All Activity

So, a little update from my side for whoever is interested in this (and again, thanks for reading). Been playing with the box 2-3 evenings every week since my last post and still impressed by it (considering what I plan to use it for), yet not there where it should be yet. Bookworm (some various archive images I found online) works fine, and I can install OMV via armbian config, although performance is bad and I’m talking here about applying changes using the UI - like it takes whole minutes, plus some expected issues for the 2.5g interface. Trixie, all good installing, OMV fails from armbian config but works fine via the OMV installation guide from their site, it’s snappy in applying changes, like not instant but just a few seconds. The 2.5g interface is still an issue and while I can get good results on writing to the box after trying various fixes found online (like a 4gb file write is just fine, the interface crashes and I lose connection while copying from it back to my pc). This doesn’t crash the device completely, still works fine on the 1g interface, and accessible, so from my point of view is more of a perf issue than a stability one. Overall, still happy having this box, but man you do spend a lot of time getting things right, an obviously I’m a newbie. Thanks for watching! (Just for clarity, my 1g interface is connected to my 1g router, and the 2.5 one directly to my desktop to a 2.5 usb network card, and this set up was working fine on buster)

Hey Paul - Once this gets merged it's going to be fixed, thanks for the report! https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/9349/ Best, Andrei

I think I've completed all tasks. Thus the OpiRV2 PR now waits for a team member to press the [merge] button probably. @maxsub I compiled 6.6.99 kernel on my board with 2Gb RAM once. Needed 3 hours and a decent swap file. HTH // Sven-Ola

I have managed to compile this on two different platforms (Ubuntu and MacOS) for both boards: RV2 and R2S. My RV2 has 8GB and has a 64GB eMMC. I am hoping to be able to build it on the R2S natively. Will let you know how that goes. Looking forward to seeing this PR merged into armbian:main. I think the GPU will remain orphaned. OrangePi decided to use a unsupported GPU and it seems mostly a check box for them v/s them truly intending to support it.

@maxsub: if you still have compile probs, I just uploaded new images to my site on https://privat-in.de (navigate to downloads). LG // Sven-Ola

Oh so I stand corrected... I was going from information on the website: I don't see a Linux client, and in other sites: emby was open source but now it's not

Edit the makefile: # keypad support CONFIG += CONFIG_TM16XX_KEYPAD=n #CCFLAGS += -DCONFIG_TM16XX_KEYPAD

I am so thrilled to be able to get this working. Donation to Armbian on the way.

