# Pine64 Notes

Some useful links

- [Pinouts](http://joey.hazlett.us/pine64/Pine%20A64%20Pin%20Assignment%20160119.pdf)
- [Battery Status/Level Script (3.10.x kernel only)](https://gist.github.com/pfeerick/05e5715733f00dcf303636c80abff598)


## Misc Notes

- Set ```console=serial``` in ```/boot/armbianEnv.txt``` to put *all* boot output on the serial console.
- If an emmc is installed in a sopine and blank, boot of armbian on an sd card will fail
- The sopine carrier board appears to have a 1.35mm barrel jack. Link to usb wire: [Amazon](https://amazon.com/gp/product/B01N2UILL7)
- The emmc, a64 and other large, non axp803 chips can take a 15mmx15mm heat sink. This one is good: [Mouser](https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/984-ATS-52150G-C1-R0)
- The pine64 3d printed cases need a little extra material removed around the micro-usb area to facilitate the sopine carrier board dc barrel jack connector
- Button top batteries probably will *NOT* work with the 18650 battery pack, use flat tops. Only 1/2 ish of the battery top will be exposed to contacts on the positive side of the pack
- PPS is broken in 4.19 kernels as of 2019/04/12 ; 4.14.x may be required for reliable PPS ; this is only needed if you want to build a stratum 0 ntp server
- As of 4.19.34 the ```/sys/class/power_supply``` device nodes appear to be populated, the existing 3.10.x kernel scripts for showing battery status can be adapted for the new device node names
- This is a good battery status script [https://gist.github.com/pfeerick/05e5715733f00dcf303636c80abff598](https://gist.github.com/pfeerick/05e5715733f00dcf303636c80abff598)
- The axp803 appears to charge the battery pack even with 2 cores of the CPU at max, persistent load, adding persistent usb load on a usb disk will "net 0" the charger. You'll want a semi-idle setup for the batteries to charge over time with a sopine.
- The Samsung 3000mah 18650 batteries are a good fit for the battery pack sold by pine64.org and have good capacity and amp ratings.
- The top USB port on the sopine is a *host* port

## ZFS Notes

zfs is broken until 0.7.13, see the below links for info on how to set this up
  - https://github.com/zfsonlinux/spl/issues/715
  - https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/wiki/Custom-Packages

Rough outline of installation

``` bash

wget sources
follow spl instructions (may warn/error about empty dkms module, this is OK)
follow zfs instructions (may warn/error about empty dkms module, this is OK)
cd zfs-0.7.13 && make deb-utils && for file in *.deb; do echo $file; done
Run sudo gdebi -q --non-interactive $file for each in the list that makes sense to install (omit test and dracut packages)
dkms build spl/0.7.13
dkms install spl/0.7.13
dkms build zfs/0.7.13
dkms install zfs/0.7.13
systemctl enable zfs-import-cache zfs-import.target zfs-mount zfs-share zfs.target

```

## Monitor For Common Problems

For some reason the Pine64 and SOPine can have problems with "clock jumps" (ie. jumping forward 95 years) due to kernel bugs. They can also have major IO stalls when writing heavily to micro-sd cards, so much so the board becomes basically non-responsive for many minutes (upwards of 10).

The below Monit configuration and setup will monitor for both events and reboot the board in the event either happens. Currently this seems to be the least-worst option for recovery.

### Monit Install / Initial Config

``` bash

apt install monit
nano -w /etc/monit/monitrc
    set mail-format { from: user@domain.tld }
    set alert admin@domain.tld
    set mailserver mail.domain.tld port 587
               username "user@domain.tld" password "apassword"
               using tls
    set httpd port 2812 and
        allow admin:apassword
        allow guest:guest readonly
        #with ssl {            # enable SSL/TLS and set path to server certificate
        #    pemfile: /etc/ssl/certs/monit.pem
        #}

```


### Monit Monitor for large clock jumps forward

```/usr/local/bin/check_clock_jump.py```

``` python

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import datetime
import sys

FORMAT_STRING = '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'
MAX_TIME_JUMP = datetime.timedelta(days=90)
CACHE_FILE = '/var/cache/last_time.check'

current_time = datetime.datetime.now()
last_time = current_time

try:
    with open(CACHE_FILE, 'r') as f:
        last_time = datetime.datetime.strptime(f.read().strip(), FORMAT_STRING)
except FileNotFoundError:
    pass

timedelta = current_time - last_time
if timedelta > MAX_TIME_JUMP:
    sys.exit(1)

with open(CACHE_FILE, 'w') as f:
    f.write(current_time.strftime(FORMAT_STRING))

sys.exit(0)

```

``` bash

chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/check_clock_jump.py
cat > /etc/monit/conf.d/check_clock_jump.conf <<EOF
 check program check_clock_jump with path /usr/local/bin/check_clock_jump.py
       if status != 0 
       then exec "/bin/systemctl reboot"
        as uid "root" and gid "root"
EOF

systemctl restart monit

```

### Monit monitor for ```card_busy_detect status: 0xe00``` kernel errors

``` bash

cat > /etc/monit/conf.d/card_busy_detect.conf <<EOF
# From docs: On startup the read position is set to the end of the file and Monit continues to scan to the end of the file on each cycle.
check file kernel path /var/log/kern.log
if content = ".*card_busy_detect status: 0xe00.*" 
    then exec "/bin/systemctl reboot"
        as uid "root" and gid "root"
EOF

systemctl restart monit

```