Support for Rock PI-4b

[Mostafa Saleh]

On Fri, Sep 26, 2025 at 4:02 PM Mostafa Saleh <smostafa at google.com> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Sep 26, 2025 at 04:28:48PM +0200, Sjoerd Simons wrote:
> > On Fri, 2025-09-26 at 15:07 +0100, Mostafa Saleh wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > I am trying to run Linux[1] on my Rock PI-4b, which I see is supported in
> > > the kernel in “rk3399-rock-pi-4b.dts”.
> > >
> > > However, compiling “defconfig” (ARM64) and flashing my Image doesn’t
> > > work,
> > > It just hangs before any console (even with earlycon), I tried to also use
> > > some of the vendor configs with no luck.
> > > I did some research and found that [2], which indicates that the upstream
> > > support has been broken for some years?
> >
> > We've got the Rock 4b in our automated testing lab as part of kernelci and other
> > efforts. Upstream works just fine on those boards, so it's likely an issue in
> > your setup.
> >
> > See e.g https://lava.collabora.dev/scheduler/job/19978558#L525 for a recent
> > upstream kernel boot.
>
> Thanks a lot for the quick response!
>
> I can see some differences between this log and my setup.
>
> 1- My uboot seems ancient
>    U-Boot 2017.09-00026-g2431fa34678 Compared to U-Boot 2024.07-rc4
>
> 2- The board model in this log is not 4b as mine
>    Model: Radxa ROCK Pi 4A while mine shows Model: Radxa ROCK Pi 4B
>
> 3- I am using LLVM not GCC (I don't think that matters though)
>
> 4- I am using MMC to boot and not TFTP
>
> I will try to look more into the differences, and update this thread in
> case I was successful.
>

Update on this, in case someone have the same issue.

After updating u-boot the same issue persisted.
However, I was able to boot with eMMC instead of an SD card.
Which is strange, as I could boot an older kernel on an SD card with no problem.

Thanks,
Mostafa

> Thanks,
> Mostafa
>
> >
> > Regards,
> >   Sjoerd
> >
> >
> > >
> > > Has anyone tried to flash a recent kernel successfully on it? or any
> > > tips are greatly appreciated.
> > > Otherwise, maybe it can be removed to avoid misleading other developers
> > > (I got this board to do some upstream kernel development on)
> > >
> > > [1] base: 4ff71af020ae59ae2d83b174646fc2ad9fcd4dc4
> > > [2] https://wiki.radxa.com/Rockpi4/dev/kernel-mainline
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > > Mostafa
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Linux-rockchip mailing list
> > > Linux-rockchip at lists.infradead.org
> > > http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-rockchip