Hi there! I got a QNAP TS-228A with RTD1295 and 1GB of memory. I was playing around with the mainline kernel and trying to figure out the correct DTS for this NAS. I managed to boot up my with one working USB from the back, everything looks fine but I feel like the CPU is running with low frequency. The logs clearly shows that the boot is very slow, it takes long minutes for SystemD to start up it's services. The setup is one USB drive with Arch Linux rootfs tarball with custom compiled kernel with options like CONFIG_ARCH_REALTEK or CONFIG_F2FS_FS_ZSTD. Unfortunately Arch's kernel misses this target. Is it worth to spend more time with this device? Were any of us able to setup the Gbit ethernet and SATA interfaces? I can see there are many related repo's with usable dts or drivers. I think most of the driver are available we just need to adjust the device tree according to that. I saw the SMP implementation is also somewhat problematic with the spin table, psci solution. [ 19.016897] VFS: Mounted root (f2fs filesystem) readonly on device 8:2. [ 19.027405] devtmpfs: mounted [ 19.032713] Freeing unused kernel memory: 3264K [ 19.037576] Run /sbin/init as init process [ 19.528716] systemd[1]: System time advanced to built-in epoch: Wed 2026-01-07 19:31:44 UTC [ 80.887403] systemd[1]: systemd 259-2-arch running in system mode (+PAM +AUDIT -SELINUX +APPARMOR -IMA +IPE +SMACK +SECCOMP +GCRYPT +GNUTLS +OPENSSL +ACL +BLKID +CURL +E) [ 80.921626] systemd[1]: Detected architecture arm64. [ 111.625814] systemd[1]: Initializing machine ID from random generator. [ 111.632867] systemd[1]: Installed transient '/etc/machine-id' file. [ 111.641073] systemd[1]: Hostname set to <alarm>. [ 142.877742] systemd[1]: bpf-restrict-fs: BPF LSM hook not enabled in the kernel, BPF LSM not supported. [ 176.038563] systemd[1]: Queued start job for default target Graphical Interface. [ 177.884307] systemd[1]: Created slice Slice /system/dirmngr. [ 209.925527] systemd[1]: Created slice Slice /system/getty. [ 240.645593] systemd[1]: Created slice Slice /system/gpg-agent. [ 271.365518] systemd[1]: Created slice Slice /system/gpg-agent-browser. [ 302.085600] systemd[1]: Created slice Slice /system/gpg-agent-extra. [ 332.805493] systemd[1]: Created slice Slice /system/gpg-agent-ssh. [ 363.525552] systemd[1]: Created slice Slice /system/keyboxd. [ 394.245551] systemd[1]: Created slice Slice /system/modprobe. [ 424.965578] systemd[1]: Created slice Slice /system/serial-getty. [ 455.684357] systemd[1]: Created slice User and Session Slice. [ 486.391860] systemd[1]: Started Dispatch Password Requests to Console Directory Watch. [ 517.111666] systemd[1]: Started Forward Password Requests to Wall Directory Watch. [ 547.831552] systemd[1]: Arbitrary Executable File Formats File System Automount Point was skipped because of an unmet condition check (ConditionPathExists=/proc/sys/fs/b. [ 547.848314] systemd[1]: Expecting device /dev/ttyS0... [ 578.551439] systemd[1]: Reached target Local Encrypted Volumes. [ 609.271487] systemd[1]: Reached target Image Downloads. [ 639.991487] systemd[1]: Reached target Local Integrity Protected Volumes. [ 670.711612] systemd[1]: Reached target Path Units. [ 701.431485] systemd[1]: Reached target Remote File Systems. [ 732.151447] systemd[1]: Reached target Slice Units. [ 762.871556] systemd[1]: Reached target Swaps. [ 793.591527] systemd[1]: Reached target Local Verity Protected Volumes. [ 824.311963] systemd[1]: Listening on Device-mapper event daemon FIFOs. [ 855.041446] systemd[1]: Listening on Query the User Interactively for a Password. [ 885.761590] systemd[1]: Listening on Process Core Dump Socket. [ 916.477769] systemd[1]: Listening on Credential Encryption/Decryption. [ 947.201487] systemd[1]: Listening on Factory Reset Management. [ 977.912008] systemd[1]: Listening on Journal Socket (/dev/log). [ 1008.631975] systemd[1]: Listening on Journal Sockets. [ 1039.361885] systemd[1]: Listening on Console Output Muting Service Socket.

Hi, @Harleyyyu, thanks for the copy of multitool. Sadly it behaves just like before. When turning on with the SD card inserted I only get a red LED. I saw some people saying they had luck booting from LibreELEC, but I get the exact same behavior. I do want to keep a backup of my current OS. Any next steps for debugging it? Maybe it needs a shittier SD Card?

