espressobin
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Globalscale
Community maintained

What Does Community Support Mean?

Community maintained targets have full featured Armbian OS support but lack quality control imposed by Armbian standard support criteria. Boards are supported / maintained at least on the level of 3rd party Linux distributions. They are maintained (or not maintained) by community members (like you). These builds are provided by the Armbian project as a service to the community. They are automatically generated and untested.

What you can do to help lifting support status?

  • Version 7 EspressoBIN (identifiable by sata power connection instead of molex) has ethernet ports in the reverse order.  This can be fixed in armbianEnv.txt with the line “fdtfile=marvell/armada-3720-espressobin-v7.dtb”
  • manual flashing to latest u-boot is mandatory, again (as part of 2022.05 release)! Download the right boot flash for your board: 512,1G,2G, number of RAM chips (identify by visual inspection – one on each side of the PCB opposite to each other. Later 1GB models have only one chip at the bottom) and appropriate memory speeds. You can obtain numbers from the current boot prompt. Also choose right memory: ddr3 are for V3-V5 EspressoBin’s (i.e. V5, 1g-2cs) and ddr4 images are for v7 EspressoBin’s. Insert ‘ddr3’ or ‘ddr4’ into the bubt command string. Copy this flash-image-{ddr3,ddr4}-MEM-RAM_CHIPS-CPU_DDR.bin to your formatted USB key, plug it into USB3.0 port and execute from u-boot prompt: 
    bubt flash-image-ddr3/ddr4-MEM-RAM_CHIPS-CPU_DDR.bin spi usb

    In case you experience instability reflash boot loader with lower CPU speed values!  SoC speed can be found printed on the armada chip, under the heat sink.  No 1200 chips have been reported, 800 is a safe option, 1000 is a likely option.  It can also be found as part of the current u-boot output.

  • Updated u-boot (2022.04) needs new default boot environment and boot script. U-boot now respects ethaddr and eth[0,1,2]addr variables. This is what you need to copy/paste into u-boot prompt: 
    printenv ethaddr
env default -a
saveenv
# Including this line to make sure saveenv is executed.
  • If ethaddr was previously changed, it can be set with “setenv ethaddr f0:ad:4e:08:00:00”, then “saveenv”
  • If you manage to crash your SPI flash, get appropriate files and proceed with one of the rescue options: SATA, UART,
  • if you need USB2 port on your mPCI slot (for Bluetooth or 4G/LTE modems) you need to move both jumpers near to the USB2 port. Position for this function is: away from the port.

After you download and boot?

Basic OS configuration is conducted at first boot. You are asked to set a root password, normal user and confirm your, automatically determined, language settings. If your hardware has internal media, you might want to transfer your OS to it. You can also choose to configure your OS first, setup applications, enable services and install to internal media later.

armbian-config

image

You can select different login shell (ZSH), enable 2FA for your SSH, enable virtual read-only file-system, switch to rolling releases, ... and more. Armbian config tool helps you configure your network (static, dynamic, enabling hotspot). Once you are done configurion your OS, you can proceed to software section. Armbian config provides clean and fast way of installing great selection of popular software titles. If you plan to use your board for running a home automation, file server, ad blocking, downloading media, ... we got you covered.

Become a partner and support development!

Specifications

1000tx 2 core 2GB 64bit docker eMMC i2c mpci sata spi spi flash switch usb3 wireguard Marvell A3700

* Specifications differ from hardware revision, model and software support level

FAQs

We provide a selection of images that fits hardware best. If you need different image - use build framework and make whatever you need. Build framework relies on Debian and Ubuntu packages - you can build any combination - stable, old stable or rolling release.
Make sure you have a good & reliable boot media (SD card / USB key) and a proper power supply. Archives can be flashed with Etcher (all OS) directly. Insert the SD card into the slot, connect a cable to your network if possible or a display and power your board. (First) boot (with DHCP) takes a bit longer.

Support is provided in one of two ways:

Armbian images and kernels can be made from scratch. Supported environment for build framework is any any X64 based Linux distribution. You can re-make live bootable image or just a kernel+dtb(hardware configuration) package which you transfer to your image and install with: dpkg -i linux-image-[branch]-family.deb linux-dtb-[branch]-family.deb. In that process you can enforce many customisation.
Current images doesn't work? Use old images from archive and report to forums exactly which image fails.