Fix Raspberry Pi 4 Model B support / Upgrade to Raspbian Buster

[vpetersson]

It has become evident that the support for Pi 4 is broken. I'm going to use this ticket to track the remaining efforts to get this across the finishing line. It's a large and complex task unfortunately with many moving parts.

The status below reflects the current status of a manual installation on Raspbian Buster (Lite) on a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B.

Update for Experimental branch

• Raspberry Pi 3 Model B
  • Assets
    • Web
    • Images
    • Video
  • Balena
  • Native
  • Splash Screen
• Raspberry Pi 4 Model B
  • Assets
    • Web
    • Images
    • Video
  • Balena
  • Native
  • Splash Screen

This task is becoming ginormous. I've created a new milestone to track this instead.
https://github.com/Screenly/screenly-ose/milestone/12

Here are the outstanding issues on Development branch:

- [x] Installation (development branch)
- [x] Web interface
- [x] Display of webpages
- [x] Display of images
- [x] Display of videos
~~ - Unclear if h265 works at the moment~~
- [ ] Splash screen isn't working
~~ - This appears to be a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B issue only. Moving the SD card to a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B brings back the splash screen back just fine.
~~ - I've created this forum post to try to troubleshoot the issue

Tasks once QC/QA has been performed:

• Create new disk image (this pull request needs to be merged before)
• Merge master to production

[bf8392]

Display of webpages was not working on my pi 4 (not properly rendered)

[vpetersson]

Not sure what you're testing with @bd8392 but it works fine for me. I have Hacker News loaded on the screen in my lab without issues. If you're talking about some kind of complex page, then that is out of the scope of this issue. This is purely about getting the Pi 4 to work, not about extending the functionality of the browser.

[bf8392]

Not sure what you're testing with @bd8392 but it works fine for me. I have Hacker News loaded on the screen in my lab without issues. If you're talking about some kind of complex page, then that is out of the scope of this issue. This is purely about getting the Pi 4 to work, not about extending the functionality of the browser.

Oh okay I tested two wordpress-sites....both were not working but Google worked...

[vpetersson]

Just a note on the splash screen. As I mentioned to @ealmonte32 here, it's currently unclear if the issue is related to the Pi 4 or Buster.

[bf8392]

Can you deacitvate overscan in boot.txt by default image? Because on 99% of screens it produces unwanted black-bars...

[vpetersson]

No, this is about splash screen. It has nothing to do with overscan.

[bf8392]

No, this is about splash screen. It has nothing to do with overscan.

OHHH okay I'm sorry =). The Black bars really afffect just splash...Just tested one =)

[ealmonte32]

No, this is about splash screen. It has nothing to do with overscan.

OHHH okay I'm sorry =). The Black bars really afffect just splash...Just tested one =)

You can do this yourself manually, just go into the /boot/config.txt file and make the changes there. Read over the comments on that file or even on raspberry pi website, and you will see it is very easy to configure overscan and adjust for your tv/monitor. You can even do it when you have the SD card inserted in your computer, you can edit the config.txt file directly from there.

[ealmonte32]

@vpetersson
This is regarding the splash screen issue.
I found these instructions 1 and 2, and without plymouth or themes, splash screen is working by using framebuffer image viewer fbi only.

Raspbian Buster Lite on RPi4.

The splashscreen.service file:

pi@pi4blk:~ $ cat /etc/systemd/system/splashscreen.service 
[Unit]
Description=Screenly splash screen
DefaultDependencies=no
After=local-fs.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/fbi -d /dev/fb0 --noverbose -a /home/pi/screenlylogo.png
StandardInput=tty
StandardOutput=tty

[Install]
WantedBy=sysinit.target

The /boot/cmdline.txt file:

pi@pi4blk:~ $ cat /boot/cmdline.txt 
console=serial0,115200 console=tty1 root=PARTUUID=53c6e06f-02 rootfstype=ext4 elevator=deadline fsck.repair=yes rootwait logo.nologo quiet

[vpetersson]

So we used to use fbi in the early days but we moved away from it because the upstream Raspbian adopted plymouth. Thus I'm not sure it would make sense to move back.

[shaqaruden]

From my research using fbi seems to be the common method for Raspbian Lite

[vpetersson]

Yes, this is true. That's why we started using it. However, it has a number of drawbacks over Plymouth.

[ealmonte32]

So we used to use fbi in the early days but we moved away from it because the upstream Raspbian adopted plymouth. Thus I'm not sure it would make sense to move back.

Gotcha, so we keep plymouth.
I started troubleshooting, so far I can see all of the default themes showing splash screen after installing plymouth and plymouth-themes , then running sudo plymouth-set-default-theme -R themename , as you know to see the list we use plymouth-set-default-theme -l .

I will continue troubleshooting

[ealmonte32]

Ok so it is working for me:

pi@pi4blk:~ $ sudo plymouth-set-default-theme -R screenly
pi@pi4blk:~ $ sudo update-initramfs -u
pi@pi4blk:~ $ sudo reboot

..

I compared ansible splashscreen files like screenly.plymouth and screenly.script, and they are identical...

These are the packages I installed during testing:

pi@pi4blk:~ $ dpkg -l | grep -i "plymouth"
ii  libplymouth4:armhf             0.9.4-1.1+rpt2                      armhf        graphical boot animation and logger - shared libraries
ii  plymouth                       0.9.4-1.1+rpt2                      armhf        boot animation, logger and I/O multiplexer
ii  plymouth-label                 0.9.4-1.1+rpt2                      armhf        boot animation, logger and I/O multiplexer - label control
ii  plymouth-theme-breeze          5.14.5-1                            armhf        Breeze theme for Plymouth
ii  plymouth-theme-hamara          1.0                                 all          boot animation, logger and I/O multiplexer - Hamara theme
ii  plymouth-themes                0.9.4-1.1+rpt2                      armhf        boot animation, logger and I/O multiplexer - themes

..

This is the /boot/cmdline.txt

pi@pi4blk:~ $ sudo cat /boot/cmdline.txt 
console=serial0,115200 console=tty1 root=PARTUUID=53c6e06f-02 rootfstype=ext4 elevator=deadline fsck.repair=yes rootwait logo.nologo quiet plymouth.ignore-serial-consoles loglevel=0 splash

Screenshot with test image as logo: