2022.01.00

This release includes major changes compared previous Freedom-U-SDK (FUSDK) release. The notable changes include:

• stress-ng was updated to V0.13.10.
• nbd gained a new dependency on libnl to support netlink interface. This is preferred interface compared to ioctl. In additional to that netlink interface resolves IO errors during shutdown with systemd. --force/-f option for poweroff is not longer required if NBD rootfs is used.
• opensbi was updated to 5d025eb2353550eadbd2fa9b8083a92fe9b07bd9. This includes SiFive HiFive Unmatched reset fix (WDT needs to be disabled before reset is triggered).

Known Issues

1. Newer OE/Yocto buildtools could cause build issues for nspr-native package. Use -r yocto-3.2_M2 -t 20200729 as described in README file if you are using OE/Yocto buildtools. See Yocto bug #14112
2. We have found an issue with SanDisk "A2" microSD cards and thus do not recommend them.
3. If the desktop is unresponsive/frozen (i.e. the keyboard doesn't work or/and the mouse doesn't work, the clock is not updating, etc.) try systemctl restart display-manager from the serial console.
4. If the keyboard or/and mouse is not responsive/frozen check if the input device is available under libinput list-devices and if events are registered by libinput debug-events in the console. If events are registered try systemctl restart display-manager from the serial console. Otherwise manually unplug and plug the keyboard or/and mouse.
5. If your desktop is very slow check Mesa OpenGL rendered (glxinfo | grep OpenGL). If it is OpenGL renderer string: llvmpipe restart the system. In rare cases Mesa might fallback to llvmpipe, but restart usually resolved the issue.
6. If NBD rootfs is used NetworkManager will not handle eth0 interface. This leads to resolv.conf not being generated (DNS resolving doesn't work), and system time is not synchronized via NTP. The Internet connection itself is working.

2021.12.00

This release includes major changes compared previous Freedom-U-SDK (FUSDK) release. The notable changes include:

• Layers (openembedded-core, meta-openemedded, meta-riscv, meta-clang) and bitbake were updated to their latest commit.
• demo-coreip-cli-initramfs was moved to meta-sifive layer from freedom-u-sdk layer. meta-sifive layer contains MACHINE configuration files that directly refer to the initramfs recipe.
• python3-tensorflow-lite-demo was moved to freedom-u-sdk layer from meta-sifive layer. These only contain demo files.
• stress-ng was updated to v0.13.08.
• nbd was updated to 2.23.
• vmtouch package was added. It allows to load/check/remove files into/from memory cache.
• All demo-coreip-* disk images were updated to include vmtouch package.

Known Issues

1. Newer OE/Yocto buildtools could cause build issues for nspr-native package. Use -r yocto-3.2_M2 -t 20200729 as described in README file if you are using OE/Yocto buildtools. See Yocto bug #14112
2. We have found an issue with SanDisk "A2" microSD cards and thus do not recommend them.
3. If the desktop is unresponsive/frozen (i.e. the keyboard doesn't work or/and the mouse doesn't work, the clock is not updating, etc.) try systemctl restart display-manager from the serial console.
4. If the keyboard or/and mouse is not responsive/frozen check if the input device is available under libinput list-devices and if events are registered by libinput debug-events in the console. If events are registered try systemctl restart display-manager from the serial console. Otherwise manually unplug and plug the keyboard or/and mouse.
5. If your desktop is very slow check Mesa OpenGL rendered (glxinfo | grep OpenGL). If it is OpenGL renderer string: llvmpipe restart the system. In rare cases Mesa might fallback to llvmpipe, but restart usually resolved the issue.
6. If NBD rootfs is used NetworkManager will not handle eth0 interface. This leads to resolv.conf not being generated (DNS resolving doesn't work), and system time is not synchronized via NTP. The Internet connection itself is working.
7. If NBD rootfs is used NBD client will be terminated too early during systemd shutdown procedure leading to a few IO errors. This happens after the first sync for all filesystems and block devices. Systemd sends SIGSTOP to all processes unconditionally and that's enough for NBD connection to be terminated. To avoid this issue one should need to use --force/-f with poweroff and similar commands. From systemctl man page: If combined with --force, shutdown of all running services is skipped, however all processes are killed and all file systems are unmounted or mounted read-only, immediately followed by the powering off.

2021.11.00

This release includes major changes compared previous Freedom-U-SDK (FUSDK) release. The notable changes include:

• libunwind was updated to the final v.1.6.0 release (the first one to support riscv64).
• opensbi was updated to 22d556d26809775e2ac19251e5df9075434ee66e commit. This allows SiFive HiFive Unmatched to use SBI SRST (System Reset) extension in the kernel to reset the board. This is only a partial reset, but from the user point of view it will acts as a normal reset. The output rails will go down and up at OTP voltages. The other DA9063 settings will not be affected.
  • A better approach is being tested by the community using RTC wake-up.
• xserver-xorg was updated to 21.1.1.
• xf86-video-ati now includes a backport from upstream to fix compilation errors with a new xserver-xorg.
• demo-coreip-cli-initramfs new recipe was introduced. This initramfs stage includes NBD (Network Block Device) client and support for NBD rootfs. This is experimental feature and is currently available only for SiFive HiFive Unmatched board.
  • To use this new feature open extlinux.conf configuration file in /boot partition and change append line to append ip=dhcp root=/dev/nbd0 rw nbdroot=<server_ip_address>:<export_name> nbdport=10809 console=ttySIF0,115200 earlycon Note that depending on the NBD server used and it's configuration <export_name> might be ignored by the NBD server.
  • nbdkit could be used for the NBD server. The example: sudo nbdkit -f --verbose --threads 128 --filter=cow --filter=partition --filter=xz file demo-coreip-xfce4-unmatched-<..>.rootfs.wic.xz partition=4. This would expose the 4th partition from a compressed disk image with a cow (copy-on-write) layer on top to make it writable. Note that in this particular case <export_name> value is ignored by nbdkit server. If performance is important uncompress disk image before sharing it via NBD server.
• kernel-devsrc package was removed from the disk images. The package does not work wih the kernel version used by FUSDK.
• chronyc package was added as CLI front-end for chrony daemon.
• dtc-staticdev package was removed as it is empty.
• systemd PACKAGECONFIG was modified to remove resolved and nss-resolve. These functions are convered by NetworkManager.
• GDB was updated to 11.1.
• u-boot was rebased to v2021.10.
• linux-mainline_5.13 was updated with two additional patches:
  • SBI SRST support for SiFive HiFive Unmatched reset support.
  • irqchip/sifive-plic fix backport. There was case there only the first interrupt was handled and following interrupts were not delivered.

Known Issues

1. Newer OE/Yocto buildtools could cause build issues for nspr-native package. Use -r yocto-3.2_M2 -t 20200729 as described in README file if you are using OE/Yocto buildtools. See Yocto bug #14112
2. We have found an issue with SanDisk "A2" microSD cards and thus do not recommend them.
3. If the desktop is unresponsive/frozen (i.e. the keyboard doesn't work or/and the mouse doesn't work, the clock is not updating, etc.) try systemctl restart display-manager from the serial console.
4. If the keyboard or/and mouse is not responsive/frozen check if the input device is available under libinput list-devices and if events are registered by libinput debug-events in the console. If events are registered try systemctl restart display-manager from the serial console. Otherwise manually unplug and plug the keyboard or/and mouse.
5. If your desktop is very slow check Mesa OpenGL rendered (glxinfo | grep OpenGL). If it is OpenGL renderer string: llvmpipe restart the system. In rare cases Mesa might fallback to llvmpipe, but restart usually resolved the issue.
6. If NBD rootfs is used NetworkManager will not handle eth0 interface. This leads to resolv.conf not being generated (DNS resolving doesn't work), and system time is not synchronized via NTP. The Internet connection itself is working.
7. If NBD rootfs is used NBD client will be terminated too early during systemd shutdown procedure leading to a few IO errors. This happens after the first sync for all filesystems and block devices.

2021.10.00

This release includes major changes compared previous Freedom U SDK (FUSDK) release. The notable changes include:

• meta-sifive was converted to a smaller layer containing the most important packages (e.g. OpenSBI, Linux kernel, U-Boot, etc). All other packages related to building a demo distribution are now in freedom-u-sdk repository (i.e. layer).
• Layers (openembedded-core, meta-openemedded, meta-riscv, meta-clang) were updated to their latest revisions.
• stress-ng was updated to 0.13.51.
• linux-mainline_5.13 (Linux kernel) was updated to v5.13.19.
• libunwind_git was updated to 97d74d396264720e86d4b8455216f4a7b06a54af commit.
• qemu RVV, RVB and Zfh patches were removed for now. These extensions are being finalized (currently in a public review stage). The patches as-is do not apply to the latest stable QEMU version available in openembedded-core layer. The next stable QEMU version should have some of these available out-of-the-box.
• qemuriscv64_b, qemuriscv64_b_zfh and qemuriscv64_v machines are not available (see above).
• demo-coreip-xfce4 has VAAPI disabled for now as OE attempts to install packages with *initial* in their name, which should be excluded from the dependency list, but are not.
• nghttp2 sub-packages client and server were removed from the main recipe as the content of them is empty.

Known Issues

1. Newer OE/Yocto buildtools could cause build issues for nspr-native package. Use -r yocto-3.2_M2 -t 20200729 as described in README file if you are using OE/Yocto buildtools. See Yocto bug #14112
2. We have found an issue with SanDisk "A2" microSD cards and thus do not recommend them.
3. If the desktop is unresponsive/frozen (i.e. the keyboard doesn't work or/and the mouse doesn't work, the clock is not updating, etc.) try systemctl restart display-manager from the serial console.
4. If the keyboard or/and mouse is not responsive/frozen check if the input device is available under libinput list-devices and if events are registered by libinput debug-events in the console. If events are registered try systemctl restart display-manager from the serial console. Otherwise manually unplug and plug the keyboard or/and mouse.
5. If your desktop is very slow check Mesa OpenGL rendered (glxinfo | grep OpenGL). If it is OpenGL renderer string: llvmpipe restart the system. In rare cases Mesa might fallback to llvmpipe, but restart usually resolved the issue.
6. Restart is not implemented in software for HiFive Unmatched.

2021.09.00

This release includes major changes compared previous Freedom U SDK (FUSDK). The main changes include:

• Layers (openembedded-core, meta-openemedded, meta-riscv, meta-clang, meta-tensorflow-lite) were updated to their latest revisions.
• libinput 1.17.0 was removed from meta-sifive layer. Newer version is now available from openenmedded-core layer.
• mesa was updated to 21.2.1.
• stress-ng was updated to 0.13.01.
• linux-mainline_5.13 (Linux kernel) was updated to v5.13.17.
• u-boot was refactored and converted to bbappend instead of a modified copy from openembedded-core layer.
• tune-riscv.inc was introduced in meta-sifive layer to provide two new options (sifive-5-series and sifive-7-series) which adds -mtune=sifive-{5,7}-series compiler options for all the packages.
• Unmatched machine DEFAULTTUNE is now changed from riscv64 to sifive-7-series. This setting can be changed in the local configuration file if the user wants to revert back to riscv64.
• opensbi was updated to a git version (commit bd355213b).
• glibc was updated to 2.34.

Known Issues

1. Newer OE/Yocto buildtools could cause build issues for nspr-native package. Use -r yocto-3.2_M2 -t 20200729 as described in README file if you are using OE/Yocto buildtools. See Yocto bug #14112
2. We have found an issue with SanDisk "A2" microSD cards and thus do not recommend them.
3. If the desktop is unresponsive/frozen (i.e. the keyboard doesn't work or/and the mouse doesn't work, the clock is not updating, etc.) try systemctl restart display-manager from the serial console.
4. If the keyboard or/and mouse is not responsive/frozen check if the input device is available under libinput list-devices and if events are registered by libinput debug-events in the console. If events are registered try systemctl restart display-manager from the serial console. Otherwise manually unplug and plug the keyboard or/and mouse.
5. If your desktop is very slow check Mesa OpenGL rendered (glxinfo | grep OpenGL). If it is OpenGL renderer string: llvmpipe restart the system. In rare cases Mesa might fallback to llvmpipe, but restart usually resolved the issue.
6. Restart is not implemented in software for HiFive Unmatched.

