Update RoPieee on Allo USBridge

Audio Gear Talk RoPieee
1

As many of you are interested in using RoPieee on an Allo USBridge I’ve got some bad news I’m afraid…

To be able to get RoPieee running on the USBridge it means that I need to port RoPieee’s foundation to Allo’s Sparky SBC. This means figuring out how to get my Linux kernel running on Sparky, and I thought this weekend I was almost there.

Unfortunately I hit the wall: Sparky’s kernel is an old one (3.10), and this kernel version is not supported (anymore) by systemd, one of the basic components being used by ArchLinux, which in turn is the foundation for RoPieee.

To put it shortly: there won’t be a RoPieee for Allo’s USBridge. At least not until Allo is able to update Sparky’s base kernel to a more recent version. I’ve reached out to them but haven’t heard back from them. Maybe they got a surprise for me :wink:

I’m sorry to disappoint quite a few of you out there; hopefully we can make this happen in the future.

Thanks,

5 Likes
2

The joys and pains of rolling ones own disto to different platforms. I don’t envy Dan and his DietPi efforts in this regard…supporting so many SBC models must be a nightmare.

I’m sure everyone appreciates the effort Harry, you do an amazing amount of effort for the RPi uses here - I hope the Sparky owners will forgive…I have a Sparky too… but alas my Kali and Piano 2.1 boards snuffed it…must get that sorted…been way to long.

1 Like
3

Thanks for trying. Come on @allo.com get back to Harry and upgrade the Sparky to a decent kernel.

4

Problem is that manufacturer of CPU (actions semi) has to do that…they have been promising for at least 8 months it will happen.

Sorry there’s not much we can do on our side

5

please pardon the newbie question, but what about “Highlights of the ARM hardware enablement work for Linux 4.16 include (…) the Actions Semiconductor S700 SoC is now supported by the mainline kernel. This is the only new SoC added this time around. The S700 SoC is a quad-core Cortex-A53 design with a Mali 450 MP6 GPU. Along with this new SoC, the CubieBoard7 board is now supported and the Allo.com Sparky SBC.” ?

6

We are using s500 and not 700

7

Good spot!

That at least sounds promising. Problem is that not only you need the kernel to support the SoC, but also the proper configuration. That’s something that’s not part of the kernel itself, and should be provided by the manufacturer.

Tinkering with the Linux kernel configuration is very time consuming, especially if you don’t know what settings you need.

If someone (@allo.com ?) can provide me with the right build config I can have a look…

Hmmm… I see a DTS file for the Sparky… So potentially this could be doable.

8

marked to follow thread.