SteeMan

You do have access to the source for these builds: https://github.com/150balbes/Build-Armbian and https://github.com/150balbes/Amlogic_s905-kernel (actually these git trees are usually a few days behind the most recent balbes150's builds as he waits for code changes to stabilize before pushing them back to these github trees) I would recommend you start by pulling the Build-Armbian environment, and building the equivalent of what you currently have installed. You will see that the build system creates the kernel header package as part of the build process. Then you can experiment with improvements and contribute back to the overall community.

I did some testing of this new feature and it seems to work well. I installed the above version. Then I pulled your source from github, bumped the version number to 20.05.2 built the .deb files and then did a local update to the new deb files and the update was successful. Thank you for your continued work on this project.

I am starting a new thread as this discussion doesn't belong in the "Single Armbian image for RK + AML + AW" thread. The end user need is that users (I think this is especially true of TV box users) think of Armbian for TV boxes like a standard linux distribution. What this means is that they expect to receive security updates and critical bug fixes. They are after all trying to run home servers and desktops on this platform. And for the most part they get these fixes from the upstream distributions (ubuntu or debian). However they don't get fixes for the linux kernel. The question "how do I get kernel updates?" gets asked quite frequently in the TV box sub-forum (and if users aren't asking that question they probably assume they are getting updates through apt and don't realize they are not, or don't care at all about security). @balbes150 has been working on building linux-image .deb files for the TV box builds, and I think with today's patches he has that working (i've looked at the code, but haven't tested that yet). He has also been experimenting with deploying these kernel images via apt.armbian.com. As was just discussed in IRC @igor correctly points out that the Armbian TV box work is a fork of Armbian and not supported. But if we are using armbian infrastructure to deploy TV box kernel builds that line is certainly blurred. There are a whole lot of release management questions and support issues that need to be worked out before this is all going to work smoothly. And I think it is better for this to be planned and discussed so that everyone agrees to the strategy and supports it. At the end of the day, my personal desire is to be able to install an "Armbian TV box release" of for example Ubuntu 18.04 on an LTS kernel (i.e. 5.4) and to have apt install all security and critical bug fixes for both the kernel and other packages for a couple of years without giving the box much thought (like I would with any other server linux distribution) - the fact that I want to do this (and hopefully can someday) on a sub $50 box that originally ran android is the incredible value that this project brings to the world. So how should we deploy kernel images for Armbian TV Box builds?

Shouldn't the kernel version be part of the package name for proper versioning of new kernel builds? I see that you have moved the 20200404 build to armbian version number 20.05.1 (I am assuming this was to allow for proper versioning of the .deb files). Also, are you planning on releasing regular arm-64-current, arm-64-dev, aml-s9xxx-current, aml-s9xxx-dev, rk and alwinner kernels? (I am assuming that you are not :-) as there are only 24 hours in a day). Do you need any help with this? The reason I am asking is that I am looking for stable kernel upgrades for the servers I have running on my tv boxes. I am currently building them weekly as new mainline kernels are released. I have just started looking into your deb packaging patches and would like to help if there is something that I can contribute.

In the TV box builds, balbes150 is focusing most on the aml-s9xxx and arm-64 areas. So if you look at config/sources/families/aml-s9xxx.conf or arm-64.conf you will see something like this: case $BRANCH in legacy) KERNELDIR='linux-aml-legacy' KERNELSOURCE='https://github.com/150balbes/Amlogic_s905-kernel' KERNELBRANCH='branch:5.3' ;; current) KERNELDIR='linux-aml-current' KERNELSOURCE='https://github.com/150balbes/Amlogic_s905-kernel' KERNELBRANCH='branch:5.6' ;; dev) KERNELDIR='linux-aml-dev' KERNELSOURCE='git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/next/linux-next.git' KERNELBRANCH='branch:master' ;; esac From here you can see that 'current' is on the 5.6 branch. So if you look in patch/kernel/aml-s9xxxx-current you will see the packages-current.patch which is what you want. (I just realized in my instructions I called this patch by the wrong name, in my instructions I say build-?????.patch, but the name really is packages-?????.patch). You will notice that balbes150 maintains his own patched kernels that he builds from (KERNELSOURCE). I have been generally using unpatched kernels from kernel.org so I know exactly what I am building. But once you understand what is going on, you can experiment with different kernel sources and find what works best for you. Because in this case balbes150 kernel tree is already patched, there isn't in this patch directory the other required patch (text-offset.patch). You can find that patch in the 'dev' build (patch/kernel/aml-s9xxx-dev/text-offset.patch) as that build is against a non-patched kernel tree. You mentioned looking at meson-gxl, which I assume means you are working with an aml s905 based tv box. I use and build kernels for TX3mini boxes that have the s905w cpu (meson-gxl-s905w-tx3-mini.dtb) and yesterday I built and installed both the 5.4.30 and 5.6.2 releases that came out yesterday on my TX3minis. My recommendation is to start simple, learn, and then experiment with more things. I find that the 5.4 and higher kernels have good support for the amlogic chips (at least up through the s905x3) and as long as I am using these boxes for servers they work fine for my needs. (i.e. I don't care about wifi, bluetooth, etc). But if you need more than the base kernel supports, you can start looking at the kernel patches that are around and finding things that you want to experiment with and add them into your build environment. I find this is a good way to explore the evolving support of these arm based TV boxes.