2021.08.00

This release includes major changes compared previous Freedom U SDK (FUSDK). The main changes include:

• Layers (openembedded-core, meta-openemedded, meta-riscv, meta-clang, meta-tensorflow-lite) were updated to their latest revisions.
• Updated all files to a new override syntax ("_" separator character was replaced by ":"). There is no way to support old and new syntax at the same time.
• xf86-video-amdgpu was updated to 21.0.0.
• mesa was updated to 21.1.5.
• binutils was updated to 2.37.
• root password in the SiFive disk images is now stored in SHA512 encrypted form (the password itself did not change).
• demo-coreip-xfce4 disk image gained new packages:
  • xf86-video-modesetting
  • xf86-video-fbdev
  • perf-python
• demo-coreip-cli disk image gained new packages:
  • perf-python
• stress-ng was updated to 0.13.0.
• util-linux sub-package doc gained support for alternatives to fix man page conflicts at install time.
• libunwind was enabled for riscv64. The recipe is set to non-release git commit 1527061fc5ce7cfd3911ac7ee8af04fdd4393477. The official support will land in v1.6.0 release (v1.6.0-rc1 is already available on their GitHub repository).
• perf PACKAGECONFIG was chaged to add dwarf, libunwind, manpages, jvmti, and cap options.
• linux-mainline_5.13 was rebased on top of v5.13.9 kernel and gained compatibility with qemuriscv64, qemuriscv64_b, qemuriscv64_b_zfh, and qemuriscv64_v machines.
• Kernel defconfig was modified to include VirtIO options required for QEMU machines:

CONFIG_VIRTIO_BLK=y
CONFIG_SCSI_VIRTIO=y
CONFIG_VIRTIO_NET=y
CONFIG_VIRTIO_CONSOLE=y
CONFIG_VIRTIO=y
CONFIG_VIRTIO_MENU=y
CONFIG_VIRTIO_PCI=y
CONFIG_VIRTIO_PCI_LEGACY=y
CONFIG_VIRTIO_BALLOON=y
CONFIG_VIRTIO_MEM=y
CONFIG_VIRTIO_INPUT=y
CONFIG_VIRTIO_MMIO=y
# CONFIG_VIRTIO_MMIO_CMDLINE_DEVICES is not set
CONFIG_VIRTIO_FS=y
CONFIG_CRYPTO_DEV_VIRTIO=y
CONFIG_NET_9P_VIRTIO=y
CONFIG_HW_RANDOM_VIRTIO=y
CONFIG_DRM_VIRTIO_GPU=y
CONFIG_RPMSG=y
# CONFIG_RPMSG_CHAR is not set
CONFIG_RPMSG_VIRTIO=y

• All QEMU machines (qemuriscv64, qemuriscv64_b, qemuriscv64_b_zfh, and qemuriscv64_v) now have PREFERRED_PROVIDER_virtual/kernel set to linux-mainline.

Known Issues

1. Newer OE/Yocto buildtools could cause build issues for nspr-native package. Use -r yocto-3.2_M2 -t 20200729 as described in README file if you are using OE/Yocto buildtools. See Yocto bug #14112
2. We have found an issue with SanDisk "A2" microSD cards and thus do not recommend them.
3. If the desktop is unresponsive/frozen (i.e. the keyboard doesn't work or/and the mouse doesn't work, the clock is not updating, etc.) try systemctl restart display-manager from the serial console.
4. If the keyboard or/and mouse is not responsive/frozen check if the input device is available under libinput list-devices and if events are registered by libinput debug-events in the console. If events are registered try the command from #6 above otherwise manually unplug and plug the keyboard or/and mouse.
5. If your desktop is very slow check Mesa OpenGL rendered (glxinfo | grep OpenGL). If it is OpenGL renderer string: llvmpipe restart the system. In rare cases Mesa might fallback to llvmpipe, but restart usually resolved the issue.
6. Restart is not implemented in software for HiFive Unmatched.

2021.07.00

This release includes major changes compared previous Freedom U SDK (FUSDK). The main changes include:

• Layers (openembedded-core, meta-openemedded, meta-riscv, meta-clang, meta-tensorflow-lite) were updated to their latest revisions.
• stress-ng was updated to 0.12.12.
• rng-tools was rebased to 6.13.
• nfs-utils was rebased to 2.5.4.
• man-pages was rebased to 5.12.
• linux-mainline_5.12 was rebased to v5.12.18.
• u-boot was rebased to v2021.07 (major change):
  • Upstream U-Boot v2021.07 release is the first one to provide the initial (not full) Unmatched support.
• Added missing unmatched-udev-rules and unmatched-systemd-units packages into demo-coreip-cli disk image.
• Changed UBOOT_MACHINE for Unmatched machine to sifive_unmatched_defconfig (the new upstream name).
• Changed UBOOT_MACHINE for Unleashed machine to sifive_unleashed_defconfig (the new upstream name).
• qemu-native, qemu-system-native, qemu gained pmem PACKAGECONFIG option to solve compilation issues on some host system configurations.
• gdb now includes backport of symtab/27999 bug fix for riscv64.
• udev-extraconf was added back.

