shared object file: No such file or 
directory.  Couldn't load XPCOM.

And when I fix that with

ln -s libicuuc.so.69.1 libicuuc.so.68

then I get the error

[tjh@PineBookPro ~]$ seamonkey
XPCOMGlueLoad error for file /usr/lib/seamonkey/libxul.so:
/usr/lib/seamonkey/libxul.so: undefined symbol: u_strToUpper_68
Couldn't load XPCOM.

There seems to be a need to systematically update values 68->69 in the source?

Otherwise the update looks great.

System Details:

Operating System: Manjaro-ARM
KDE Plasma Version: 5.21.4
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.81.0
Qt Version: 5.15.2
Kernel Version: 5.11.16-1-MANJARO-ARM
OS Type: 64-bit
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 6 ×
Memory: 3.8 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: Mali T860

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Seamonkey is a package we get from Arch Linux ARM, which seems to not have been built for the new libraries. No one seems to have mentioned the issues on the Arch ARM forums.

I would suggest looking at Waybar’s bluetooth plugin. Like @appelgriebsch mentioned above.