Hi guys. Just sharing my experience. After reading @Johan S success story, I bought a Transpeed 8K 4GB 64GB. (https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005534455685.html) Apparently, mine is different, and nothing, I've tried, worked. But sharing is caring, so here we go. 🧩 DEVICE SPECIFICATION & FULL FINDINGS SUMMARY 📦 Device Identity Model: Transpeed 8K618‑T (or clone variant) SoC: Allwinner H618 (sun50i‑h618 family) CPU: Quad‑core ARM Cortex‑A53 DRAM: 4 GB DDR3 PMIC: AXP1530 (BOOT0), AXP313 (BL31) Boot Chain: BOOT0 → BL31 → Vendor U‑Boot 2025 → Kernel 🧠 DRAM & Bootloader Behavior DRAM training succeeds at 648 MHz DRAM type: DDR3 DRAM size: 4096 MB Bootloader reports chip ID 0x2100 BL31 applies CPU errata 855873 & 1530924 Vendor U‑Boot loads: Kernel DTB Initrd (always) → cannot be disabled Vendor U‑Boot ignores Armbian boot scripts and forces initramfs boot 💾 STORAGE 1. SD Card Slot — NON‑STANDARD HARDWARE This is the root cause of all Linux failures. BOOT0 reports: card no is 2 → SD wired to MMC2, not MMC0 sdcard 2 line count 8 → 8‑bit bus width (SD normally max 4‑bit) MMC 5.1 → SD treated as eMMC, not SD Speed: 50 MHz (HSSDR52/SDR25) Vendor U‑Boot handles it Mainline Linux cannot Linux symptoms: sunxi-mmc ... data error send stop command failed lsblk hangs ls /dev/mmcblk* hangs Kernel freezes on MMC access Armbian drops to initramfs MiniArch boots but freezes shortly after Conclusion: The SD interface is electrically non‑standard and incompatible with mainline Linux. 2. eMMC Detected as /dev/mmcblk2 Stable under vendor bootloader Linux could use it — but SD instability prevents reaching userspace 🖥️ DISPLAY HDMI DDC errors: pinctrl_get for HDMI2.0 DDC fail tv_power failed Likely missing regulators in DTB HDMI output unreliable 🌐 NETWORKING Ethernet PHY: AC300 Should work under Linux if system boots Wi‑Fi: AIC8800 (doable. Android is rooted, so just copy '/aicsdio', 'aic8800_fdrv.ko' and 'aic8800_bsp.ko') 🧪 IMAGES TESTED Armbian Armbian-unofficial_25.05.0-trunk_Transpeed-8k618-t_bookworm_edge_6.12.11_server Armbian-20240726-unofficial_24.8.0-trunk_Transpeed-8k618-t_bookworm_edge_6.7.12_server Results: Always dropped to initramfs Could not mount /dev/mmcblk0p2 init=/bin/sh ignored (because vendor U‑Boot forces initrd) SD access hangs kernel No path to userspace MiniArch MiniArch-20240715-6.18.3-board-h618.transpeed-8k618-t-SD-Image MiniArch-20240715-6.18.3-board-h618.vontar_h618-SD-Image Results: Kernel boots Reaches userspace Shows login banner Then freezes due to SD/MMC errors lsblk and ls /dev/mmcblk* hang MiniArch boots further than Armbian, but still fails due to the same SD hardware issue. 🖧 UART TESTING Tried multiple UART speeds: 115200 (default) 921600 (Android kernel switches to this mid‑boot) Other speeds (varied) Findings: Vendor U‑Boot uses 115200 Android kernel switches to 921600, causing “garbage” output MiniArch & Armbian stay at 115200 UART is stable — not the issue 🧪 BOOT PARAMETER TESTING Tried: init=/bin/sh root=/dev/ram Removing root= Editing armbianEnv.txt Editing extlinux.conf Disabling overlays Changing DTBs Adding earlycon Adding rootwait Adding rootdelay=10 Findings: Vendor U‑Boot ignores Armbian boot parameters Always loads initrd → always enters initramfs init=/bin/sh never executed under Armbian MiniArch does honor init=/bin/sh, but MMC hangs prevent installation 🧨 ROOT CAUSE SUMMARY The device has non‑standard SD/MMC wiring: SD slot wired to MMC2 (normally eMMC controller) SD slot uses 8‑bit MMC mode SD slot uses MMC 5.1 protocol SD slot uses 50 MHz high‑speed timing Vendor kernel supports this Mainline Linux does not This causes: Armbian initramfs failures MiniArch kernel freezes MMC access hangs eMMC inaccessible No way to install Linux No way to reach userspace reliably This is a hardware design incompatibility, not a software bug. 🟩 FINAL ASSESSMENT The device is not compatible with mainline Linux, because: SD interface is wired incorrectly Vendor U‑Boot forces initramfs MMC controller hangs under mainline drivers eMMC cannot be accessed due to SD instability DTB regulators missing HDMI DDC errors (Wi‑Fi requires proprietary driver Android works because it uses the proprietary Allwinner MMC driver. Mainline Linux does not.) 🟦 Images

There's no armbian community image available to this device, don't flash images from other users, you will need to build your images, for tv-box it's all at your own risk, build your armbian image by applying this custom files use this DTS

You need to clear the EMMC and flash the bootloader an easy way to do it, just flash the android update image, it will flash the bootloader. if you are making experiments with this board use this bootloader

@ArturHey I Happen to have a backup of multitool on my pc, I have uploaded it to my github page for everyone to download. https://github.com/Harleythetech/RK322x-multitool/releases/tag/rk322x-multitool if you don't need to backup your current operating system you can also just use RKDevelopTool to flash your armbian image to your board. https://github.com/rockchip-linux/rkdeveloptool

Hi Armbian community I have a Giada DN74 media player and would like to install Armbian on the box. First I try (through SD card) some community maintained images like the Orange Pi RK3399 or the Firefly RK3399, but none of them worked. Some google search teach me the Rockchip SoCs have fixed boot order (SPI->eMMC->SD card), and this cause my boot issue. Then search again how boot from SD card, the only solution which I find is to erase eMMC, so I erase the eMMC using: "rkdeveloptool ef". Unfortunately the box still not want to boot, so I open the box and try to identify the UART to see what is happening during the boot. I find a 4 pin connector (see images) which I assume this is the UART console, have a label "MCU_D" (Micro Controller Units Debug?) and have 3,3V on first pin and GND on the last pin. I try to use this connector whit some USB-to-UART (PL2303 and FT232RL) with multiple baud rate (115200, 1500000) without output. At this point was able still connect the box through USB and recover Android because MaskRom mode work fine. After some reading on https://opensource.rock-chips.com/wiki_Boot_option I deiced to build u-boot using evb-rk3399_defconfig and flash to the eMMC (which wan was a big mistake). I assume the box is try to boot from eMMC, but stuck there because is only u-boot on the eMMC nothing else. Unfortunately still no UART output (maybe is not UART connector) but also no Maskrom mode. If I understand right jock guide Unbrick Part, the only option to recover the box if I short EMMC CLK pin to GND. So my question is somebody could help me identify the eMMC CLK pin? Some extra info: According the rk3399 hardware design guide, I need to find a 22 ohm resistor near to the CLK pin. The eMMC is a Kingstone EMMC32G-TX29, and the manual write different CLK frequency's, I am don't know what I need to look. I have a Fnirsi dst-210 3in1 (sure not the best), which I could use measurements but I do not know how to set the oscilloscope parameters to find the CLK.

BTF is hungry for memory, yes. KERNEL_BTF=n and it needs less. On 16Gb+ machine you should be fine. If not memory is eaten away by something else.

I got emby installed and working. Made it launch with the ir remote, it was all perfect until I tried to play a video I've set it to use mpv but it seems the emby package has it's own version of mpv and ffmpeg baked in as the versions reported in the mpv.log are different and it fails to use drm, it seems the following errors are the problem. [ 0.028][v][libmpv_render/drmprime] drmprime hwdec requires at least one dmabuf interop backend. [ 0.028][v][libmpv_render] Loading failed. [ 1.422][v][ffmpeg] Unable to open any dma_heap device [ 1.422][e][ffmpeg/video] hevc: Failed to set destination format: S265 1920x1080 [ 1.422][e][ffmpeg/video] hevc: Failed setup for format drm_prime: hwaccel initialisation returned error. When I launch the same file directly in mpv, it plays fine and doesn't have the errors above. The system has mpv version 0.35.1 but emby reports using 0.38.0-dirty. Same with ffmpeg and all the associated lib files, they are all higher versions and I can't find duplicates in the system so I believe they are packaged as part of the emby app so I really doubt it's something I will be able to fix unfortunately. Tried Kodi and that's missing all the acceleration settings. Jellyfin client doesn't work with an emby server anymore. Just to attempt to keep this on topic, I don't suppose there is anything I can config with the image that might resolve the dma_heap errors? edit: I figured out a solution, emby lets you configure an external player. I just set that to /usr/bin/mpv and it works.

