Armbian on the MangoPi MQ Pro!

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Boring Introduction

After spending the last 24 hours trying to bodge together a Gentoo build in the worst possible way, it turns out there’s a working build of Armbian that will run on the MangoPi MQ Pro and everything was a waste of time. Do I care? Nope, not too much, becauuuuse..

Armbian user balbes150 has been working away on Armbian builds for other RISCV D1 boards such as the Nezha, LicheeRV Dock, sharing his knowledge with the Armbian forum users and as luck would have it, they also run on the MangoPi MQ Pro!

Image Downloads

There are a few to choose from, both Ubuntu and Debian flavours are represented and if you want a desktop environment? Sure, they’re there too, though I can’t say you’re going to have a great time with a single 1GHz RISCV core but if you’re into that kind of thing, more power to you. I’ve tested the jammy desktop and headless versions and both work, I have no reason to believe the others don’t but if you have any issues, please leave a comment!

The following images are all linked directly from the author’s repository via Yandex.ru. I’ve mirrored all of them in Spain, Singapore, and Australia, though if your download speeds aren’t great from there.

Headless / CLI

Armbian_22.08.0-trunk_Nezha_jammy_current_5.19.0.img.xz
Armbian_22.08.0-trunk_Nezha_sid_current_5.19.0.img.xz

XFCE Desktop

Armbian_22.08.0-trunk_Nezha_jammy_current_5.19.0_xfce_desktop.img.xz
Armbian_22.08.0-trunk_Nezha_sid_current_5.19.0_xfce_desktop.img.xz

Issues Noticed So Far

• The first boot is going to take some time! Do make sure you’re watching it via HDMI if possible so you can see what it’s doing as depending on the size and speed of your SD card, it may take a while to boot and resize.
  
• Straight out of the gate there seems to be an issue with the wireless interface only detecting certain networks. This seems to be related to band-steering and 2.4GHz/5GHz networks sharing the same SSID. An easy fix is having a separate SSID for 2.4GHz (or a guest network running on that if you have the ability to) but when we have further information, we’ll update it here.
  
• When shutting down, balbes150 notes that it doesn’t quite complete properly and you’ll still see an image on the screen.
  
• When connected to the UART serial console, the HOST USB-C port will not function. You will need to un-plug your serial cables and enable the USB port or try plugging in and out the device a few times until it turns on and activates.
  
• The activity light will not come on on the board so don’t be alarmed. Just plug in a USB ethernet adapter or HDMI cable and you’ll be able to access the device.
  
• There are possible locale issues due to packages being missing. RichN via the RISCV Discord (definitely join if you’re interested in RISCV fun!) has mentioned that he’s already working on fixing this and including additional plugins for the desktop environment.

Summary

balbes150 has done some great work in getting these images together and whilst they weren’t built specifically for the MQ Pro, they work well enough and everything I’ve tested so far within Armbian has been what I’m used to (in the headless images anyway, I only checked to see if the XFCE image booted) so bravo to the guy.

The default password when logging in to Armbian if you’re not familiar with it is 1234 and you’ll be prompted to change that and set up an account with your chosen shell on the first login.

This will be a living document and no doubt there’ll be new builds so as soon as we discover fixes for known problems, or we encounter new ones, I’ll update this page with timestamps.

Enjoy your MangoPi boards (finally!)