Notes and questions on installing on an Orange Pi 4 LTS

Do you want advice about what hardware to buy for use with MythTV? Ask here.

Moderator: Forum Moderators

Post Reply
User avatar
dochawk
Junior
Posts: 24
Joined: Mon Jan 17, 2022 8:32 pm
United States of America

Notes and questions on installing on an Orange Pi 4 LTS

Post by dochawk »

[for those reading this some time in the future, wondering why I would buy such a thing, it's because I *could* get one, and raspberry are almost impossible to get right now. And if you can, it's at an insane scalped price.]

I've seen enough quirks so far on this orange pi 4 LTS that I think it merits its own guide. (OK, so maybe one killer quirk, but even so.

Mine is a 3gb RAM with 16gb EMMC.

It comes with android on the EMMC, and is supposed to boot to sd instead if one is in . . . and thus the hair pulling began. :?

I downloaded both raspbian and ubuntu server for ARM, and flashed onto a variety of cards with the raspbian tool.

in each case, it booted from android anyway.

I even tried raw writing with dd, and got the same results.

It took a few days of futilely trying various fora (the manufacturer's own takes three or four days to get an account approved, and is a spam wasteland) before I ventured to try Arabian, because, well, why not?

their site suggested balenaEtcher, so I downloaded that and the Arabian image. They actually have a specific image for the orange pi 4 LTS!

Initially, the etcher would not take the images. I had downloaded with safari (osX), and it was apparently unpacking the image.

So I copied the link and used wget to download.

so I flashed, put it in, and it simply came up in armbian!

curious, I flashed ubuntu onto the same chip with the etcher, and it still wouldn't work, so back to armbian.

(I'm actually agnostic as to linux distros; I initially chose based on what the bulk of people here seem to use, as there will be more collective experience).

so the lessons so far:
1) use armbian
2) use balenaEtcher
3) don't use safari to download.
User avatar
dochawk
Junior
Posts: 24
Joined: Mon Jan 17, 2022 8:32 pm
United States of America

Re: Notes and questions on installing on an Orange Pi 4 LTS

Post by dochawk »

Now found:

the usbc connector is really only a power connector, or doesn't provide power to devices plugged in.

Really???

after days of twiddling with it not responding to my ssd, I plugged it into the usb-3 type A adapter, and it was instantly found!


just plain "grr"
Post Reply