Known Issues

1. Newer OE/Yocto buildtools could cause build issues for nspr-native package. Use -r yocto-3.2_M2 -t 20200729 as described in README file if you are using OE/Yocto buildtools. See Yocto bug #14112
2. We have found an issue with SanDisk "A2" microSD cards and thus do not recommend them.
3. If the desktop is unresponsive/frozen (i.e. the keyboard doesn't work or/and the mouse doesn't work, the clock is not updating, etc.) try systemctl restart display-manager from the serial console.
4. If the keyboard or/and mouse is not responsive/frozen check if the input device is available under libinput list-devices and if events are registered by libinput debug-events in the console. If events are registered try the command from #6 above otherwise manually unplug and plug the keyboard or/and mouse.
5. If your desktop is very slow check Mesa OpenGL rendered (glxinfo | grep OpenGL). If it is OpenGL renderer string: llvmpipe restart the system. In rare cases Mesa might fallback to llvmpipe, but restart usually resolved the issue.
6. Restart is not implemented in software for HiFive Unmatched.

2021.06.00

This release includes major changes compared previous Freedom U SDK (FUSDK). The main changes include:

• Layers (openembedded-core, meta-openemedded, meta-riscv, meta-clang) were updated to their latest revisions.
• stress-ng was updated to 0.12.10.
• mesa was updated to 21.1.2.
• udev-extraconf was removed.
  • Issues were reported if the system was booted from microSD or NVMe, and USB storage device was auto-mounted. This resulted in random errors related to storage. Manual mounting works fine. This is a temporary removal until the issue can be understood.
• Enabled spell PACKAGECONFIG for mousepad to avoid warnings at the build time.
• opensbi_0.9 from openembedded-core layer was added to BBMASK to avoid BitBake parsing issues.
• New QEMU MACHINE targets were added (see below). These MACHINE options do not currently affect how packages or/and disk images are built. The toolchain might not provide support for these extensions yet. Currently this only allows to boot into QEMU virt machine with particular extensions (not ratified) enabled.
  • qemuriscv64_b - RISCV-V 64-bit (RV64GC) with B extension (not ratified yet) for QEMU virt machine.
  • qemuriscv64_b_zfh- RISC-V-64-bit (RV64GC) with B and Zfh extensions (both not ratified yet) for QEMU virt machine.
  • qemuriscv64_v- RISC-V 64-bit (RV64GC) with V extension (not ratified yet) for QEMU virt machine.

Known Issues

1. Newer OE/Yocto buildtools could cause build issues for nspr-native package. Use -r yocto-3.2_M2 -t 20200729 as described in README file if you are using OE/Yocto buildtools. See Yocto bug #14112
2. We have found an issue with SanDisk "A2" microSD cards and thus do not recommend them.
3. If the desktop is unresponsive/frozen (i.e. the keyboard doesn't work or/and the mouse doesn't work, the clock is not updating, etc.) try systemctl restart display-manager from the serial console.
4. If the keyboard or/and mouse is not responsive/frozen check if the input device is available under libinput list-devices and if events are registered by libinput debug-events in the console. If events are registered try the command from #6 above otherwise manually unplug and plug the keyboard or/and mouse.
5. If your desktop is very slow check Mesa OpenGL rendered (glxinfo | grep OpenGL). If it is OpenGL renderer string: llvmpipe restart the system. In rare cases Mesa might fallback to llvmpipe, but restart usually resolved the issue.
6. Restart is not implemented in software for HiFive Unmatched.

2021.05.00

This release includes major changes compared previous Freedom U SDK (FUSDK). The main changes include:

