Helios64
The Helios64 is a powerful ARM board specially designed for Network Attached Storage (NAS). It harnesses its processing capabilities from the Rockchip RK3399 SoC.
Debugging
Increase serial console verbosity
Boot from microSD card
Add the following lines to /boot/armbianEnv.txt
verbosity=7
console=serial
extraargs=earlyprintk ignore_loglevel
Boot from eMMC
Boot from a fresh image on a microSD card, mount the eMMC then modify
/boot/armbianEnv.txt.
Log serial console output to file
$ screen -S helios64-serial
$ picocom -b 1500000 /dev/ttyUSB0 -g <filename>.txt
Audit ArmbianEnv.txt
For some unknown reason /boot/armbianEnv.txt keeps getting overwritten with
logrotate configuration "gibberish". To monitor which process is modifying the
file, setup autitd as follows:
$ sudo apt-get install auditd
$ sudo auditctl -w /boot/armbianEnv.txt -p wa
$ sudo tail -F /var/log/audit/audit.log
Management
Start fans during early boot
Allow the fans to spin at a constant speed from the earliest stage of initrd until fancontrol is started by the system. If the boot process encounters an error, the fans may never start and your device will overheat.
Include the pwm-fan module to initramfs like so:
$ echo pwm-fan | sudo tee -a /etc/initramfs-tools/modules
Create /etc/initramfs-tools/scripts/init-top/fan:
#!/bin/sh
PREREQ=""
prereqs() {
echo "$PREREQ"
}
case $1 in
prereqs)
prereqs
exit 0
;;
esac
. /scripts/functions
modprobe pwm-fan
for pwm in /sys/devices/platform/p*-fan/hwmon/hwmon*/pwm1; do
echo 150 >$pwm
done
exit 0
The $pwm value can be set anywhere between 1 and 255 and specifies how fast
the fans should spin.
Include the fan script in initramfs and update the initramfs image:
$ sudo chmod +x /etc/initramfs-tools/scripts/init-top/fan
$ sudo update-initramfs -u -k all
$ sudo reboot
Update bootloader
$ nand-sata-install
# select option 5 "Install/Update the bootloader on SD/eMMC"
Disable NCQ
Edit /boot/armbianEnv.txt and add the following
extraargs=libata.force=noncq
The output should show actions performed on the file and the process ID performing those actions.
Fan management
The standard fans shipped with the Helios64 were rather noisy and therefor replaced by two Noctua NF-A8 PWM fans. A custom fancontrol configuration was also implemented:
$ cat /etc/fancontrol
# Helios64 PWM Fan Control Configuration
# Temp source : /dev/thermal-cpu
INTERVAL=10
FCTEMPS=/dev/fan-p6/pwm1=/dev/thermal-cpu/temp1_input /dev/fan-p7/pwm1=/dev/thermal-cpu/temp1_input
MINTEMP=/dev/fan-p6/pwm1=40 /dev/fan-p7/pwm1=40
MAXTEMP=/dev/fan-p6/pwm1=75 /dev/fan-p7/pwm1=75
MINSTART=/dev/fan-p6/pwm1=125 /dev/fan-p7/pwm1=125
MINSTOP=/dev/fan-p6/pwm1=100 /dev/fan-p7/pwm1=100
MINPWM=125