Hi just learned about this os, forever been using armbian but wanted to test unfortunately, none of the available images work, tried trixie, bookworm and forky, Im using orange pi 5, downloaded orange pi5B image and it did start, but has some usb issues, didnt want anything to burn so only tested a few seconds, thing is it actually got to login screen (opi5B image) with opi5 actual image screen never showed anything, something tries to boot ( as i can see lights blinking for drive and ethernet) but no screen / display feedback, let it a while and not discoverable on router or pihole so im guessing it cuts short before boot, wondering if someone can point me to an old working image of if someone at dietpi would be so kind as to fix or regress download link to older working image, thank you in advance, btw is there a discord?
I just tested our Orange Pi 5 image, and it boots fine here.
The only regression I recognized, as we switched to mainline Linux recently, is that the vertical USB 2.0 port is not in host mode, since the overlay has a different name in mainline and vendor kernel (EDIT: fixed with dietpi-installer: Orange Pi 5/5B: enable vertical USB 2.0 port · MichaIng/DietPi@a0b4f24 · GitHub). The other two USB 3.0 ports work, as well as Ethernet.
Since you say LEDs are giving signals, obviously it is booting to a certain degree. We’d need serial console output to know why/where it stops. I thought about whether it boot via SPI, and the SPI bootloader might be outdated, not setting fdtfile or so, but then it wouldn’t boot the 5B image either. The only difference between those two images is the bootloader, hence the device tree it picks based on fdtfile.
And generally, there is no point to try all tree images per SBC (Bookworm, Trixie, Forky), since they all ship with the same kernel and bootloader.
nope, we just have Github and the Forum.
Only ethernet light blinking, no sdcard reads / write lights, red light next to it permanently on, no blinks, (yes i did say they where blinking above, upon further inspection they are not) tried newer builds of Armbian and same behaviour (main reason why im hunting for another os as I like trying stuff every so often) so if forking from armbian we have the culprit, have no uart hardware to share more info as can only say for what visually happens, yes it was the vertical usb that seemed to not be work on the 5B image, witch I would expect as they are mostly the same but not completely the same board, well thanks for answering hopefully it will magically fix itself on some future image so I can test Dietpi
Yes this affected and is now fixed for both upcoming images, 5 and 5B. Affects the separate USB Type-C port likewise, they share the same controller. You can solved this yourself:
G_CONFIG_INJECT 'overlays=' 'overlays=usb-c-host' /boot/dietpiEnv.txt
resp. changing “dwc3-host” to “usb-c-host” there.
As the 5B image boots, you could try to update the SPI bootloader. First of all, assure that the correct device tree is used:
G_CONFIG_INJECT 'fdtfile=' 'fdtfile=rockchip/rk3588s-orangepi-5.dtb' /boot/dietpiEnv.txt
reboot
This might already fix most things. Then install the correct bootloader package:
apt install linux-u-boot-orangepi5-current
Then you can flash the SPI bootloader via dietpi-config > Advanced Options > Update SPI bootloader. Maybe it helps, e.g. try with a dedicated SD card, whether a DietPi or Armbian Orange Pi 5 image now boots.
I wonder what the difference can be: The Orange Pi 5B U-Boot package contains vendor U-Boot, the Orange Pi 5 image mainline U-Boot. Wouldn’t be the first SBC which does SD vs eMMC vs SPI prioritization based on mainline vs vendor U-Boot.
Awesome thanks, usb working now, originally apt could not find pi5 uboot so will paste chatgpt answer that made it possible
"Yes. Since you already removed the wrong Orange Pi 5B U-Boot, do not reboot yet.
I checked DietPi’s repository directly. The correct package does exist:
linux-u-boot-orangepi5-current
but your APT configuration is not indexing the orangepi5 package repository. DietPi’s Orange Pi 5 repository contains the package, including current versions. (DietPi)
Install the correct Orange Pi 5 U-Boot directly
Your system is currently:
-
Orange Pi 5
-
rk3588s-orangepi-5.dtb -
kernel
6.18.37-current-rockchip64 -
SPI
/dev/mtdblock0= 16 MB
Download the correct DietPi package:
cd /tmp
wget https://dietpi.com/downloads/binaries/linux-u-boot-orangepi5-current.deb
Then verify it:
dpkg-deb -I /tmp/linux-u-boot-orangepi5-current.deb | grep -E 'Package|Version|Architecture'
It should say:
Package: linux-u-boot-orangepi5-current
Architecture: arm64
Then install it:
sudo dpkg -i /tmp/linux-u-boot-orangepi5-current.deb
Then check where DietPi installed the U-Boot files
Run:
dpkg -L linux-u-boot-orangepi5-current
Do not flash SPI manually yet.
The package is specifically for the Orange Pi 5, while the package you had before was explicitly orangepi5b. DietPi publishes separate U-Boot packages for the 5, 5B, 5 Plus, 5 Max, etc. (DietPi)
After installing it, paste the output of:
dpkg -L linux-u-boot-orangepi5-current
I’ll give you the exact command to put that Orange Pi 5 U-Boot into your 16-MB SPI, without touching your NVMe or SD card." then dietpi-config do it at your own risk
Oh yeah absolutely right, I missed that. For completeness do this:
echo 80 > /etc/.dietpi_hw_model_identifier
/boot/dietpi/func/dietpi-obtain_hw_model
/boot/dietpi/func/dietpi-set_software apt-mirror dietpi
apt update
The first 2 commands change the hardware ID so that DietPi scripts see it as Orange Pi 5 instead of 5B. The 3rd command then adds the correct APT component for our repo, which does contain the linux-u-boot-orangepi5-current package, instead of the linux-u-boot-orangepi5b-current one.
Then you can apt install linux-u-boot-orangepi5-current. But manually downloading and installing it as ChatGPT suggested works as well. The URL and commands are correct.
EDIT: Instead of dpkg -i, you would need to use apt install /tmp/linux-*.deb. The bootloader packages conflict with each other, and dpkg cannot resolve that, while apt offers you to have the orangepi5b one uninstalled, to proceed.
Final update
So was able to do recommends, since I was inside (after launching opi5b image) proceeded as recommended to do stuff… and UPDATE SPI, as I had never had issues with board in the past never had updated it, after spi update, board runs original dietpi for opi5 image, so we have a winner, will be testing as originally planned, thanks for the help it was all useful (usb fix, fixed usb and the other stuff all did what they where supposed to) and finally got it working as intended. Image was always indeed good, my spi just was too old. Thanks again 
Okay great! My guess is that the board attempts to boot from media with vendor bootloader first. So when you use the original SPI bootloader, and an image with mainline U-Boot, it boots from SPI. The original SPI bootloader might set a wrong device tree path, or none at all, so boot fails. This is something we can check when someone else stumbles above this.
Since the Orange Pi 5B image still ships with vendor U-Boot, it works. That Orange Pi 5 images switched to mainline U-Boot for all kernel branches was one of the reasons we needed to split off separate Orange Pi 5B images: orangepi5: drop vendor uboot · MichaIng/build@e5b845f · GitHub