[BUG] Advise RK3566 Users That Switching Between Mainline and BSP Can Require Physical Battery Reset to Resolve Shutdown Issue

[spirit-in-exile]

This isn't an issue with ROCKNIX per se, but with making a potential caveat clear to users who intend to switch between Mainline and BSP OS cards:

I believe it is a known issue to the dev team that, when switching between a Mainline Linux OS and a BSP based OS on RK3566 devices, there seems to be a common glitch wherein something in power management gets bugged, and soft shutdowns result in restarts instead of shutting down, requiring a physical battery disconnect to resolve. Happened when switching between ROCKNIX and old JxxOS cards, ROCKNIX and ArkOS, or Batocera and ArkOS / JxxOS. Experienced on RG353M and x55. Seen other reports and acknowledgements in the ROCKNIX Discord.

In posts in other Discords and elsewhere, this is being mistaken by some users who switch OSes as being a malicious result, perhaps not knowing why this happens, or that this also happens with another Mainline distro?

Maybe a brief mention of the issue and its fix in the Wiki, perhaps in the install instructions for affected devices, would alleviate this confusion?

[sydarn]

Hi @spirit-in-exile, I have heard of this but I am not personally familiar with it. According to one person I know the problem can be alleviated by other means:

According to them, the preferred way is: Do a correct soft shutdown from ROCKNIX. Then also BSP based OSes will also shut down when asked. (Apparently this situation can appear when you have hard shutdown with the mainline kernel, but then switch to a BSP based kernel)

Another option may be (less certainty): On the BSP based kernel do a restart, instead of a shutdown, the restart cycle may give the correct behavior for subsequent shutdowns.

[spirit-in-exile]

Reinserting the ROCKNIX card and going thru the soft shutdown did allow for a proper shutdown from ROCKNIX but the next time I booted up using a BSP based OS the restart behavior reoccurred when attempting soft shutdown from the BSP OS.

I was able to correct the behavior on the BSP OS with a battery unplug/reset without too much hassle. I went this route before attempting a restart cycle from the BSP OS, so I cannot speak to its effectiveness. I will try the BSP restart cycle method next time I try ROCKNIX on the affected device.

[spirit-in-exile]

Just to add: A user in the RH Discord reports that a 30-sec power button hold resolved the behavior for them, while another user said this did not work in their case. Something else for an affected user to try?

At any rate, since this is not a ROCKNIX issue but an issue with switching back to BSP OSes from Mainline, I will mark it as Closed, but hope that some mention of potential hiccups is made elsewhere as a friendly warning to would-be OS card swappers 😉