Why the VIM3 Pro shows ~3GB system memory?

Technical Support
1

Hi,
I just bought a VIM3 Pro board, for start up, inserted the SD that flashed with the image “VIM3_Ubuntu-xfce-bionic_Linux-4.9_arm64_SD-USB_V20190813”, and went to the “Keys Mode”, the Ubuntu system was boot up successfully, while I met some issues when try to check the hardware info of the board:

  1. khadas@Khadas:/dev$ free -m
    total used free shared buff/cache available
    Mem: 3370 382 2548 10 439 2942
    Swap: 1023 0 1023

    installed the lshw, and the result of running it:
    …
    *-memory
    description: System memory
    physical id: 8
    size: 3370MiB

    So why it is only about 3GB system memory on the VIM3 Pro board? While the specification 
    (https://www.khadas.com/product-page/vim3) shows 4GB.
 
    FYI, after installed dmidecode for further check it:
             khadas@Khadas:/dev$ dmidecode
             # dmidecode 3.1
             Scanning /dev/mem for entry point.
             /dev/mem: No such file or directory

     So is there anything wrong with the Linux Kernel of the VIM3's Ubuntu image?
  1. The said “5.0 TOPS NPU” maps to what device under /dev?

Thanks!

2

You use the SD image and use Keys mode to bootup, so the u-boot is from Android. And there is a patch to fix the memory issue, but not applied for Android yet, we will fix this issue in next release.

By the way, this issue in ubuntu u-boot has been fixed. So you can try to erase the Android in eMMC and boot from SD card directly, so that you can get the correct memory size in ubuntu.

In u-boot command line, erase the eMMC:

kvim3# store init 3
kvim3# reset

Or you can try the Ubuntu eMMC image, the memory size is also correct.

Thanks.

3

Thanks for your clarification!

Another issue that I found is that it always that “Failed to fetch https://dl.khadas.com/repos/vim3/dists/bionic/InRelease Could not connect to dl.khadas.com:443 (54.197.197.165), connection timed out”
while trying “apt update”, please check you server on 54.197.197.165 does work or not?

4

Hello @Tuotu2019

The OTA is still under testing…

But I checked on my side, it works

root@Khadas:~# apt-get update
Hit:1 http://ports.ubuntu.com bionic InRelease                        
Get:2 https://dl.khadas.com/repos/vim3 bionic InRelease [2,196 B]              
Get:5 https://dl.khadas.com/repos/vim3 bionic/main arm64 Packages [4,438 B]
Get:7 https://dl.khadas.com/repos/vim3 bionic/main armhf Packages [1,299 B]
Get:3 http://ports.ubuntu.com bionic-security InRelease [88.7 kB]
Get:4 http://ports.ubuntu.com bionic-updates InRelease [88.7 kB]
Get:6 http://ports.ubuntu.com bionic-backports InRelease [74.6 kB]
Get:8 http://ports.ubuntu.com bionic-security/main armhf Packages [394 kB]
Get:9 http://ports.ubuntu.com bionic-security/main arm64 Packages [425 kB]
Get:10 http://ports.ubuntu.com bionic-security/universe armhf Packages [605 kB]
Get:11 http://ports.ubuntu.com bionic-security/universe arm64 Packages [670 kB]
Get:12 http://ports.ubuntu.com bionic-updates/main armhf Packages [680 kB]
Get:13 http://ports.ubuntu.com bionic-updates/main arm64 Packages [714 kB]
Get:14 http://ports.ubuntu.com bionic-updates/restricted arm64 Packages [906 B]
Get:15 http://ports.ubuntu.com bionic-updates/restricted armhf Packages [10.4 kB]
Get:16 http://ports.ubuntu.com bionic-updates/universe arm64 Packages [1,144 kB]
Get:17 http://ports.ubuntu.com bionic-updates/universe armhf Packages [1,072 kB]
Get:18 http://ports.ubuntu.com bionic-updates/multiverse arm64 Packages [2,685 B]
Get:19 http://ports.ubuntu.com bionic-updates/multiverse armhf Packages [3,810 B]
Get:20 http://ports.ubuntu.com bionic-backports/universe armhf Packages [4,211 B]
Get:21 http://ports.ubuntu.com bionic-backports/universe arm64 Packages [4,211 B]
Fetched 5,991 kB in 6s (1,043 kB/s)                           
Reading package lists... Done

You can also try to disalbe the Khadas repo.

$ sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/fenix.list
$ sudo apt-get update
5

Any timeline or release date for this?

Do you maintain a list of thinks working on Ubuntu image for Vim3 ?

6

Hello @Spikerguy

You can find the patch here:

7

OK, got it, thank you!

8

I can confirm that the issue is not fixed as I’ve 3451MB of available RAM using VIM3_Ubuntu-server-bionic_Linux-4.9_arm64_EMMC_V20190813, however, with CoreELEC and their’s custom bootloader, I get 3696MB of available RAM.

Since I’m going to use Armbian, I’ve asked @balbes150 or input regarding this as when using Armbian_5.94_Aml-g12_Debian_buster_dev_5.3.0-rc5_20190823.img, total available RAM is even lower - 3354MB (Armbian for Amlogic S9xxx kernel 5.x - Page 43 - General Chat - Armbian Community Forums)

9

The source code is fixed, but this fix is not in image V20190813

10

That makes sense. balbes reports that the newest kernel is using the missing RAM for video, but I’m not sure if it reserves as much as almost 350MB of RAM…

Update:
Updating Android to VIM3_Pie_V190809 increased available RAM to 3696MB :slight_smile: