How did you install it? I’ve tested with the cm4 on the old panel and it works. The fact that you didn’t even have keyboard says that there was another problem like the overlays weren’t loaded. Did you update from an existing install?
yes, i installed akrex-kernel from the https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ak-rex/ClockworkPi-apt/main/debian apt repo, in an existing installation.
i’m supposing that doing this broke the overlay like you said - unfortunate that the package doesn’t fix this itself. is there a manual fixup i can do?
ok, to leave a breadcrumb for anyone else that hits this, in /boot/firmware/config.txt,
dtoverlay=clockworkpi-uconsole
needs to become:
dtoverlay=clockworkpi-uconsole-cm4
for cm4 uconsoles (or replace cm4 with cm5, etc).
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The kernel install was supposed to do that. I made sure to test it several times. I wonder why it’s working for some others
Is everything working now?
yes, with this the display and keyboard are working just as they did with the old kernel, using akrex-kernel 7.1.3-v8-16k+ from apt.
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I think I found why the installer didn’t do this automatically.
The kernel install was supposed to do that. I made sure to test it several times. I wonder why it’s working for some others.
In akrex-kernel’s postinst, the config.txt migration is guarded by this condition:
if [ -d "/boot/firmware/config.txt" ]; then
sed -i 's/^\(#\?\)dtoverlay=clockworkpi-uconsole$/\1dtoverlay=clockworkpi-uconsole-cm4/' /boot/firmware/config.txt
-d tests for a directory, but config.txt is a file. The condition is therefore always false and the sed never runs — on any machine.
Why it appears to work for some people: anyone who installed from a recent image already has dtoverlay=clockworkpi-uconsole-cm4 in their config.txt and never needed the migration. Only users whose config.txt predates the rename are affected, which makes it look intermittent.
Why it breaks now specifically: 7.1.3 dropped clockworkpi-uconsole.dtbo (only the -cm4 variant ships now), while preinst still runs rm -rf /boot/firmware/overlays/*.dtb*. So the old overlay is deleted and never replaced, and config.txt points at something that no longer exists.
Worth noting for anyone hitting this: the device still boots normally and is reachable over SSH — only the panel stays dark. It looks far worse than it is, so it’s worth trying to ping/SSH the device before assuming it’s bricked.
The fix is one character:
if [ -f "/boot/firmware/config.txt" ]; then
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missing overlays break a bit more than just the display, the keyboard and other usb ports also won’t work, but without a display that’s hard to notice
thanks for catching that, will be fixed soon.
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One of my apps is not running since update to Kernel 7.1.3, it gives the following error when calling AppArmor. Is this something you can add to the kernel, or is this something that needs to come from mainline?
Error: “Kernel needs AppArmor 2.4 compatibility patch”
I’ll take a look at it tonight, if it’s something I can fix I’ll recompile tonight.
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nice one, but did the panel actually light up? thats what op specifically needs to see
@Rex, could you please enable the upstream OpenVPN driver in both arm64 kernel configurations?
CONFIG_OVPN=m
I am using:
akrex-kernel 7.1.3-v8+
OpenVPN 2.7.x
The driver is currently disabled:
$ grep -E 'CONFIG_OVPN' /boot/config-7.1.3-v8+
# CONFIG_OVPN is not set
OpenVPN 2.7 uses the upstream ovpn kernel module for DCO support. Without it, OpenVPN still works, but only with the userspace data channel.
It would be useful to enable it for both the v8+ and v8-16k+ builds, if there are no compatibility issues.
Will do it’ll be enabled on next update.
Did you update to it from apt or manually install it? Does you pi4 line in the config.txt have -cm4 at the end of the uConsole line?
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Hi Rex. Just want to thank you for all the work you do for the community. I just upgraded my uConsole with a CM5 Lite. Without your help, I couldn’t have got it working myself.
Mahalo!
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