# Banana Pi

From the manufacturer:

> Banana Pi is an open-source single-board computer. It can run Android 4.4, Ubuntu, Debian, Rasberry Pi Image, as well as the Cubieboard Image. It uses the AllWinner A20 SoC, and has 1GB DDR3 SDRAM

BananaPi is a minimalist computer built for the ARMv7-A architecture. More information about this project and technical specification.

With its Allwinner SoC, a Banana board usually runs the well documented Sunxi Linux kernel. So for any hardware or kernel related tasks, you should take a look at the Sunxi Wiki as well.

## Article preface

This article is strongly based on Raspberry Pi. Moreover this article is not meant to be an exhaustive setup guide and assumes that the reader has setup an Arch system before.

## Installation

### Using original ArchLinuxARM tarball

This method will install unmodified ArchLinuxARM armv7 basesystem to your Banana Pi, meaning you'll have the latest mainline kernel running.

#### Install basesystem to a SD card

Zero the beginning of the SD card:

    dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=1M count=8

Use fdisk to partition the SD card, and format it with `mkfs.ext4 -O ^metadata_csum,^64bit /dev/sdX1`.

Mount the ext4 filesystem, replacing `sda1` with the formatted partition:

    # mkdir mnt
    # mount /dev/sda1 mnt

Download and extract the root filesystem:

    # wget http://archlinuxarm.org/os/ArchLinuxARM-armv7-latest.tar.gz
    # bsdtar -xpf ArchLinuxARM-armv7-latest.tar.gz -C /mnt/

Create a file with the following boot script

    boot.cmd

    part uuid ${devtype} ${devnum}:${bootpart} uuid
    setenv bootargs console=${console} root=PARTUUID=${uuid} rw rootwait

    if load ${devtype} ${devnum}:${bootpart} ${kernel_addr_r} /boot/zImage; then
      if load ${devtype} ${devnum}:${bootpart} ${fdt_addr_r} /boot/dtbs/${fdtfile}; then
        if load ${devtype} ${devnum}:${bootpart} ${ramdisk_addr_r} /boot/initramfs-linux.img; then
          bootz ${kernel_addr_r} ${ramdisk_addr_r}:${filesize} ${fdt_addr_r};
        else
          bootz ${kernel_addr_r} - ${fdt_addr_r};
        fi;
      fi;
    fi

    if load ${devtype} ${devnum}:${bootpart} 0x48000000 /boot/uImage; then
      if load ${devtype} ${devnum}:${bootpart} 0x43000000 /boot/script.bin; then
        setenv bootm_boot_mode sec;
        bootm 0x48000000;
      fi;
    fi

Compile it and write it to the SD-card using the package uboot-tools

    # mkimage -A arm -O linux -T script -C none -a 0 -e 0 -n "BananPI boot script" -d boot.cmd /mnt/boot/boot.scr
    # umount /mnt

#### Compile and copy U-Boot bootloader

The next step is creating a u-boot image. Make sure you have arm-none-eabi-gcc, dtc, git and uboot-tools installed on your system. Then clone the u-boot source code and compile a Banana Pi image:

    $ git clone git://git.denx.de/u-boot.git
    $ cd u-boot
    $ make -j4 ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-none-eabi- Bananapi_defconfig
    $ make -j4 ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-none-eabi-

If everything went fine you should have an U-Boot image: u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin. Now dd the image to your sdcard, where /dev/sdX is your sdcard.

    # dd if=u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin of=/dev/sdX bs=1024 seek=8

#### Login / SSH

SSH login for root is disabled by default. Login with the default user account and use su.

Type | Username | Password
--- | --- | ---
Root | `root` | `root`
User | `alarm` | `alarm`

### Using prebuilt ArchLinuxARM images

#### Download the source

First make sure you download the right image for your board. Although you can install the image for the Pi on the Pro as well for example, it doesn't include features like wireless support out of the box.

- Arch image for Banana Pi
- Arch image for Banana Pro

You can get customized images as well, like this Arch / LXDE distribution for the Pi.

#### Installation

See the Banana Pi documentation. You mostly need to download the Arch Linux image, unpack it, and dump it to your SD card. If your SD card is larger than 4G, you might want to resize the filesystem with a tool like `parted` etc.

