i want to use nanopi r5s device, but its partition layout and final image creation process is confusing.
it’s official image has 9 partitions that has diffrent partitions for kernel, dtb.
how can i use mender in this device?
is such partitioning can be used by mender?
or can i use mender partitioning for this device?
thanks
Hi @chezgi,
Thanks for reaching out! What means are you planning to create the image? Looking at the wiki, there seems to be no Yocto support, and I also could not spot anything in the various Rockchip-related public layers.
Once you have decided upon a strategy to proceed, you can look into integration details. I’m pretty sure the high partition count is just a particular design decision and you can replace it with a much simpler scheme.
The integration of Mender requires a bit of bootloader integration to do the A/B strategy, so you need a way to get that into your build at least. On top, Mender prefers to have kernel and devicetree on the rootfs partition to make it self-contained for a system update. You can work around that, but its always error-prone and reduces the features you can use, so definitely discouraged.
Generally speaking, the support is best when going the Yocto route, probably you can get started by looking at meta-rockchip and meta-mender-rockchip. The latter requires bumping to kirkstone too, though. Maybe I can help with that.
Greetz,
Josef
I have meta-mender-rockchip updated to kirkstone as I’m currently working on support for rk3328 (rock-pi-e board) and push it shortly.
Quick look at meta-rockchip show that r5s device is not supported by mainline. Use proprietary u-boot can be tricky. Which layers do you use for building image ATM? Thanks.
Please see PR here: Rockchip kirkstone updates by nandra · Pull Request #336 · mendersoftware/meta-mender-community · GitHub
i used meta-rockchip and some bbappend files for kernel and uboot in my layer.
it creates kernel and uboot successfully.
linux-rockchip_5.10.bbappend:
SRC_URI = "git://github.com/friendlyarm/kernel-rockchip.git;protocol=https;nobranch=1;branch=nanopi5-v5.10.y_opt;"
SRCREV = "${AUTOREV}"
u-boot-rockchip.bbappend:
SRC_URI = " \
git://github.com/friendlyarm/uboot-rockchip.git;protocol=https;branch=nanopi5-v2017.09;\
git://github.com/JeffyCN/mirrors.git;protocol=https;branch=rkbin;name=rkbin;destsuffix=rkbin; \
"
SRCREV = "${AUTOREV}"
machine/nanopi-r5s.conf:
SOC_FAMILY ?= "rk3568"
PREFERRED_VERSION_linux-rockchip ?= "5.10%"
LINUXLIBCVERSION ?= "5.10-custom%"
require conf/machine/include/rockchip-arm64-common.inc
MALI_GPU := "bifrost-g52"
MALI_VERSION ?= "g2p0"
RK_ISP_VERSION := "2.1"
UBOOT_MACHINE = "nanopi5_defconfig"
RK_WIFIBT_FIRMWARES = ""
MACHINE_EXTRA_RRECOMMENDS:append = " \
drm-cursor \
"
KERNEL_DEVICETREE = "rockchip/rk3568-nanopi5-rev01.dtb"
Which one please? 
See: [yocto] [meta-rockchip] The various rockchip layers
I think you use Rockchip flavour with custom u-boot + kernel. Then I’ve asked also there: Mender support · Issue #61 · JeffyCN/meta-rockchip · GitHub 
As stated in commend on meta-rockchip you would need to use mainline u-boot instead of rockchip one. At least I’m not sure if this would be possible to backport to mainline u-boot.
i used u-boot provided by friendlyarm, and rockchip version not used here.
Looks like friendly-arm just forked rockchip u-boot: uboot-rockchip/Makefile at nanopi4-v2017.09 · friendlyarm/uboot-rockchip · GitHub (version is same as for rockchip uboot).
use nanopi5-v2017.09 branch for r5s
This branch is 2399 commits ahead, 7 commits behind nanopi4-v2017.09.
OK it’s same 2017.09 u-boot
@chezgi I’ll try to integrate mender to my radxa board which using same u-boot but earliest next week can start looking into it 
@chezgi please check radxa integration: Preliminary radxa support · nandra/meta-mender-community@96d3dde · GitHub You can get some inspiration how to do it for your board.
thanks @MarekBelisko for your helps,
I apologize for the late reply.
I am currently working on another field.
Hi, I am using Friendlyelec armhf OS version with these details -
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 16.04.5 LTS
Release: 16.04
Codename: xenial
I have added few files in this system and trying to create an image of the same OS. Following are the details -
udev 390M 0 390M 0% /dev
tmpfs 98M 6.0M 92M 7% /run
overlay 3.2G 3.0G 37M 99% /
tmpfs 492M 0 492M 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock
tmpfs 492M 0 492M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs 99M 4.0K 99M 1% /run/user/1000
/dev/mmcblk0p1 60M 13M 43M 23% /media/pi/boot1
tmpfs 99M 0 99M 0% /run/user/0
I am trying to create the custom image of my OS version but the resultant image is not bootable.
I am using the following command to create the image = sudo dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=/home/myimage.img
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks