SteeMan
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Posts posted by SteeMan
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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).
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@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.
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On 5/7/2022 at 10:06 AM, FilSan said:
The blue light just keeps blinking no matter how long i hold the reset button. Any ideas/clues?
Is this chip hopeless? Should i get a box with S905X4 or rockchip, allwinner?? I just want a box with gigabit working for a micro server. The shop's page showed this box had gigabit, but iperf3 says otherwise.
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.
On 5/7/2022 at 6:12 PM, FilSan said:How can i see the hardware in the box? lspci returns nothing.
Generally the recommendation is to open the box and inspect the chips on the board for their markings and work from there.
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@thierry69 I don't know. Have you tried it following the instructions in the tv box forum faq?
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Armbian does not support any TV boxes, nor does armbian support android. I suggest you as your question in a forum that supports your hardware and os.
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@Rohaaq A further comment that might help clarify. Applying 'multiboot' is a one time operation. It changes the boot environment which only needs to be done once. So if you have properly applied multiboot (through either toothpick or update methods) then you are done and subsequently all you need to do is insert your sd card and it should first try to boot from there before falling back to booting android from emmc. If it doesn't boot what you have on your sd card, you either haven't properly installed multiboot or your sd card is incorrectly setup.
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On 9/20/2021 at 8:09 AM, sfs said:
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 735459 дек 28 2020 u-boot.ext
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 609247 дек 28 2020 u-boot-s905
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 735459 дек 28 2020 u-boot-s905x2-s922@ravijol1 per this information posted above, you can see that (by looking at file sizes) he is using the u-boot-s905x2-s922 boot from the distribution. If you were to follow the instructions in the FAQ item (https://forum.armbian.com/topic/17106-installation-instructions-for-tv-boxes-with-amlogic-cpus) this is the uboot file that should be used for this cpu.
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@saudpc Your duplicate post was deleted. Do not post duplicate posts especially in the wrong forums.
You should start by understanding that armbian does not support TV boxes so you are unlikely to get an response to your question. Please read this FAQ post to understand the status of armbian and tv boxes: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/16976-status-of-armbian-on-tv-boxes-please-read-first
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First off, I would point you to the following FAQ post to set expectations: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/16976-status-of-armbian-on-tv-boxes-please-read-first
Second comment is that both of the videos you linked point to builds that are from 2018. My suggestion would be to avoid them as you are dealing with kernel versions that are very old and full of known vulnerabilities as there are no security updates for them.
If you want to pursue this with an s805 based box, then I would point you to the following thread: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/3023-armbian-for-amlogic-s805-and-s802s812 The last few pages of that thread will have more recent builds on newer kernels. But since there is no active work on amlogic based tv boxes even those are now outdated.
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Per the box specs this box should have an alwinner h6 cpu, so moving to the correct sub forum.
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@Vittorio Mori @jock. Please stay on the topic of this thread or your posts will be deleted.
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I find your research interesting. I don't have this particular box (I have a TX3 based on the s905x3 cpu). If you provided links to the source code for the dtbs (i.e. the .dts files) I'd be willing to at least look at the source code to see if anything jumps out. Also since you want the gigabit ethernet working, do you know what ethernet chip your box has installed (i.e. could you open the box and take a picture of the board and especially the ethernet chip)?
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The s905w2 is actually a new processor from amlogic (bad confusing naming choice as it is not related to the s905x2). As a new processor you are not going to find support for it in mainline linux for a while (if ever). There is less and less effort in the mainline linux community to support new amlogic cpus. So this may be something that will never work with armbian.
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Note that the X96 Mini box name is very generic. There are many different manufacturers that make boxes with that name and each manufacturer may use different components (i.e. wifi chips) in their specific boards. So don't assume that the above will work for you unless you verify that you have the same wifi chip on your board.
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The short answer to your question is that there isn't a dtb file for your box for mainline armbian linux kernels. The box manufacturers don't put any effort into supporting mainline linux and since there are hundreds of unique hardware boxes out there, the best you generally can do is use a reference dtb that is close to your boxes hardware. For example you say you are using the gxm-q201.dtb. That q201 is the reference board made by amlogic to be used as a template for box manufacturers to base their designs off of. TV boxes are a price sensitive commodity, so each manufacturer is looking for the lowest cost components so the final box manufacturered will differ from the reference in order to cut costs. And using generic wifi chips is one of the areas they cut costs. These generic chips generally have no mainline linux support and the box has no correct mainline dtb file. This is why the FAQ explicitly says not to expect to ever get wifi working, If you can't use a wired ethernet connection, you are recommended to get a cheap linux supported usb wifi adapter. If you have searched the forum archives an no one has reported getting wifi working on your specific box, it most likely isn't going to happen (unless you have some very specific developer skills to do the work yourself).
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Please read the following FAQ post if you haven't already:
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Have you followed the instructions in this FAQ post:
Also, I would recommend using the toothpick method. You need to have a specific type of 'update' andoid app installed for that method to work and I have found that a lot of android boxes don't have the right update app to use that method. I always use the toothpick method to install multiboot.
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Your issue is more likely that the dtb file you are using isn't correctly identifiing the wifi hardware that is in your box. Without a correct dtb file for your box, the driver won't do you any good. You need both as the dtb is the mapping between the hardware and the software of the driver.
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I'm pretty sure this is a duplicate of a previously reported issue:
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Also, the following thread probably is what you are looking for to answer your questions.
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Since you say you have a tv box based on a rk3228 I am moving this thread to the rockchip specific forum for tv boxes.
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I think these are what you are looking for:
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First off I want to point you to the following TV Box FAQ item: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/16976-status-of-armbian-on-tv-boxes-please-read-first
The most important information there is that TV Boxes are not supported by the Armbian project.
Second, there is this other FAQ item: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/17106-installation-instructions-for-tv-boxes-with-amlogic-cpus
The most important thing here is that there is no one in the community currently working on amlogic support for TV Boxes, so the latest build is from Oct 2020. Obviously that build predates the release of the x905x4 cpu by amlogic. I don't know of anyone that has tried to see if the old build (that supported the s905x2 and generally worked on the s905x3) would work on a newer s905x4 box. My guess is that it won't work until upstream amlogic maintainers incorporate refererence design dtb files into mainline kernel and someone around here creates a build that incorporates those upstream changes.
If you are adventurous, you could give it a try with the current build using the s905x3 reference dtb: meson-sm1-sei610.dtb
Sunvell H3 2GB RAM + 16GB ROM TV Box
in Beginners
Posted
@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.