danboid

Thanks for that c0rnelius! I was unaware that u-boot (probably still) doesn't support BTRFS subvols. Hopefully they can add that so we'd be able to avoid the extra boot partition. I will look into that today. EDIT It looks like it does have subvol support : https://github.com/u-boot/u-boot/blob/master/fs/btrfs/subvolume.c

Under Ubuntu when you install using BTRFS and Debian when you install to BTRFS using the Calamares live GUI installer, both installers create a subvolume called @home for the /home directory and another subvol called @ for the rest of the filesystem. This layout enables users to use timeshift to easily (and automatically with timeshift-autosnap-apt) create BTRFS snapshots and restore them using the command line or the timeshift GUI and restore their OS whilst optionally keeping users files stored under /home intact. I would like to see the armbian installation script configure BTRFS in this same manner.

I wpouldn't want Armbian to do anything because Ubuntu is. I'm moving away from Ubuntu after 22.04 because Canonical are turning more apps into snaps which is destroying performance. I don't care about sandboxing or any other supposed benefit of snaps - having to wait 10x longer for apps to load is not acceptable.

I know Ubuntu uses netplan by default but I prefer NetworkManager. The files are easier to configure by hand than netplans awful yaml plus netplan doesn't have alternatives to nmtui, nmcli and the GUI app. Everything has to be done by hand with netplan.

I'll give a good example of this causing a problem. I have an Armbian machine that only uses wifi. I set the wifi up using the included nmtui but there is an almost 2 minute boot delay caused by the default Armbian /etc/network/interfaces (ifupdown) config for eth0. Remove or comment this config and Armbian boots almost 2 minutes faster if eth0 isn't connected at boot.

Why does Armbian include both include ifupdown AND NetworkManager by default? I'm not aware of anything that ifupdown can do that NM cannot and ifupdown doesn't have a TUI/GUI like NM so as far as I'm concerned ifupdown is just clutter that causes config clashes and boot delays. Isn't it time to strip ifupdown from Armbian? On a related note, I've never got any of the (ifupdown) network config options in armbian-config to work.

To sort of answer my own question, I was going wrong by using Phoenix USB Pro when I should've been using Phoenix LiveSuit which works much more reliably under Windows 10. I suspect USB Pro was a XP or Windows 7 app. It would be nice to see FELix updated to support flashing H6. I have tried using dd under Armbian to copy H6 Android images onto the internal mmc but that doesn't work.

Does anyone know of any working alternatives to the Phoenix USB Pro or Phoenix Card for flashing the internal memory (FES) of H6 TV boxes for Linux? I've found FELix which builds OK under Ubuntu 20.04 but I've not been able to successfully flash a box with it yet. I suspect it never officially supported the H6 and it looks like the author has abandoned it. https://github.com/jankowskib/FELix

Sorry if this is a stupid question but I presume you rebuilt your kernel using the emmc patch in MBBs .odt guide and installed the patched kernel before running nand-sata-install did you?

I agree with awawa regarding the overclocking and I don't think its a good idea to run them at max speed by default but it should be made easy to do that for anyone who wants to, of course. These TV box CPUs are pretty weedy. Anyone who needs a bit of grunt would be well advised to get a rockpi4 instead if you really want to stick with ARM Linux. I wouldn't try to do anything too CPU heavy with a TV box. I too would like to see the eMMC install patch MBB mentioned included in awawas fork. It sounds like MBB has tested this quite well already so why not?

I'm going to have to try installing to the eMMC. I have noticed it offers about twice the read speed of using the SD card slot according to hdparm. I have got this working with Manjaro on my X96 Air amlogic TV box, eMMC boot. Good to hear it works and thats cool that you can even do it over the web in you're brave enough! Back to my H10-play. I tried Android again and all 4 USB ports do work. Not sure what happened last time. The build quality of the H10-play is not up to the standard of the T95 MAX, as evidenced by the constant and very audible noise and distortion on the onboard audio jack when using the default Android rom. My T95 MAX runs at just under 50 degrees whilst I've not seen the H10 run any cooler than 62 degrees. Also, on the T95 MAX I am able to power a mechanical 2.5" USB 3 disk via its onboard USB 3 port but you cannot do that on the H10-play so I'd recommend people buy the T95 boxes in most cases unless you really want the ethernet blinkenlichts or the extra 2 USB 2 ports. I recently bought a rockpi4c and its great now that I have 4K output working and it booting directly off nvme. Wifi and bluetooth work too under Manjaro, I just need to rebuild the kernel with the pcie-gen2 patch now to get full disk speed. I've also got the rpi4 and the jetson nano and I've not done any proper benchmarks yet but I'm confident it will beat both notably and it has MUCH better mainline kernel support than the nano. I would buy the rockpi4b instead of the 4c if I was buying another. The 4c has an extra mini displayport but it uses mini HDMI whereas the 4b just has one normal HDMI output. Beware if buying a second hand 4b that it has the SPI chip because you need that to install u-boot to so you ca boot directly off nvme.

Awawa's build is running nicely on the H10 Play - wifi and ethernet work fine as do all 4 USB ports! Under its stock Android, only 2 of the USB ports work but all 4 work under Armbian. Another nice thing about this box is the ethernet port has link and activity LEDs which is rare on these TV boxes. It is still only 100 Mb tho. It looks like it has a clock display in pictures when its turned off but its just a transparent plastic window to allow you to see its power led.