1. Operating System

The OrangePi website has downloadable images for Ubuntu and Debian versions of the operating system. The installation instructions on the OrangePi webite will instruct you on how to create a microSD card with the operating system, and how to boot the first time.

Both of these builds have a bug in that the alsactl program does not function properly.

When the OS boots the first time, it goes into installation mode and works fine. But when the system boots a 2nd time, it tries execute /usr/sbin/alsactl restore and locks up.

To solve this problem, make sure that during the 1st boot up, you disable the alsa-restore that is part of the boot process:

    sudo systemctl mask alsa-restore

If, for some reason, you missed that opportunity and your board won't boot, try this: remove the microSD card from the OrangePi, mount it on a Linux computer and:

    rm <mount-point>/usr/sbin/alsactl          # execute this on a Linux desktop, with the sdcard mounted

After a sync and umount, you can replace the microSD card in the OPi-i96 and reboot. It should proceed through the boot process and be available to log into.

[Thanks to DD1984 for the inspiration]