## Network

### SSH

Luckily the SSH daemon is already installed by default. The default login data is:

Type | Username | Password
--- | --- | ---
Root | `root` | `bananapi`
User | `bananapi` | `bananapi`

## X.org driver

The X.org driver for Banana Pi can be installed with the xf86-video-fbdev package.

## Troubleshooting

### Ethernet not working

In some cases, the Gbit ethernet connection is unstable or not working properly. It might help to limit the link speed to 100 Mbps using ethtool:

    ethtool -s eth0 speed 100 duplex half autoneg off

### HDMI 1080p resolution

There are two methods to achieve changing the resolution from the default 1280x720/60Hz to 1920x1080/60Hz.

#### Manually change the resolution

Yield all possible HDMI-resolutions:

    # cat /sys/class/graphics/fb0/modes

Change to desired resolution, e.g.:

    # echo "D:1920x1080p-60" > /sys/class/graphics/fb0/mode

#### Automatically set resolution on boot

The factual accuracy of this article or section is disputed.

Reason: Arch does not provide the sunxi-tools package in official repositories, so the `pacman -S ...` command in this section is probably specific to Arch Linux ARM. (Discuss in Talk:Banana Pi#)

This article or section needs language, wiki syntax or style improvements.

Reason: Does not comply with Help:Style. (Discuss in Talk:Banana Pi#)

You need to edit the kernel parameters in the `uEnv.txt` and provide the required parameters in `script.bin`. As the `script.bin` is a binary file, you need to use the Sunix tools, to convert it to a `script.fex` text file, make your changes and reconvert it to the `script.bin`. (see also Sunxi fex guide, Sunix kernel arguments and this thread).

    $ cd $HOME
    $ mkdir $HOME/boot
    $ sudo mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 $HOME/boot
    $ cp $HOME/boot/script.bin $HOME/script.bin
    $ pacman -S sunxi-tools
    $ bin2fex $HOME/script.bin $HOME/script.fex

Now edit the created `script.fex` with an editor of your choice. Find the `[disp_init]` section and change/add the following parameters:

    screen0_output_mode = 10
    fb0_framebuffer_num = 3
    fb0_scaler_mode_enable = 0
    sunxi_fb_mem_reserve = 32

Save the changes, run `fex2bin`, backup and replace the previous `script.bin`.

    $ $HOME/sunxi-tools/fex2bin $HOME/script.fex $HOME/script.bin
    $ sudo cp $HOME/boot/script.bin $HOME/boot/script.bin.backup
    $ sudo cp $HOME/script.bin $HOME/boot/script.bin

After creating a backup, you can change the `disp.screen0.output_mode` part of the `$HOME/boot/uEnv.txt` config with root privileges:

    disp.screen0.output_mode=10:1920x1080p60

Unmount the boot partition, reboot and you should have 1080p/60Hz.

#### Display turns off after idle and does not turn on again

If you also have an issue with the display turning off after some idle time and not turning on again, you might want to disable DPMS. Therefore add these X11 arguments to the proper configuration of your display manager.

    -s 0 -dpms

For example, if you use SLiM, you would modify in your `/etc/slim.conf`:

    xserver_arguments -nolisten tcp vt07 -s 0 -dpms

If for some reason the display still keeps turning off, e.g. when restarting your receiving device, you can turn it on again, by temporary change the resolution:

    # echo "D:1280x720p-60" > /sys/class/graphics/fb0/mode
    # echo "D:1920x1080p-60" > /sys/class/graphics/fb0/mode

## Benchmarks

Of course the following values might differ from yours, as they are dependend on the actual hardware connected (e.g. the HDD), but it might give you a feeling about the Banana Pi performances.

### SATA HDD

I connected two different external HDDs (3,5" with external energy source) via SATA-L to eSATA-I cable to the Banana Pi. My reading/writing results using dd (average of 3 run times):

| HDD 1 (2 TB) | HDD 2 (4 TB)
--- | --- | ---
Reading | 81.8 MB/s | 115.5 MB/s
Writing | 37.6 MB/s | 39,4 MB/s

### Network

Due to the Allwinner A20 SoC limitations the BPi is not able to use the full theoretical bandwidth of the Gigabit Ethernet NIC. Yet the BPi is able to use about 510 MBits per second.

Benchmarking was done using `iperf` (average of 3 run times). Client BPi and Server were connected to a Gigabit capable switch via Gigabit Ethernet.

## See also

- [1]

Category:

- ARM architecture

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