• Layers (openembedded-core, meta-openemedded, meta-riscv, meta-clang) were updated to their latest revisions.
• meta-clang layer was updated and brought back LLVM/Clang 12.0.0.
• lmsensors now have supports for tmp451 temperature sensor on Unmatched.
• The critical temperature (tmp451) for Unmatched was changed to 85C.
• meta-filesystems layer (from meta-openembedded) is now included by default.
• meta-tensorflow-lite layer was added (this is a scalar version, doesn't include support for RVV).
• linux-mainline_5.12 was added as a new kernel for Unleashed and Unmatched (common kernel and configuration).
• Notable kernel configuration changes:
  • More SATA controllers and features were enabled.
  • CONFIG_STRICT_DEVMEM and CONFIG_IO_STRICT_DEVMEM were enabled.
  • XFS file system support was added.
  • Btrfs file system support was added.
  • CONFIG_STRICT_KERNEL_RWX and CONFIG_STRICT_MODULE_RWX were enabled.
  • NVMe hwmon driver was enabled (temperatures will be reported by lmsensors).
  • CONFIG_STACKPROTECTOR and CONFIG_STACKPROTECTOR_PER_TASK were enabled.
• Support for HiFive Unleashed Expansion Board from Microsemi was removed.
• New packages added to demo-coreip-{cli,xfce4} disk images:
  • gdbserver
  • exfat-utils
  • xfsdump
  • xfsprogs
  • xfsprogs-fsck
  • xfsprogs-mkfs
  • xfsprogs-repair
  • btrfs-tools
  • python3-tensorflow-lite
  • python3-tensorflow-lite-demo-doc
• Disabled earlycon via SBI for Unleashed. This is handled directly by the kernel as on Unmatched.
• This is the first released compiled with GCC 11.
• stress-ng was updated to 0.12.8.

Known Issues

1. Newer OE/Yocto buildtools could cause build issues for nspr-native package. Use -r yocto-3.2_M2 -t 20200729 as described in README file if you are using OE/Yocto buildtools. See Yocto bug #14112
2. We have found an issue with SanDisk "A2" microSD cards and thus do not recommend them.
3. If the desktop is unresponsive/frozen (i.e. the keyboard doesn't work or/and the mouse doesn't work, the clock is not updating, etc.) try systemctl restart display-manager from the serial console.
4. If the keyboard or/and mouse is not responsive/frozen check if the input device is available under libinput list-devices and if events are registered by libinput debug-events in the console. If events are registered try the command from #6 above otherwise manually unplug and plug the keyboard or/and mouse.
5. If your desktop is very slow check Mesa OpenGL rendered (glxinfo | grep OpenGL). If it is OpenGL renderer string: llvmpipe restart the system. In rare cases Mesa might fallback to llvmpipe, but restart usually resolved the issue.
6. Restart is not implemented in software for HiFive Unmatched.

2021.04.00

This release includes major changes compared previous Freedom U SDK and thus is experimental at this stage. The main changes include:

• Layers (openembedded-core, meta-openemedded, meta-riscv) were updated to their latest revisions.
• meta-clang layer was reverted back to what we had in meta-sifive 2021.02.00 release as LLVM/Clang cross compiler had issues locating libraries for riscv64.
• meta-sifive layer compatibility was switched from gatesgarth to hardknott release.
• mesa was updated to 21.0.1.
• linux-mainline_5.11 kernel was updated to v5.11.14 for HiFive Unmatched.
• tree package was added for CLI and Xfce4 disk images.
• xdotool package was added to Xfce4 disk images.
• stress-ng was updated to 0.12.06.

Known Issues

1. Avoid overclocking SoC using CPUFreq if you are using HiFive Unleashed Expansion Board from Microsemi as this will hang the board. Hard reset will be required.
2. If Xfce4 desktop disk image is used with HiFive Unleashed Expansion Board and GPU then rebooting is required after the 1st boot.
3. Newer OE/Yocto buildtools could cause build issues for nspr-native package. Use -r yocto-3.2_M2 -t 20200729 as described in README file if you are using OE/Yocto buildtools. See Yocto bug #14112
4. We have found an issue with SanDisk "A2" microSD cards and thus do not recommend them.
5. Xfce4 file manager (Thunar) might crash due to a bug in exo related to "Icon View". We advice to switch to "List View" or "Compact View" under "View" menu.
6. If the desktop is unresponsive/frozen (i.e. the keyboard doesn't work or/and the mouse doesn't work, the clock is not updating, etc.) try systemctl restart display-manager from the serial console.
7. If the keyboard or/and mouse is not responsive/frozen check if the input device is available under libinput list-devices and if events are registered by libinput debug-events in the console. If events are registered try the command from #6 above otherwise manually unplug and plug the keyboard or/and mouse.
8. If your desktop is very slow check Mesa OpenGL rendered (glxinfo | grep OpenGL). If it is OpenGL renderer string: llvmpipe restart the system. In rare cases Mesa might fallback to llvmpipe, but restart usually resolved the issue.
9. Restart is not implemented in software for HiFive Unmatched.