Can the OPI5 be Configured to Run LCNC?

You don't have to connect the opi5 to a host pc. On the orange pi site there is a great manual to get started.

Basically you'll need the rt kernel from the image I mentioned, but because that image is made for a different rk3588 board it will not boot. So copy the kernel files to a working system and rename the files to the existing ones or rename the filenames in the bootloader.

There has been some developments in the meantime, there is since today an u-boot you could write to the spi flash that could boot extlinux right from an ext4 partition, so you won't need an extra boot partition. You could find this on the Armbian forum.
There is also a working UEFI firmware made for the OPI5 (even Windows 11 could be installed), but this is all in alpha state at the moment.
So in the near future it will be better/easier to set up.

I did try straight mounting the img file, using dd and balenaEtcher to write the img file to the SD card first before using the Upgrade tool. However the .img file for the rtlinux in the link had no recognizable partition table so there was no way to extract the files. I figured there was some special process the upgrade_tool was using to write to the SD card. Its possible that my download was corrupted, so I'll give it another go after I get home from work. Also could be that the img file is different from when you wrote the procedure. It looks like the image is dated 230306. Could that have broken the procedure?

That's correct, you can't dd write that image, that's why I wrote that there is a tool with the image to write it to the sd.
Now I understand a bit more how the system works I'll look for an easier way to create a system with that rt kernel when I've time for it. I hope in a few day.

Hi royka, it seems you did a great work with Orange PI 5. I'm struggling to make it working.. I'm not sure to understand the instruction you posted.
The image here drive.google.com/drive/folders/1tlyMGSqB...yWGSXBo6CVWPw7jkJ0sy
seems corrupted to me, I mean creating SD cart it doesn't boot and even opening the image with 7zip it fails.
Can you share a image where the RT patch is already installed? I did several tentatives with version 5.10.176, 5.10.109, no one was working. Thanks for help.
Bye
Andrea

I see they've now added another tool than before. You could extract the image rkdevtool. In the folder "Output/Android/image/" you'll see the images rootfs.img and boot.img.
If you're not able to make this work, I'll see if I could make a working image for the opi-5, but it could maybe take a few days because I'm busy at the moment.

To explain some things to hopefully make some things a bit clear:
Opi-5 has a spi-flash (/dev/mtdblock0) for the u-boot, the default u-boot from opi and armbian could only load the bootloader from an ext2 or fat16 partition.
The bootloader needs to be on the first partition. Balbes150 on the armbian forum however has just made some images with an u-boot that could also boot from usb and ext4 partitions.
The u-boot could also be written on the first "free" 16mb of a sd-card, when you've inserted a sd-card with u-boot it will load that u-boot.

I think at the moment the easiest way to install this, is to use the u-boot created by balbes150 for the opi-5. You could install this by dd this u-boot image from /usr/lib/linux-u-boot-current-orangepi5_23.02.3_arm64/rkspi_loader.img to mtdblock0. Or you could write his armbian image to a sd-card and boot from it, then type sudo armbian-install and choose to install the bootloader to MTD flash.
Then you could write the rootfs image to a sd/usb/nvme and mount and copy the files from boot.img to /boot. Then you'll need to copy the Opi-5 dtb. In extlinux.conf edit the locations to /boot and change the name for the dtb.
Edit the UUID in extlinux.conf and /etc/fstab.
The UUID you'll see with "blkid"

Thanks, I have now more input on what I have to investigate.

What still not fully clear to me is:

1) the above procedure basically is important to install OS on internal memory if I'm not wrong
2) I'm successfully working with all OS available (armbian, ubuntu, debian..) booting from SD card, as I use to do in Rpi.. so I can imagine is more fast with internal memory etc.. but as first step I simply would like to have LinuxCNC working on my Orange PI5 as my RPI4 today does, so my issue is to patch with RT the OS
3) why is so important follow steps you suggested when I'm not able to patch the OS or even find a IMG where RT is already installed? For example I have now running a SD RebornOS but I don't have any image patched RT.. I don't feel installing ubuntu or debian helps.. What I have lost?

Sorry but I'm not so confident with Linux..


Thanks