Exactly my thinking. The kernel was upgraded to 5.4.20, using @shell’s config. That’s the one that’s set as the default kernel. The optional kernel is 5.5.90. Possibly rolling back to the stock 5.3.6 kernel, including the older driver could fix this.
That said, the kernel portion of the Lima driver has been (I believe) standardised since 5.2.
https://linux-sunxi.org/Mali
This makes me believe it’s not from the drivers used in the kernel, but something else.
The Mesa installed was using this method, mainly using your words of advice @r043v.
Does GameShell Actually Use FBTurbo? - #65 by javelinface
It’s using Mesa 20.0, ie this version:
Mesa 20.0 Released With Big Improvements For Intel, AMD Radeon Vulkan/OpenGL - Phoronix
This was installed over an updated Debian 10 Buster build.
I will certainly try downloading and updating to the beta Lima 1.1 drivers, but without a board that exhibits the symptoms, I have no idea if it would be effective or not.
Here’s some resources:
I’m wondering, has the flickering only started since the latest 200318/200319 builds? @guu - I remember talking to you about the reasons for including a uImage.5.4.6 on the stock 0.5 image boot partition, despite using 5.3.6. You said it was to do with incompatibility with some boards. Was this flickering the kind of incompatibility you were talking about?
@shell - while making your latest config for the 5.4.20 kernel (the one that I’m using by default) did you experience any problems re: flickering, going between changes? I’m finding it perfect, but again it sounds like there’s an inconsistency between boards. I believe the variants include either a R16 or R16J. You can check which one you have, looking at the physical board. It is writing on one of the larger chips.
A poll would be a good gauge on how people are experiencing the latest changes.
Describe your experience
- I’m using a R16 board.
- I’m using a R16J board.
- I’m experiencing flickering at startup.
- The flickering is only during the boot splash screens.
- The flickering stays indefinitely.
- The flickering stops after a minute.
- I’m not experiencing flickering at all.
@Larry_Covington - thanks for getting back. You’re using EXACTLY the same card as me. Can I confirm, you said in the other thread that everything worked fine on another card. Was this correct? And if so, what kind of card was it? This is exciting and baffling!
@1115 Thanks for letting me know which bird revision you’ve got. Ahh you have a R16J! Both of mine are just R16! I think we’re getting closer to solving the problem, meaning that I may need to release 2 versions. As mentioned above I don’t think we need to roll back FHD entire Mesa libraries, but just the kernel. Here are some instructions to return to the stock 5.3.6 kernel from a stock clockwork OS 0.5. This means you will lose the splash screen.
Download this: Kernels.zip - Google Drive
From memory there are two directories: one with the stock 0.5 kernel files, and one with the stock deot v1 kernel files.
Copy the contents of the stock 0.5 kernel files to /home/cpi/
Mount the boot partition with sudo mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /boot
Move the files with
sudo mv uImage /boot
sudo mv sun8i-r16-clockworkpi-cpi3.dtb /boot
sudo mv sun8i-r16-clockworkpi-cpi3-hdmi.dtb /bootReboot with sudo reboot
Please let me know if it works! If it does, I will make a new build including this as a kernel option.
Just saying, if anyone wants to swap boards, ie your R16J for my R16, I would be happy to do so, for the furthering of development. You get a working board; I get something to test on to help the community. It’s a win win scenario! Let me know!
According to @Veronica , the R16 and R16J are meant to be the same; just different batches.
Perhaps they aren’t as similar as we thought?
@yong and @Veronica - is there any way you can help me out, specifically checking to see if a gameshell that I acquire from you is a R16J board?