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Deepin @ Milk-V Meles Test Report

System Version

20250122

Status

GOOD

Last Update

2025-04-05

RevyOS Meles Version Test Report

Test Environment

Operating System Information

Warning

This image is not officially compatible with the Milk-V Meles; manual modification of the dtb environment variable is required as in the steps below.

HDMI audio is not working.

Hardware Information

  • Milk-V Meles 4GB/8GB/16GB
  • eMMC module > 16GB
  • A USB A to C cable
  • Optional: A USB-TTL Debugger (Flash U-Boot with SPL to SPI NOR Flash)
  • Optional: Keyboard, monitor, mouse (for graphical interface testing)

Installation Steps

Milk-V Meles’ Bootloader is stored inside the onboard SPI NOR Flash, which can be upgraded using cct tool provided by yoctools. This is different from Lichee Pi 4A which uses the same TH1520 SoC.

You’ll need UART serial connection to flash the firmware.

Note: please do not try to use fastboot flash uboot method to upgrade U-Boot firmware, which is the same as the LPi4A. This method will NOT flash U-Boot to SPI NOR Flash which is loaded on boot by default. Thus you must use cct to flash the firmware.

Known issue: some AMD boards might not pick up Meles in fastboot mode.

Workaround: try connect Meles to a external USB Hub rather than the USB ports directly provided by the motherboard/PCH.

Use cct to flash Bootloader into SPI NOR Flash

cct is the image flashing tool provided by yoctools, which requires Python 3.6~3.11 and Linux.

If your distro has already upgrade to Python 3.12+, then you’ll need to manually install Python 3.11, create a Python virtual environment with it.

Since Python 3.12 and PEP 668, you can not use pip to install packages globally.

And yoctools still depends on some packages which were already deprecated/replaced in Python 3.12+, thus you must create a Python venv in order to use yoctools.

Take Arch Linux as an example. By the time this article was written (2025.01), the default Python is Python 3.13, directly install yoctools will not work. You should install Python 3.11 from AUR and creating a virtual environment using this version in order to flash the firmware.

Prepare Python 3.11 environment:

paru python311
sudo pacman -S python-virtualenv
virtualenv -p 3.11 meles
source meles/bin/activate
pip install yoctools
cd meles/bin

For those distros still staying at Python 3.6~3.11, you can install yoctools directly with pip. Python venv is not required.

Download the firmware:

wget https://mirror.iscas.ac.cn/revyos/extra/images/meles/20240720/iw-single-line.bin
wget https://cdimage.deepin.com/RISC-V/preview-20240815-riscv64/uboot-th1520-revyos.zip
unzip uboot-th1520-revyos.zip

Note: choose the correct version depending on your board’s RAM:

  • 4GB -> uboot-th1520-revyos/light_milkv_meles_singlerank/u-boot-with-spl.bin
  • 8GB -> uboot-th1520-revyos/light_milkv_meles_dualrank/u-boot-with-spl.bin
  • 16GB -> uboot-th1520-revyos/light_milkv_meles_16g/u-boot-with-spl.bin

The iw-single-line.bin can be used with all RAM versions.

Connect the board and your PC with UART debugger. DO NOT run tools like minicom or tio which will occupy the serial port.

Hold the recovery button and THEN power on the board.

The recovery button is located at the edge of the board near the GPIO pins, while the eMMC boot button is on the inner side - Don’t be confused! For details please refer to: https://milkv.io/docs/meles/hardware/meles-main-board

sudo ./cct list
sudo ./cct download -d ram0 -f iw-single-line.bin -v checksum -r
sudo ./cct download -d qspi0 -f uboot-th1520-revyos/light_milkv_meles_16g/u-boot-with-spl.bin -v checksum -r -t 1200

Wait for the flashing progress to complete, then power off the board, hold the recovery button and reconnect it to PC.

Flashing Image using fastboot onto the Development Board

Check connection status:

$ lsusb | grep T-HEAD
Bus 001 Device 045: ID 2345:7654 T-HEAD USB download gadget

Next, execute the following commands to download, extract and flash the images to your board’s eMMC.

If fastboot doesn’t pick up the board or you encounter flashing issues, check the device connection and try running fastboot as a privileged user (i.e. sudo). Doing so is usually required under Linux since the default USB VID/PID is not in the default udev rules.

wget https://ci.deepin.com/repo/deepin/deepin-ports/cdimage/20250122/riscv64/deepin-25-beige-preview-riscv64-th1520-20250122-113934.tar.xz
tar xvf deepin-25-beige-preview-riscv64-th1520-20250122-113934.tar.xz
sudo fastboot flash ram uboot-th1520-revyos/light_milkv_meles_16g/u-boot-with-spl.bin
sudo fastboot reboot; sleep 3
sudo fastboot flash boot deepin-th1520-riscv64-25-desktop-installer.boot.ext4
sudo fastboot flash root deepin-th1520-riscv64-25-desktop-installer.root.ext4

After the flashing process, reset the board and you’re good to go.

![WARNING] The following steps is REQUIRED for successful login via GUI with this image.

Interrupt the booting process at Hit any key to stop autoboot, and run the following in the U-Boot console:

env set fdtfile thead/th1520-milkv-meles-16g.dtb; env save; reset

Logging into the System

Logging into the system via serial port or graphical interface.

Complete the OOBE as guided, and login with the set user and password after a couple of minutes.

Expected Results

The system should boot up normally and allow login through the serial port.

HDMI output works and the user can login to the desktop environment.

Actual Results

The system should boot up normally and allow login through the serial port.

HDMI output works (except audio) and the user can login to the desktop environment.

Boot Log

See https://github.com/QA-Team-lo/oscompare/blob/main/Deepin/Meles/README.md for our report on its desktop experience.

Test Criteria

Successful: The actual result matches the expected result.

Failed: The actual result does not match the expected result.

Test Conclusion

Test successful.

Source: Support Matrix