Volumio Debian Buster Beta - Raspi images debugging

gvolt · June 7, 2020, 2:27pm

You could edit /etc/os-release and change the value for VOLUMIO_HARDWARE to “pi” so the according line looks like VOLUMIO_HARDWARE="pi". NOTE: I did not check for any side effects this might have. But the install script of the touch display plugin should detect the correct hardware platform then (and hopefully download the correct packages for the chromium-browser ).

ashthespy · June 7, 2020, 2:29pm

Not seeing what is messing up the system here. Could you try reinstalling the image? Then you can try editing etc/os-release with:

sudo sed -i 's/^VOLUMIO_HARDWARE="raspberry"/VOLUMIO_HARDWARE="pi"/' /etc/os-release

And try installing the touch display plugin again. I am not sure if it will work without any tweaks for buster though.

gvolt · June 7, 2020, 2:41pm

Yes, can’t really hurt - if need be it can be easily changed back. I rather think using VOLUMIO_HARDWARE="pi" would be of use as e.g. /bin/hotspot.sh currently also relies on “pi”.

ashthespy · June 7, 2020, 3:27pm

Hmm, I’m quite reluctant to change this, as I think it’s ambiguous + it’s probably a relic of when Volumio could only run on x86 and the pi. It doesn’t follow the pattern of the rest of the boards:

github.com

volumio/Build/blob/b9cd485c2d7861a79d18f42ff0fdb052338b2239/build.sh#L239-L261


pi) echo 'Writing Raspberry Pi Image File'
  check_os_release "arm" "$VERSION" "$DEVICE"
  sh scripts/raspberryimage.sh -v "$VERSION" -p "$PATCH"
  ;;
cuboxi) echo 'Writing Cubox-i Image File'
  check_os_release "armv7" "$VERSION" "$DEVICE"
  sh scripts/cuboxiimage.sh -v "$VERSION" -p "$PATCH" -a armv7
  ;;
odroidc1) echo 'Writing Odroid-C1/C1+ Image File'
  check_os_release "armv7" "$VERSION" "$DEVICE"
  sh scripts/odroidc1image.sh -v "$VERSION" -p "$PATCH" -a armv7
  ;;
odroidc2) echo 'Writing Odroid-C2 Image File'
  check_os_release "armv7" "$VERSION" "$DEVICE"
  sh scripts/odroidc2image.sh -v "$VERSION" -p "$PATCH" -a armv7
  ;;
odroidc4) echo 'Writing Odroid-C4 Image File'
  check_os_release "armv7" "$VERSION" "$DEVICE"
  sh scripts/odroidc4image.sh -v "$VERSION" -p "$PATCH" -a armv7
  ;;

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I do realise in the end, its just to-mah-to vs to-may-to, but I do really think in this case change is good, and the shift to Buster is a perfect opportunity to clean up a lot of legacy code in Volumio – take for example the bin/hotspot.sh that you link to. It is no longer relevant for example, and has been removed in Buster…

I do understand that is quite a lot of churn for plugin devs though.
Either way, this is just my 0.2 cents, in the end it’s up the the core Volumio devs anyway,

PS: I also don’t use that Build system to make these images, as I found it extremely hard to debug and extremely error prone with all the copy pasting going on for the different boards - but again this is all my personal opinion(s)

gvolt · June 7, 2020, 4:08pm

Probably a misunderstanding: I’m not against using “raspberry” in future versions of Volumio at all. My suggestion was directed just to give SuperBoby a quick (temporary) solution for testing the touch display plugin without its install script being mislead again regarding the hardware platform.

BTW what is the branch in the Volumio repos which is currently used for buster development? The hotspot.sh I found in the “jessiebuster” branch.

ashthespy · June 7, 2020, 4:58pm

Ah, sorry I was scratching my head wondering why I had changed it, and went looking - hence the brain dump!

On the note of the plugin - with the correct hardware identified - it also grabs the additional xserver-xorg-legacy and seems to install fine on my pi4. I haven’t tested if something actually turns up on the display though.

I noticed that it’s using a rather old version of chromium (48.0.2564.82) from launchpad
for other hardware, we should be able to get chromium (80.0.3987.162-1 directly from the buster repos now!

