docs.armbian.comArmbian Documentation

Home What is Armbian? What is the difference between Armbian and Debian/Ubuntu? Common features Performance tweaks What is supported? Supported SoCs Supported boards User Guide Getting Started Quick facts Troubleshooting Recovery Advanced Features Fine Tuning Armbian config Armbian DT overlays Hardware Notes Allwinner (Generic) A10 and A20 H2+ and H3 H5 and A64 H6 Freescale i.MX6 Marvell Armada Rockchip Developer Guide Building Armbian Building with Vagrant Building with Docker Build Options User Configurations FEL boot Contributor Process Contribute Merge Policy Documentation Release management Model Changelog Workflow (Jira) Community IRC Governance Docs » Home Edit on Github Linux for ARM development boards Welcome to the ! ¶ If you are new to Armbian , the Getting Started section provides a tutorial for everything you need to get Armbian running and answers many F requently A sked Q uestions. It then continues on to more advanced topics. If you need help and have read through Getting Started check out Troubleshooting . If you still cannot find what you need here visit the Armbian forum where your input can help to improve this documentation. What is Armbian? ¶ Armbian is a base operating system platform for single board computers (SBCs) that other projects can trust to build upon. Lightweight Debian or Ubuntu based Linux distribution specialized for ARM development boards Each system is compiled, assembled and optimized by Armbian Build Tools It has powerful build and software development tools to make custom builds A vibrant community What is the difference between Armbian and Debian/Ubuntu? ¶ Debian or Ubuntu officially do not support most of those boards/boxes. Armbian does. Armbian userspace has many small but vital performance or security adjustments Armbian fancy some kernel development and a lot of its maintaining. Debian relies on upstream sources for ARM hardware which can be years behind and/or lack of many functions Armbian userspace is lean, clean but 100% Debian/Ubuntu compatible Many stock Debian bugs are fixed on the way, “better than original :)” The Armbian build system is a central part of this whole ecosystem. You can DIY. Debian is much harder. Dedicated support forums per boards/boxes Plug’n’Play vs. complicated install scenarios on stock Debian unified development scenarios and user experience vs. mess of different setup instructions scattered all around Common features ¶ Armbian Linux is available as Debian and Ubuntu based images, compiled from scratch Images are reduced to actual data size and automatically expand across the SDcard at first boot Root password is 1234 . You are forced to change this password and (optional) create a normal user at first login Ethernet adapter with DHCP and SSH server ready on default port (22) Wireless adapter with DHCP ready (if present) but disabled. You can use armbian-config to connect to your router or create an access point NAND, SATA, eMMC and USB install script is included ( nand-sata-install ) Upgrades are done via standard apt upgrade method Login script shows: board name with large text, distribution base, kernel version, system load, uptime, memory usage, IP address, CPU and drive temperature, ambient temperature from Temper if exits, SD card usage, battery conditions and number of updates to install Performance tweaks ¶ /var/log is mounted as compressed device (zram, lzo), log2ram service saves logs to disk daily and on shutdown Half of memory is allocated/extended for/with compressed swap /tmp is mounted as tmpfs (optionally compressed) Browser profile memory caching Optimized IO scheduler (check /etc/init.d/armhwinfo ) Journal data writeback enabled. ( /etc/fstab ) commit=600 to flush data to the disk every 10 minutes ( /etc/fstab ) Optimized CPU frequency scaling with interactive governor ( /etc/init.d/cpufrequtils ) 480-1010Mhz @Allwinner A10/A20 480-1368Mhz @Allwinner H2+/H3 392-996Mhz @Freescale imx 600-2000Mhz @Exynos & S905 eth0 interrupts are using dedicated core (Allwinner based boards) What is supported? ¶ “Supported” is not a guarantee. “Supported” implies a particular SBC is at a high level of software maturity, but has no intention to support all possible SBC functions. Supported boards do receive preferential treatment to bugfix, improve, or add additional functionality based on any of the following, non-exclusive criteria: The discretion of the “Armbian Development Team” The availability of the “Armbian Development Team” The availability of sample boards and ease of testing The mainline kernel maturity for the particular SoC or SBC platform Paid engagements, long-term sponsorship to the Armbian Project or volunteer developers Vendor or 3rd party has a designated resource providing support for a SBC or platform ON BEHALF OF THE COMMUNITY and is contributing to the project Supported SoCs ¶ Allwinner A10, A20, A31, H2+, H3, H5, H6, A64 Amlogic S805 and S905 (Odroid boards), S802/S812, S805, S905, S905X and S912 (fork by @balbes150 ) Actionsemi S500 Freescale / NXP iMx6 Marvell Armada A380 Rockchip RK3288/RK3328/RK3399 Samsung Exynos 5422 Supported boards ¶ Check download page for recently supported list. Get Involved! ¶ Contribute Community Contact Our IRC channel is #armbian on freenode . More details here Next Built with MkDocs using a theme provided by Read the Docs . Next »...