Allwinner News – Root Exploit in Linux and Fake Pine A64 Boards

There’s been a lot of buzz about a root exploit in Linux 3.4 kernel for Allwinner H3/H83T SoCs found by linux-sunxi & armbian developers in the last few days. Since the kernel for H3 / H83T is stuck to 3.4, and not always updated on the vast majority of hardware platforms, it’s quite likely there are many ways to breach into such systems, and even the majority of Android devices are not secure, not only the ones powered by Allwinner. So I did not really pay attention at first, but it went viral with  stories reporting a hidden backdoor, and hitting to ill-intent. But is that really the case? That’s the code from github, now removed from the master branch, but still in A83T branch. It’s now super easy to gain root access by simply running one command which works for any users:

That’s obviously pretty bad, but is […]

Orange Pi Lite Quad Core ARM Linux Development Board with WiFi is Now Available for $12

Shenzhen Xunlong Launched Orange Pi One Allwinner H3 board with Ethernet for $9.99 a couple of months ago, and the company has now started to sell Orange Pi Lite featuring a WiFi module, two full-size USB ports, an IR receiver, and an on-board microphone for $12 + shipping. Orange Pi Lite specifications: SoC – Allwinner H3 quad core Cortex A7 @ 1.2 GHz with an ARM Mali-400MP2 GPU up to 600 MHz System Memory – 512 MB DDR3 Storage – micro SD card slot up to 64GB Video & Audio Output – HDMI with CEC support Audio Input – Built-in microphone (not part of the listed specs, but clearly on the board) Connectivity – 802.11 b/g/n WiFi via Realtek WiFi module with u.FL connector USB – 2x USB 2.0 host ports, 1x micro USB OTG port Camera – CSI Interface Expansions – 40-pin Raspberry Pi compatible header Debugging – 3-pin […]

Chromium OS for SBC Aims to Turn Popular Development Boards into Chromeboxes

A team of developer has come together last December in order to provide Chromium OS, the open source project which Chrome OS is based on, to single board computers such as Raspberry Pi boards. So far, they’ve provided Chromium OS images for Raspberry Pi 2 & 3, but more boards should be supported in the future. The latest version 0.5 release is said to be usable, but WiFi, Netflix, and HTML5 video are not working. The installation procedure is standard. You simply need to download and uncompress the archive (e.g. SamKinison_v0.5_Pi3_16GB.tar.xz), and dump it on a micro SD card with Win32DiskImage or dd. They have released different images for Raspberry Pi 2 & 3, and different SD card sizes (2GB and 16GB). Chromium OS is using 12 partitions, so that may be why they don’t provide a single image and resize the file system during the first time. You can […]

Orange Pi Plus 2E Development Board with Gigabit Ethernet, 2GB RAM & 16GB eMMC Flash to Sell for $35

Shenzhen Xunlong has been pretty busy churning out new boards over the last few months and years, but is still not active on the software side. However these days, it’s not that bad thanks to Armbian community which provides Debian based images, and supports Allwinner H3 boards pretty well. The company is now about to launch Orange Pi Plus 2E, based on Orange Pi Plus 2 which comes with 2GB RAM, but at a lower cost, by removing SATA, the need for a USB hub chip, and the camera connector, while still managing to upgrade the eMMC flash capacity to 16 GB. Orange Pi Plus 2E specifications with differences in bold or stricken through: SoC – Allwinner H3 quad core Cortex A7 @ 1.3 GHz with ARM Mali-400MP2 GPU up to 600 MHz System Memory – 2GB DDR3 Storage – 16GB eMMC, micro SD card slot, SATA interface (via a […]

Android and Linux Benchmarks on MiQi Development Board

MiQi is an upcoming low cost development board powered by Rockchip RK3288 SoC that will sell for $35 with 1GB RAM and 8GB storage, and $69 for the version with a  2GB / 32GB combination. Since Rockchip RK3288 was launched in 2014, most available benchmarks were made on Android 4.4, and since MiQi is the first low cost board based on the processor, other RK3288 based board such as FireFly have not been that popular. So I’ve decided to run updated benchmarks in MiQi both in Android 5.1 and Linux (Lubuntu 14.04), which was easy since a dual boot image is pre-installed. But since I received an early sample without heatsink, I found a spare heatsink added some thermal paste and placed it on top of the processor and partially on RAM and eMMC flash. MiQi Board Android 5.1 Benchmarks I ran Antutu both using 1080p60 and 2160p30 video output, […]

Software Matters, or How SinoVoIP Crippled Banana Pi M2+ Performance.

The most common way to use a development board is to simply go to the manufacturer website, and download the images from there. They are the ones who made the hardware after all, and they should be the most knowledgeable about their platform. But it may not always be true as tkaiser found out when he ran some Phoronix benchmarks on Banana Pi M2+ (aka BPI M2+) board with SinoVoIP (the manufacturer), Armbian, and Raspbian images. The results speak for themselves. The last three columns are what is of interest here, and in some benchmark Banana Pi M2+ is about 3 times slower with SinoVoIP image compared to Armbian, while with others the performance is quite similar. John The Ripper password cracker benchmark shows a massive difference between distributions… … while FLAC audio encoding not so much. So what’s going on here? First Jon the Ripper is a multi-threaded applications, […]

Low Cost Development Boards Linux Benchmarks – Raspberry Pi vs Banana Pi vs Orange Pi vs ODROID

LoveRPi, a distributor and reseller of electronic boards and accessories, has run benchmarks from the Phoronix Suite on several low cost development boards: $46* Banana Pi M2  based on Allwinner A31s quad core Cortex A7 processor @ 1.0 GHz with Armbian (Ubuntu 14.04) $74* Banana Pi M3 based on Allwinner A83T octa core Cortex A7 processor @ 1.80 GHz with Debian 8.3 $32 ODROID-C1+ based on Amlogic S805 quad core Cortex A5 processor @ 1.5 GHz with Ubuntu 14.04 $40 ODROID-C2 based on Amlogic S905 quad core Cortex A53 processor @ 2.0 GHz with Ubuntu 16.04 $74 ODROID-XU4 based on Samsung Exynos 5422 quad core ARM Cortex-A15 @ 2.0GHz quad core ARM Cortex-A7 @ 1.4GHz with Ubuntu 15.10 $10 Orange Pi One based Allwinner H3 Cortex A7 processor @ 1.2 GHz with Armbiam (Debian 8.3) $15 Orange Pi PC based on Allwinner H3 Cortex A7 processor @ 1.3 GHz with […]

NanoPi M1 Allwinner H3 Development Board with HDMI, CVBS, Ethernet and 3 USB Ports Sells for $11 (Sort of)

FriendlyARM has been very busy since the beginning of the year, as they’ve already released NanoPi 2 Fire, NanoPC-T2, and NanoPi-M2 boards, all based on Samsung S5P4418 processor so far in 2016. But they’ve not stopped, as the company has now launched NanoPi M1 board powered by Allwinner H3 processor with a similar form factor as NanoPi-M2, similar features as Orange Pi One, except they added two extra USB ports, an AV port with composite video and stereo audio, an on-board microphone, and an IR receiver. NanoPi-M2 board specifications (highlights show improvements or differences over Orange Pi One): SoC – Allwinner H3 quad core Cortex A7 @ 1.2 GHz with an ARM Mali-400MP2 GPU up to 600 MHz System Memory – 512 MB DDR3 (1GB as option) Storage – micro SD card slot Video & Audio Output – HDMI and 3.5mm jack for CVBS (composite + stereo audio) Connectivity -10/100M […]

EDATEC Raspberry Pi 5 fanless case