The standard armbian documentation only applies to the standard armbian builds. The builds by @balbes150 are a fork of the standard armbian code for Android TV boxes (instead of standard SBC boards) and therefore you can't use the standard documentation as there are a number of differences. To install into emmc look in your /root directory and you will see a set of install scripts. Choose the one appropriate for your CPU and run it for installation into emmc. The current active thread of discussion for the @balbes150 builds is: Please carefully read the first posting in this thread as it goes over many of the specifics that are unique or different for these android tv box builds.

You really should move to a recent build from the current builds for Armbian TV boxes from this thread: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/12162-single-armbian-image-for-rk-aml-aw/

You would repeat the process you just completed. Create a new sdcard with the desired distribution, then copy that to internal emmc with the provided scripts in the /root directory. If you boot the box with the sd card inserted, the box will boot from the sd card, thus allowing you to overwrite the contents of the internal emmc.

I'm not sure what you mean by change build. So I will try to answer the best I can. Once you have installed a build onto internal storage, you would use the distribution tools to get updates for all of the software packages (i.e. apt update/upgrade). This will get you patches for everything except the linux kernel. You are currently stuck at the linux kernel you installed as there aren't currently kernel updates automatically provided via apt for the Armbian TV builds So to get kernel updates you would either need to completely reinstall everything from a new sd card build, or build your own kernel from source and install it manually.

The standard armbian documentation only applies to the standard armbian builds. The builds by balbes150 in this thread are a fork of the standard armbian code and therefore you can't use the standard documentation. Look in your /root directory as I indicated and you will see the install script you need to run for installation into emmc.

You need to run the appropriate script for your cpu located in the /root directory.

For the Armbian TV box builds, there is a script in the /root folder that you need to run to install into emmc. There will likely be multiple scripts in this directory, you run the one named appropriately for your device.

As I have been watching the development of Armbian for TV boxes, there is one area that my needs haven't been addressed yet. And since this is open source that means I needed to read a lot of posts and get into the code to understand how things are working. I have been doing that over the last six months or so and wanted to report back on what I am now doing to solve my issue as it may help others. I have a number of TV boxes running as headless servers for a variety of projects. Once I install Armbian on them I then get OS updates through ubuntu (I am using Ubuntu Bionic on my boxes). That gives me bug fixes and patches for the software running on these boxes via apt update/upgrade. However the linux kernel generally stays unpatched at the point in time that I installed one of balbes150's TV box builds. What I wanted was to be able to build and update kernels so that I can apply new kernel versions to my servers. I am now able to do that successfully across a number of TV boxes ( TX3mini, TX3 X3, H96 Max X2) (Note I only have amlogic based boxes that I test with). I am building kernels from kernel.org sources, building .deb files and then installing those files across my servers as new kernel versions are released. My goal was to simply stick with the 5.4 kernel as it is a long term support kernel, but I find that I have moved to 5.6 as I wanted native wireguard support. Another goal I have is to do all this with as few patches as possible (i.e. running stock base unmodified linux). And a final goal was to build natively on my arm based boxes. Below are my notes that explain what I have done and hopefully provides others with some of the knowledge I have built up over time to be able to get what I needed working. I hope this is helpful to others who want to get their hands into armbian a little deeper than just installing and running it. build-debs.txt

The short answer to your question, is you can't, or at least you can't if you are not the device manufacturer or possess skills that very few people have. The longer answer is that coreelec and Armbian are very different projects with very different goals. Coreelec's goal is to provide a basic linux environment to run kodi using the vendor supplied linux kernels. I believe that for your device that would be a 4.9 kernel. Armbian on the other hand provides a full linux distribution on mainline linux kernels (currently 5.6.x). So instead of using a heavily modified custom vendor supplied kernel that never gets any security updates or bugfixes (coreelec case), with Armbian you get a fully community supported kernel with the most current security and bug fixes available. The problem is that if the device manufacturer and cpu manufacturer don't care about getting support for their devices and chips into the mainline kernel, then Armbian can't support them very well. And if the source code isn't available to others to port to the mainline kernel it is practically impossible to ever get good support for these devices in the mainline kernel and thus armbian.

