Update to uConsole

Hi All. receiveshd my new console a couple of days ago. I would like to get any updates available. tried to use ‘Preferences: Recommended Software’ and got ‘Error updating data - cannot refresh cache whilst offline.’ The web browsers works of and shows I am online. Any ideas. Thanks

The stock distros are all out of date if you have a CM4 here are some of the updated community distros: PostmarketOS, Arch, Debian Bookworm, Ubuntu 22.04, ParrotOS Security & Home, RetroPie
With the community distros you’ll get updated kernels, newer software, and some bug fixes.

Rex. I would like to use Ubuntu on this device. would you recommend a larger sd card and can you make a usb stick to install from. thanks

Depends on how you use it but I think 64gb is the minimum you should use. You can’t boot from the USB you need to just flash the sd card.

Actually you should be able to boot from USB. At least on devterm it works and if i remember right, devterm and uConsole have same mainboard. I have Ubuntu on USB too, never booted it from SD card. But all this is only applicable to CM4

The V4 Mainboard can boot from USB but the V5 can’t, all the uConsoles have V5 Mainboards.

I only know the one from the devterm, but why should the uConsole mainboard not be able to boot from USB? All it need to do is to provide USB to the outside. Doesn’t have the uConsole mainboard USB?

the only thing that changed from v4 to v5 was the usb system now the usb won’t start up till the kernel is loading. It has to do that in the v4 on shutdown a CM3 wouldn’t fully power off draining the battery. only on the CM3 so not we can’t have usb booting anymore.

My recommendation is to spend ~$30 on an SD card.

$3 is too little. $300 is too much.

I’m currently switching between two of the Amazon Basics 256 GB cards for PostmarketOS and RetroPie, but any relatively modern card from a brand you’ve heard of should be okay.

The SD card slot operates at USB 2.0 speeds (~43 MB/s) so you don’t get much benefit out of the high end photography cards. You just want a card that’s reasonably sized and won’t burst into flames when you write to it.

eMMC on the CM4 also seems to have a bottleneck around ~43 MB/s. As does anything connected to the USB 2.0 ports.

I generally buy the endurance type cards for these devices, they seem to last really well. Also used them in my dash cam, was going through regular cards every 6 months, now lasting over a year (might be 3 years on the one in my dash cam).