SteeMan

Can you PM me a link to that post. I would like to research the context of what you found.

When you say extracted, what do you mean? I don't know the manjaro setup. Also, given that Armbian isn't supported on TV Boxes and especially for amlogic based boxes where the latest build is 18 months old, why are you trying to use armbian? Why not just go with what manjaro has? It looks like from the logs that with this other u-boot that it can't detect the internal emmc.

Done. I went back to the end of April and tried to pull out all the docker related posts into this new thread. If you think I should go back farther, or if some of these posts should be moved back to the original thread let me know.

@Robert Chase I don't know what files you are talking about. The links from the first post of this thread are still valid.

@Fra Armbian is streached thin. Unless human or financial resources are provided (eg. A person willing to be a maintainer for this board and/or money to offset the increased costs) it is unlikely this will ever be supported. You really should be contacting the board manufacturer (i.e those who are making money from this board) and encourage them to work with / financially contribute to Armbian to provide a well supported os for their board. Since Armbian doesn't make any money from the board, it is unfair to ask us to provide support for free while others who do make money from the board (the board manufacturer) just benefit without contributing..

That is your problem. The armbian tv box image you are using uses the uboot from the android install to boot. The sd image doesn't have a uboot on it.

Open the case and look at the chips installed on the board. If you can look up the chip specs from the markings, you should be able to figure out how much storage the box has

You have bought from a seller that is lying to you. The amlogic s905l2 can at most support 4GB of ram. So it isn't possible to have more than that. What some disreputable sellers do is create a customized version of android that lies about how much memory the box has. There is no way you can get a box with 8gb or ram and 128gb emmc for $24. What you have is a box with 1GB of ram.

That boot.ini file isn't used so you can ignore.

I don't have any other suggestions for you and I don't have any s905 based boxes so I haven't ever tried the u-boot-s905. What error/messages are you getting when you try to boot? You may need to find the serial consol pins on the board and hook up to them to see the uboot output if you want to try to figure out what is happening.

You need to provide a lot more information. Let's start with the exact steps you are using to try to install.

@mfizz If you have ever booted coreelec (even on SD) you will likely need to restore the original android firmware before being able to use armbian. The 'multiboot' enabling process updates the uboot environment on emmc to enable booting from sd card. coreelec and armbian do that in incompatible ways, so once you have the coreelec multiboot installed you won't be able to boot armbian from sd.

As far as I know you can't

I'm not aware of anyone else trying armbian with this device, but since it it amlogic cpu based there is a chance it might work. The latest instructions for amlogic based devices can be found in the TV box FAQ here: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/17106-installation-instructions-for-tv-boxes-with-amlogic-cpus also look at this FAQ entry: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/16976-status-of-armbian-on-tv-boxes-please-read-first

I think this is the link you want: https://users.armbian.com/jock/rk322x/multitool/multitool.img.xz

Just post a good quality picture of both sides of the motherboard

Is this it? I got that picture from https://m.gearbest.com/tv-box-mini-pc/pp_367836.html

Some more information would be helpful. Like at least a picture of the box. You could also open the box and get the CPU info from the chip markimgs, and the board will have a model/version number on it. Short of that we are just guessing.

Note that since you are using a build for a completely different device (orangepizero2 vs tx6s) you aren't going to get everything working without a proper dtb file. So at a minimum you would need to find/modify a dtb file that describes to the kernel the actual hardware in your box. Unless the opzero2 has the exact same hardware on the board as the tx6s the dtb file you are using will be wrong and the hardware that is different will not be working. I'm honestly amazed that you have as much working as you do.

The 4.9.x kernels are 'legacy' kernels in armbian speak. That means they are the kernels supplied by the board vendor. Vendor kernels are generally heavily modified and the changes don't get put into the mainline kernels. Because of the heavy modifications these vendor kernels are always very old kernels and therefore not receiving any support/bugfixes/patches. Armbian focuses on support of mainline kernels and the mainline kernel tree and tries to minimize any out of tree kernel patches (when there are patches necessary, it is the goal that these changes will ultimately be accepted into the mainline tree). Because the vendor kernel and mainline are so far apart, it often isn't realistic to merge the vendor changes into mainline, but instead the work needs to be redone. Since the vendors generally don't put any effort into mainlining all that falls upon the community which can take a long time.

@Ramin Malekghasemi What you have is a TV box, not an SBC. Armbian doesn't support any TV boxes. (https://forum.armbian.com/topic/16976-status-of-armbian-on-tv-boxes-please-read-first) There is a subforum for TV Boxes and the few people who have an interest in them however.

The h616 is a relatively new cpu from allwinner. Support for that cpu by mainline linux (and therefore armbian is still in the early stages). Currently development efforts are making progress but still have a ways to go. The best working code bases right now don't use mainline linux but custom vendor supplied kernels with a bunch of out of tree linux modifications. What I mention above is for SBCs like the Opi Zero2. Armbian does not support TV boxes. The handfull of people who hang out in these TV box forums have an interest in running armbian on TV boxes, but no one is working on the h616. I would say you are a year or two away from potentially running armbian on your box (if that ever happens).

@FilSan I wanted to comment about the other image you posted/mentioned. While that sight mentions armbian, that code really has nothing to do with armbian. Those developers are not involved in the armbian community, nor to they participate in these forums. They are essentially using the armbian name without permission for their work.

I'll try to respond to your questions as best as I can, but since I don't have that box, I can only guess. First you mention that 'no matter how long you hold the reset button'. It isn't a matter of time and the process is that you need to boot with the reset button pressed for about 5 seconds, then after a bit, remove the power and boot with out the reset button pressed. This second boot should boot into your sd card image. The first boot holding the reset button is installing 'multiboot' which is a set of changed variables in the uboot environment that essetially changes the boot order. Then the second boot uses this new uboot environment to boot from the sd card. Note that you should only need to do the reset button step once (unless or until the uboot environment gets reset to default). You mention the s905x4 chip. Do not get a box with this. When it comes to TV boxes, older is better. So s905x is better supported than s905x2, etc. This is because it takes a lot of time and effort for the open source community to reverse engineer and get support into mainline linux (as the cpu manufacturers don't generally support linux openly, i.e. they don't release source code, and box manufacturers are even worse at supporting their products). So the older something is the more likely someone has put in the time to get it somewhat working. So for the s905x4 there isn't any support yet, and perhaps there may never be. The same general rule (older is better) goes for the other cpu families as well, allwinner and rockchip. But if you are looking for something in the armbian community I would currently recommend looking at rockchip based boxes. That is the only cpu family that has an active tv box developer working on support. Then finally, you mention gigabit networking. I would recomend you set your sights on 100mbit networking. Generally gigabit networking is implemented in off cpu networking chips that have no/limited support in mainstream linux. It is very rare that you will get gigabit networking to work on a tv box with armbian. Generally the recommendation is to open the box and inspect the chips on the board for their markings and work from there.

@thierry69 I don't know. Have you tried it following the instructions in the tv box forum faq?