It looks like you are trying to use a dtb from your android installation. dtb's are very much tied to specific kernel versions and an android dtb based on an older android kernel will not work with a current armbian built kernel. You need to be using one of the dtb's that are part of the armbian build you are using (or are building a dtb that will work with the armbian kernel you are using).

There are scripts in /root for installing to internal storage

It depends what you mean by screen. It you mean a terminal program listening on the uart port, yes you should see something, if you are expecting to see something via the HDMI port then no. HDMI is initialized late in the process and depends on most things working/configured properly to see anything.

I am still not able to use the u-boot-fix described above to address the hdmi color issues. I have a TX3 s905x3 box using the meson-sm1-sei610.dtb. When I boot from the SD card with the patch applied (boot.ini, s905_autoscript, u-boot.ext) the boot fails and I am left with a green screen. In attempting to figure this out myself, I have captured console logs from both a successful boot without the patch and the failed boot with the patch (see attached). Any ideas why this is not working for me? I have tried booting from both usb and sdcard and both are failing with the patch applied. screenlog.ok.txt screenlog.fail.txt

I tested the fix for the color issue and it wasn't successful for my box (TX3 x905x3). Using Armbian_19.11.3_Rk3399-tv_bionic_dev_5.4.1_20191208.img with the downloaded u-boot.ext the box fails to boot. If I remove the u-boot.ext file the box boots but with the faulty colors. Earlier in this thread it was mentioned the option of installing a newer u-boot to solve the color problem. Are there relatively simple instructions on how to build a mainline u-boot and install it on an amlogic tv box? I am assuming you need to replace the shipped u-boot on mmc? In looking at the mainline u-boot tree, it looks like support for the s905x3 (sm1) has only recently been included, so my thinking is I would likely want to try the latest: v2020.01-rc4.

I noticed that the Build_Armbian git tree had a new set of changes merged in a couple of days ago. I tried it out last night and there is one issue that I have seen so far. I did a build of 'Armbian_19.11.3_Aml-g12_bionic_current_5.4.0.img and the debs and img are missing the dtb files. I will copy the dtb's from another build to further test, but wanted to let you know of this issue. I noticed a lot of code restructuring in this set of build changes, and since it hasn't been announced yet, I suspect I am trying things before they are ready.

You need a 5.4+ kernel, the latest that I can find is at: https://yadi.sk/d/pHxaRAs-tZiei/OLD/5.99/dev I am running with: Armbian_5.99_Aml-g12_Debian_buster_dev_5.4.0-rc6_20191110.img

I have a new TX3 box with the s905x3 chip and that box boots with the meson-sm1-sei610.dtb file. It works fine as a server (i.e. boots, wired ethernet, usb working). No wifi or bluetooth. I did also try to install a desktop build and the hdmi output isn't correct, colors are messed up, and sound isn't working.

I just received a new TX3 box with the s905x3 chipset. I was able to successfully install Armbian_5.99_Aml-g12_Ubuntu_bionic_dev_5.4.0-rc6_20191110.img using the meson-sm1-sei610.dtb The box boots with HDMI and ethernet working. No WIFI or Bluetooth. I was able to install on both an SD card and internal mmc. I haven't yet tried running a GUI desktop. I also tried using the dtb from 5.4 in a 5.3 environment and that does not boot. So it would appear that 5.4 is the first kernel version that supports the s905x3 chipset.

H96 Max X2 (with S905X2 cpu) 4GB Ram ad 32GB Emmc I purchased this box thinking I was getting an X96 Max (the naming of all these different boxes is very confusing). But it turns out that it works well with current builds of balbes150's Armbian. It works with the meson-g12a-x96-max-rmii.dtb. It works well installed to eMMC. The wifi does not work, and I haven't tried bluetooth or hdmi audio.