Issue booting Multitool on RK322x Box (Kingston eMCP) - Red IR Light Only Hi everyone, First of all, thank you for this incredible project. Bringing new life to these generic boxes is vital work. I am struggling to boot the Multitool on an "RPC Plus" TV Box. Here are my hardware specs and the steps I’ve taken so far: Hardware Specs: SoC: Rockchip RK3229. Storage/RAM: 8GB Kingston eMCP (Chip ID: O8EMCP08-ELSCV100). SD Card: 16GB Lexar microSD (Class 10). Board LEDs: POWER, NET, and IR. Since the official download links for the Multitool are currently down (I get a 404 error idk why), I had to compile it myself on a Debian machine using the https://github.com/paolosabatino/armbian-build?tab=readme-ov-file repo and the ./create_image.sh rk322x script. I flashed the 500MB image to a 16GB Lexar card using BalenaEtcher and placed the Armbian minimal forky (6.18.7) image inside the /images folder (file name Armbian_community_26.2.0-trunk.357_Rk322x-box_forky_current_6.18.7_minimal.img.xz). The problem is that the box just won't boot from the SD card. When I hold the reset button and plug the power, the only thing I get is a static red light on the IR LED—no HDMI signal, no activity on the Power or Net LEDs, nothing. Android still boots fine if I pull the card out, so the hardware is okay, but it seems the boot process is hanging. I've tried both the reset and update buttons with different timings but no luck so far. I’m attaching pictures of the board and the chip. Any help to get this thing past the red light would be great. I'm putting the pictures of the board here in case it helps. Thanks! IMG_6826.HEIC IMG_6827.HEIC

You can't use emby and the h618 acceleration with ffmpeg-v4l2request... you need to make emby work under Debian, and tell emby to use mpv.

Hi if anyone have interested, this is dtb files and orangepienv file 🙂 allwinner.zip

I found the problem: [ 2299.766819] Out of memory: Killed process 43216 (pahole) total-vm:8235296kB, anon-rss:4667816kB, file-rss:0kB, shmem-rss:0kB, UID:0 pgtables:12912kB oom_score_adj:0

@maxsub: Out-of-RAM may be possible if it simply spits out "killed". My machine has 32 Gb RAM and 16 Gb swap, does not encountered the OOM-killer lately. Until now, but exhausting RAM is probably kernel-dev-hobby 😗

pahole is current. The build fails inside the docker-shell when manually invoked as well. Looks like the BTF invocation is getting killed (maybe needs more RAM)? 🐳|🔨] BTF .tmp_vmlinux1.btf.o [🐳|🔨] Killed root@c408bbb4ccde:/armbian# apt show pahole Package: pahole Version: 1.25-0ubuntu3 Priority: optional Section: universe/utils Source: dwarves Origin: Ubuntu Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com> Original-Maintainer: Thomas Girard <thomas.g.girard@free.fr> Bugs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+filebug Installed-Size: 2012 kB Depends: libbpf1 (>= 1:1.0.0), libc6 (>= 2.38), libdw1t64 (>= 0.157), libelf1t64 (>= 0.142), zlib1g (>= 1:1.1.4) Breaks: dwarves (<< 1.22) Replaces: dwarves (<< 1.22) Homepage: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/devel/pahole/pahole.git Download-Size: 275 kB APT-Manual-Installed: no APT-Sources: http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports noble/universe arm64 Packages Description: set of advanced DWARF utilities

Hi Gaetano, Maybe the issue is with g_mass_storage rather than OTG USB? "The "dr_mode" property controls whether OTG acts a peripheral or host. By default this is set to OTG mode so you shouldn't need to change anything. In my case I prefer to have OTG set as host for which I have this simple overlay: dts-v1/; /plugin/; /{ compatible = "allwinner,sun4i-a10", "allwinner,sun7i-a20"; fragment@0{ target = <&usb_otg>; __overlay__{ dr_mode = "host"; }; }; }; I find it works ok for reading a USB stick. It could be that you have to instead change dr_mode = "peripheral" but seeing as it shows up as a drive this may not be necessary. What kernel version are you currently? Are there any errors that show up in the logs? sudo dmesg | tail -n 20 There is also usb_f_mass_storage however this would need to be manually added as it is not currently included by default within the list of installed modules (Well at least was not on the last build I ran) Best of luck Ryzer

Next idea: run ./compile.sh kernel-config and switch off DEBUG_INFO_BTF. But this should not happen. Also (probably) this BTF stuff now pops up here and there anyhow...