SteeMan
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TV Box Status Information Template Version 1.0
TV Box Name (example: TX3 mini): X96 mini
CPU (example: amlogic s905w): amlogic s905w
Armbian build file name: Armbian_20.10_Arm-64_focal_current_5.9.0_desktop.img.xz
DTB file used: meson-gxl-s905w-gxl-s905w-p281.dtb
Kernel Version: 5.9.0
Distribution Installed (focal, buster, etc): focal
Working Ethernet (Yes/No): Yes
Max Ethernet Speed that works (100/1000): 100
Does wifi work (Yes/No): No
Does bluetooth work (Yes/No): No
Does HDMI audio work (Yes/No): No
Additional Comments (provide any additional information you feel is important): HDMI was unstable during boot and when connected to a 4K monitor. Once I connected to a 1080p monitor the display was stable after booting, still had issues during the boot.
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The following template should be used to report a working TV Box running Armbian. The purpose of this template is to gather consistent and complete information.
To submit a report of a working TV Box start a new topic in this sub-forum with the name of the TV box as the title and copy/paste this template into the post and provide the requested information.
Note: Only report status using dtb files that are part of the image and therefore available to all users from a standard source. If you have used another dtb file, please mention that in the comments along with where the source code for the dtb is located and what the custom dtb improved.
Note: You will need to install/enable a desktop environment to gather all of the below information (i.e. hdmi audio)
TV Box Status Information Template Version 1.0
TV Box Name (example: TX3 mini):
CPU (example: amlogic s905w):
Armbian build file name:
DTB file used:
Kernel Version:
Distribution Installed (focal, buster, etc):
Working Ethernet (Yes/No):
Max Ethernet Speed that works (100/1000):
Does wifi work (Yes/No):
Does bluetooth work (Yes/No):
Does HDMI audio work (Yes/No):
Additional Comments (provide any additional information you feel is important):
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As is stated in https://forum.armbian.com/topic/16407-please-read-first
which I linked to earlier:
"7. You really shouldn't expect things like Wi-Fi, bluetooth, remote control, etc. to work."
I have six different amlogic based TV boxes and wifi doesn't work on any of them. If you really need wifi your best bet is to use a usb wifi adaptor. Otherwise you can try different dtb files compatible with your cpu and see if you can find a better fit for your hardware or search the forums for others that have the same box as you and see if anyone has reported success in getting wifi working on a mainline kernel on your specific box. Since I don't have your box, I can't provide any more guidance than that.
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9 minutes ago, peppezic said:
I was using Armbian_20.10_Arm-64_bionic_current_5.9.0.
To your original question, you are not seeing desktop support because you have installed a server build with no desktop support. You need to install a build that has 'desktop' in the file name to have desktop support. In the last set of builds from balbes that includes amlogic support you have the following two desktop builds:
Armbian_20.10_Arm-64_bullseye_current_5.9.0_desktop.img.xz
Armbian_20.10_Arm-64_focal_current_5.9.0_desktop.img.xz(note no bionic desktop build)
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@riocoles Please read https://forum.armbian.com/topic/16407-please-read-first
especially note the current status of amlogic cpus which is what your box contains.
Have you tried different dtb files? You are using a dtb file that isn't part of the mainline kernel (thus it is a patch applied to mainline kernel). It could be the case that due to changes in mainline over time that the patch hasn't been well maintained and no longer works correctly. When dealing with TV boxes sometimes the best advise is to try all the relevant dtb files for your cpu to see which has the best support for the physical hardware in your specific box.
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Moved post to new topic as this post deals with 64bit cpu but was posted in a thread dealing with 32bit cpus.
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As a new user to the TV box forum I want to point you to the following "Please Read First" post: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/16407-please-read-first
I have very little familiarity with rockchip based TV boxes, so there isn't much help I can offer. But from what I understand the RK3318 is a poorly supported chip by the manufacturer. Here is the latest thread that I could find in the forums that you could use to get started which has links to a couple of experimental builds:
https://forum.armbian.com/topic/16153-rk3318-device-magicsee-n5-nova-4g64g-with-dead-nand
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post moved to TV box forum - general chat
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@alexx If I understand you correctly, you are currently running with the OS installed on an external drive connected via USB (no sd card and the original android still installed on the internal emmc storage). There isn't any reason you need to change that setup. As a general rule of thumb, SSD better than emmc which is better than SD card, in terms of quality and durability of the storage. So you should be fine running your current setup.
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You still didn't answer the question of which build you are using, i.e. what is the full name of the file you downloaded. Also what dtb files did you try, all of the s905x files or only the one you mentioned.
By running install-am.sh script you have erased your emmc internal storage and replaced it with a copy of your armbian install from the sd card. So yes your android install is gone. To restore you will need to find an android firmware for your box and use the appropriate tools to reinstall that firmware.
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2 hours ago, thanxx said:
are those mainline builds able to detect the integrated wifi chip?
As is stated here: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/16407-please-read-first
it shouldn't be an expectation that wifi is going to work with armbian on TV boxes. I have about 8 boxes now and wifi doesn't work on any of them. While there are exceptions, in general if you limit your expectations to using wired ethernet you can do some amazing things with these boxes. Since you didn't even mention which box you are interested in, I can't guess if wifi has a remote possibility of working for you, but my guess is not.
There are only a couple of people currently engaged in volunteering their time to respond to users in the TV box forums. So I choose to focus my limited resources on helping users who have a reasonable chance of success (i.e. their expectations are appropriate). Otherwise I could spend all my time trying to help one user try to get wifi working on one poorly supported TV box type and likely be unsuccessful in the end.
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@MX10.AC2N I think you are approaching your issue from the wrong perspective. As balbes already mentioned he "doesn't use this software and has no idea what it requires'. So essentially asking the same question in a different way isn't likely to get a different answer.
You need to understand that the armbian project is about getting the mainline linux (debian and ubuntu distributions) to run on arm SBCs (and luckily that often works on TV boes as well). Information and support of the thousands of software programs that can then run on debian or ubuntu isn't something that armbian is about.
NextCloud is a software product and you want to run that program on your armbian based TV box, which is great, but you should be looking for support from the NextCloud community for support of their product.
You mention in your posts NextCloudPI. I'm not sure why you are going down that particular path. You should be able to just install NextCloud following their instructions for your chosen distribution (debian or ubuntu). I have been running nextcloud on one of my amlogic s905w based TX3 mini boxes for over a year using the snap version for my ubuntu bionic install. It was easy to install, it automatically updates itself and I haven't had to think about it in a long time. That is exactly what you want from a server based software program. Now if you ask me what i did over a year ago to get it installed, I will have no recollection, but I just followed the readily available instructions available from nextcloud to get it done - didn't need to post anything to armbian forums to install a generic software product.
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I moved the above to a separate thread as the content is distinct from the thread it was originally posted in.
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As I mentioned I was having problems using the chainloaded u-boots for s905x2 and s905x3 based boxes in loading 5.10 kernels (5.9 and earlier kernels have been working find). I had a little time this past weekend and I was able to successfully boot a 5.10 kernel using your u-boot mentioned above in place of the one in balbes image for s905x2. I was also able to do the same with a s905x3 box (boot a 5.10 kernel) but on this one ethernet didn't work. I didn't have time to investigate anything beyond getting successful boots.
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I moved this to its own thread.
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As a new user, have you read: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/16407-please-read-first
You haven't told us how you installed your system. Lets start with some basics: what build did you use?
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I build my own from mainline kernel sources. Since I only am using this for server tasks, I can use pure mainline kernel without the need for any additional patches for my needs.
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From the instructions:
"The start system in Coreelec is not compatible with LibreELECE Armbian etc. If you run coreelec on your TV box, you will no longer be able to run LE and Armbian normally until the full recovery of the standard firmware via the USB Burn Tool and the new activation of the universal multi-boot, which is used in all new systems."
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Moved you post to the TV Box club. You should read: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/16407-please-read-first
Generally you are not going to find any Android TV boxes that will meet your needs with the armbian builds that you can install on them currently. They were great for headless servers, or light desktop/browser use. But you aren't going to find good video playback support currently in general and especially not at the price point you are looking at. Just trying to set your expectations. If you already had a box and wanted to experiment, I would say go ahead, but if you haven't yet bought something, you are likely going to be disappointed by the current state of armbian on TV boxes - the first clue to that state is that they aren't supported devices.
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1 hour ago, lgranie said:
/boot partition (u-boot) can be ext3/4 on x96max?
Yes you can use ext3/4 filesystems if you want. The reason the balbes images use fat partitions for /boot is because of the necessity to edit the config files for the dtb. Many users only have windows/mac os systems and therefore it was decided that the ease of being able to pop in the SD card into any machine regardless of OS and edit the config file (due to the universal support of the fat filesystem) to set the appropriate dtb was desirable.
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@hannah You have a lot to learn about armbian on TV boxes and dtbs and kernels. I plan to write a longer response this weekend when I have more time, but for now the short answer to your most specific question: no audio over hdmi is that you need to use a different dtb file. Your box is s905x3 based (i.e. the sm1 architecture). You are using based on what you reported a dtb for the s905x2 (g12a). While much is the same, some things are also different. Now what you may find is that if you use one of the very few available sm1 dtbs (I use and have only tested meson-sm1-sei610.dtb - the sei610 is the reference board for the s905x3 chip) that other things you have working on your current install (like wifi) will probably no longer work.
I believe you have likely already read the following: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/16407-please-read-first
as it was referenced in the last thread you started. The current state for armbian on TV boxes is limited especially for amlogic cpus. There are many reasons for this and that deserves a longer explaination of how dtbs and kernels interact and the overall goals of the armbian project. (and how they differ from other projects out there like coreelec you reference above).
But I have already spent an hour of my day (we are all volunteers around here) setting up a test system to verify that audio does indeed work on a TX3 X3 box (as I thought it did, but because I don't normally run desktop environments as the current state of support really isn't working well yet, I didn't have an environment I could quickly test). What I did just do is downloaded a clean copy of the 2020-10-14 balbes build of focal 5.9.0 desktop, used the meson-sm1-sei610.dtb and the u-boot-s905x2-s922 uboot file copied to u-boot.ext, booted and played the test.mp4 file and had correctly working audio via hdmi. I then changed the dtb to meson-g12a-x96-max.dtb, which I believe you are using, rebooted and had no audio.