That branch is for x86 I believe, these images are built from my fork, where I tried to refactor the build system to be a lot more modular, but has diverged from the original repo a bit since…

gvolt · June 7, 2020, 5:05pm

True, 48.0.2564.82 is old. I never tried a newer version as I assumed it was chosen for compatibility reasons.

Ah, good to know, thank you.

SuperBoby · June 7, 2020, 5:10pm

So, I restarted from scratch :

Reflashed the SD card
Did the initial configuration of Volumio
Restarted
Modified /etc/os-release to change raspberry to pi
Installed the touchscreen plugin

The installation goes fine, but when I activated the plugin, I got a white screen with a message on top saying :

You are using an unsupported command-line flag: --no-sandbox. Stability and security will suffer.

I can dismiss it, but the screen stays white.

In fact, the whole Web UI does not seem to load. I get a blank page when accessing it from my computer.

gvolt · June 7, 2020, 5:16pm

Looks like chromium started but the Volumio server did not start. Maybe change the value for VOLUMIO_HARDWARE back to “raspberry” and execute volumio vrestart or reboot to rule out VOLUMIO_HARDWARE="pi" as the reason.

SuperBoby · June 7, 2020, 5:25pm

I tried it; after a volumio vrestart and after a reboot, the result is a grey-ish page instead of white, on the touchscreen (with the message) as well as through the web. I guess this grey-ish color is the background of the Volumio Web UI.

ewald_harmsen · June 20, 2020, 7:55pm

I installed the latest release today.
My setup RPI3/4-4GB + 7 inch HDMI LCD

On my RPI3 the display shows an image but with a lot of stripes at the right.
On my RPI4 nothing.

I tried to install the touch plugin, but that failed.

gvolt · June 20, 2020, 8:00pm

Did you install the Buster Beta?

ewald_harmsen · June 21, 2020, 6:10am

Yes, I installed Buster as I also want domoticz installed which is not running on Jessie

gvolt · June 21, 2020, 7:47am

Buster is not an officially released version and the plugins you can download are not prepared for Buster. So it is a matter of luck if they work. The touch display plugin has already been reported by ashthespy and SuperBoby not to work. I just setup a system with the Buster beta image of ashthespy to make the touch display “Buster ready” but that may take some time.

gvolt · June 22, 2020, 9:48am

First of all: Many thanks to @ashthespy for his efforts on the change to Buster!

In order to test and prepare some plugins for Buster based Volumio I installed the Raspberry Pi Volumio-3.008-2020-05-23-pi image on a Pi 4 B.

With just a few adjustments the minidlna plugin works and will use the current minidlna version 1.2.1 which gives some additional options. The remotepi plugin installed flawlessly. Unfortunately I did not receive the required board yet so I could not check its functionality, but I do not expect problems.

Probably more important: I made the touch display plugin work.
It is currently using chromium-browser version 78.0.3904.108. All options are working properly on an original Raspberry 7" touchscreen. I will do some more tests including HDMI monitor now and report back.

ashthespy · June 22, 2020, 2:28pm

Thanks for the efforts @gvolt

Darmur · June 22, 2020, 2:35pm

Will the new version of the plugin work with buster only or with jessie too?
How to get it?

gvolt · June 22, 2020, 3:24pm

I am aiming for backwards compatibility I will do some further tests under Buster and then again with Jessie.

After that I consider to upload a preliminary zip package here first (if that’s possible). For now I would probably not do a PR on GitHub, because it has to be determined firstly if VOLUMIO_HARDWARE will stay on “pi” for Raspberry hardware or change to “raspberry” as proposed by @ashthespy - or has a decision already been made?

@ashthespy Would you prefer discussing plugin’s compatibilty with Buster in this thread or should we better open dedicated new threads.

ashthespy · June 22, 2020, 5:28pm

Would suggest to keep buster codebase in separate buster branch for now - and then merge it in when we actually release this

The pluginmanager only queries the plugin package manifest based on system arch - so right now the only way to have buster specific tweaks is to patch each plugin’s install.sh.

Not sure what is the best way forward - any suggestions? There were previously some suggestions to consolidate all plugins into one manifest, and instead add fields into the each plugin to portray what it supports. (arch, node engine, etc) Not sure if this is possible…

SuperBoby · June 23, 2020, 7:26am

Oh hey, I was thinking I should check on this thread, well I’m not disappointed Feel free to tag me when you release this so that I can join in on the tests.