Rock5/guide/radxa-debian

    ROCK 5 >  Guide >  How to use Debian

Introduction to ROCK 5 Debian

This guide is available for official ROCK 5 Debian images.

ROCK 5 Debian is an easy to use desktop system. While working with ROCK 5 Debian, you will find it do well on playing music, Internet, Bluetooth, AI and so on.

ROCK 5 Debian uses systemd to manage system.

Command prepended by $ means the command may be executed by an unprivileged user. And command prepended by # means the command may be executed by an privileged user. But the symbol, $ or #, is not part of the command.

List of boards supported

ROCK 5B

Access from the Host PC/Laptop

Option 1: HDMI monitor and Mouse

You would see Desktop on HDMI monitor.

Option 2: Serial console

See Serial Console

Option 3: SSH

SSH server is enabled on port 22 of ROCK 5 default image.

Please use angryip to find your board IP address.

$ ping ip-of-device
$ ssh rock@ip-of-device

Default User Account

Non-root User:

User Name : rock
Password  : rock

Root mode

rock is sudo user and switch to root can be done with the following command as user rock:

sudo su

For example:

rock@rock-5b:~$ 
rock@rock-5b:~$ sudo su
[sudo] password for rock: 
root@rock-5b:/home/rock#

There is no password for root user by default. You can set the password via 'passwd root'.

root@rock-5b:/home/rock# passwd root
New password: 
Retype new password: 
passwd: password updated successfully
root@rock-5b:/home/rock#

Build

XFCE4 Desktop
* ROCK 5B

Partition table

Part Number	Offset	Name	Description
(raw)	32KB	loader1	First stage loader
(raw)	8MB	loader2	U-boot image
1	16MB	boot	Kernel partition, bootable
2	528MB	rootfs	Rootfs

Offset when writing using dd

dd if=idbloader.img   of=/dev/sdx seek=64
dd if=u-boot.itb      of=/dev/sdx seek=16384 
dd if=boot.img        of=/dev/sdx seek=32768 
dd if=rootfs.img      of=/dev/sdx seek=1081344

Radxa APT

Radxa APT source includes stable one and testing one. Stable source includes stable packages while testing source includes latest but maybe unstable packages.

Radxa APT stable source is added by default while testing source is not added.

You can uncomment line like "deb http://apt.radxa.com/bullseye-testing/ bullseye main" in file /etc/apt/sources.list.d/apt-radxa-com.list to add testing source.

See file /etc/apt/sources.list.d/apt-radxa-com.list

deb http://apt.radxa.com/bullseye-stable/ bullseye main
deb http://apt.radxa.com/bullseye-testing/ bullseye main

After adding testing source, you need to update APT and install your needed packages.

$ sudo apt-get update

For more detail about Radxa APT, please see Radxa APT.

Upgrade necessary packages

Here is the example of upgrading rockchip-overlay and kernel packages.

$ sudo apt-get update -y && sudo apt-get install -y rockchip-overlay

Test RTC Device

ROCK 5B is equipped with one RTC IC hym8563.

Firstly, plug in RTC battery to give power to RTC IC. Please note that we should keep the RTC battery in the RTC connector.

Plug in power adaper to power on ROCK 5B.

And confirm that the rtc hym8563 device is created.

root@rock-5b:/home/rock#  dmesg | grep rtc
[    6.407133] rtc-hym8563 6-0051: rtc information is valid
[    6.412731] rtc-hym8563 6-0051: registered as rtc0
[    6.413779] rtc-hym8563 6-0051: setting system clock to 2022-06-22T01:22:26 UTC (1655860946)

Secondly, use the following commands to set the system time and synchronize it to rtc0.

root@rock-5b:/home/rock# hwclock -r
2021-06-12 08:10:02.613381+08:00
root@rock-5b:/home/rock# date
Wed Jun 22 10:06:10 CST 2022
root@rock-5b:/home/rock# hwclock -w
root@rock-5b:/home/rock# hwclock -r 
root@rock-5b:/home/rock# poweroff

take the RTC battery off，after 10minute or longer，insert the rtc battery and power on rock5b，check whether the RTC is synchronized with the system clock

root@rock-5b:/home/rock# hwclock -r
2022-06-22 10:09:59.214788+08:00
root@rock-5b:/home/rock# date
Wed Jun 22 10:17:01 CST 2022

FAN test

check the weather the directory /sys/devices/platform/fd8b0010.pwm is existed

root@rock-5b:/home/rock# ls /sys/devices/platform/fd8b0010.pwm
driver  driver_override  modalias  of_node  power  pwm  subsystem  supplier:platform:pinctrl  uevent

use the bash script to Set PWM period, duty_cycle, polarity and enable with root permission

#! /bin/bash
echo 0 > /sys/class/pwm/pwmchip1/export
sleep 0.2
echo 40000 > /sys/class/pwm/pwmchip1/pwm0/period
sleep 0.2 
echo 40000 > /sys/class/pwm/pwmchip1/pwm0/duty_cycle
sleep 0.2
echo normal >  /sys/class/pwm/pwmchip1/pwm0/polarity
sleep 0.2
echo 1 > /sys/class/pwm/pwmchip1/pwm0/enable
sleep 0.2

turn off the fan

root@rock-5b:/home/rock# echo 0 > /sys/class/pwm/pwmchip1/pwm0/enable

Ethernet

ROCK 5B

5B Ethernet

ROCK 5B is equipped with one 2.5G Ethernet port. You can use a network cable (one end connected to the external network port or route) to connect your ROCK 5B to the network. The ROCK 5B will automatically configure the network for your surfing on the Internet.

Ethernet throughput test result table.

Direction	Bitrate
Upstream	2.34 Gbits/sec
Downstream	2.35 Gbits/sec

To test the Ethernet, we need to follow the steps:

Switch to super user mode by command

$ sudo su

Check whether the Ethernet is normal by command, ifconfig, which would show us a network card, eth0 or enP4p65s0 , and the Ethernet IP address. Also, use tool, ping, to connect to a normal domain.

$ ifconfig
$ ping www.baidu.com

If failed to connect to a normal domain. , try

$ sudo dhclient eth0
or
$ sudo dhclient enP4p65s0

Storage device

microSD card: /dev/mmcblk0
eMMC: /dev/mmcblk1
NVME M.2 SDD: /dev/nvme0n1

Test microSD card

This is the test result of 128GB Sandisk card on ROCK 5B.

Operation	Speed
Read	87.9MB/s
Write	66.3MB/s

Device Serial Number

root@rock-5b:~# cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep Serial
Serial		: 099b83b055b47b27

Hardware Configuration

Display Power Management

Add the following lines to file /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-monitor.conf

Section "ServerLayout"
    Option "BlankTime" "0" # Disable blank Screen
    Option "StandbyTime" "0" # Disable standby
    Option "SuspendTime" "0" # Disable syspend
    Option "OffTime" "0"
EndSection