What I don't understand is that if you have read the Please Read First post, why you would post four posts in this thread within a day, seemingly demanding support for the 2 or 3 volunteers around here that monitor this forum? Especially when you are asking about things like bluetooth, wifi, etc on the amlogic platform that we say you shouldn't expect to work, and if they do you are lucky.
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@robertoenr I have seen issues similar to what you are reporting (poweroff does a reboot) on some boxes. I haven' had time to investigate as it isn't a big issue for me. But what I recently noticed was that on some boxes while 'sudo poweroff' does a reboot, using 'sudo reboot' will actually poweroff the unit.
On your other issue, with the system not being able to restart sometimes, the workaround I have found is to have a spare SD card around that is configured for the device. When the box doesn't boot from emmc, my experience is that it will boot from an SD card. And after one successful boot from the SD card, it will again correctly boot from emmc, which is a lot easier than reflashing and starting over. I'd be curious if your box behaves the same way as mine does.
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@hexdump I have been planning to reach out to you to pick your brain. I noticed that in the last balbes build which supports amlogic that the chainloaded s905x u-boot was from your work. (Which happens to be the one environment that that is working on 5.10 for me). I will definitely experiment with what you have as I really want to move all of my boxes to 5.10 as an LTS kernel that includes wireguard support natively.
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The short answer is maybe. Your question got me to experimenting a bit this morning and I was successful in getting a box (TX3 mini in my case) to boot from a current armbian meson64 kernel (5.9.14). My box is amlogic s905w, where yours I believe is s905x2. I had been wanting to try this for a while, but hadn't had time/reason to do it, but your question led me to give it a try.
If you are running from an SD card there is no reason not to experiment as you can always easily start over if you can't boot.
Here are the steps I did:
1) backup old kernel files in case things go wrong:
cd /boot
sudo cp uInitird uInitrd-5.9.0
sudo cp zImage zImage-5.9.0
sudo cp -r dtb dtb-5.9.0
# if things fail you can pop the sd card into another box and revert these
2) edit extlinux.conf
change the "LINUX /zImage" line to "LINUX /Image"
#there is different kernel file naming between balbes images and armbian kernels, Image is what I found in the kernel I installed, but different packages may have different names so adjust accordingly. If you need to revert to the old kernel you will need to undo this change as well.
3) Install the new kernel package, I used:
sudo apt install linux-image-current-meson64
#the installation errored at the end and I didn't bother to figure out why (although from past experience it is likely to have to do with the fact that balbes uses fat partitions for boot, whereas standard armbian uses ext4 partitions). But at the point it errors everything is installed in /boot that is needed which is why I didn't investigate further at the current time.
4) reboot and cross your fingers
On 11/14/2020 at 6:06 AM, lgranie said:As I understand is it not that easy to compile a kernel by myself because there is so much patches applied.
This is both true and untrue. The standard armbian kernels are heavily patched as they are trying to incorporate a lot of fixes and drivers to get a wide range of SBC boards working as completely as possible. But if all you need is a basic environment that boots with hdmi and ethernet you can use a mainline kernel with hardly any patches on a lot of TV boxes (which is what I normally do).
I also want to mention something that I was working on over the weekend that you should be aware of. As it relates to s905x2 and/or s905x3 support and 5.10 kernels. I haven't been able to boot my TV boxes running these cpus on 5.10 kernels. I can boot my s905w boxes on 5.10 however. I think there is an issue with the u-boots that balbes included for the x2/x3 cpus that are having issues with the changes in the 5.10 kernel. Someday I hope to dig into this further, but for now I am running those boxes on the 5.4 mainline LTS kernels as it will give me bug/security fixes for a few more years which will give me or someone else time to investigate the issue in the future.
Planned changes to the TV Box area
in General Chat
Posted
I have begun to make some changes to the TV Box 'Club' area.
The overall goal is to provide more useful information to users and reduce the support workload of answering the same questions over and over again.
To that end there is now a FAQ forum on the menu. While it is currently empty and just a place holder it should provide a centralized location for TV Box information over time.
The second new addition is the forum titled 'TV Boxes running Armbian'. The idea here is to provide a maintained list of current information with links to the details for boxes reported by the community to be successfully running armbian.
Both of the two above forums will likely be strictly moderated to keep the information concise and on topic. I don't want these to become mega threads (like some of the TV box threads tend to be). Content that gets posted here that belongs elsewhere will be moved.
I'm still trying to figure out how the rest of the area should be organized. There needs to be a place for newbies to ask questions and it would be nice if there was a place for developers to share information. The problem is that the current mega threads for the Rockchip CSC builds do that in a single thread, vs using one or more forums for that. Also I wonder if there should be different forums by CPU family (AML,RK,AW?) by developer build (Balbes vs Jock's CSC builds?). Any suggestions on how others think things should be organized?