SteeMan

Find the android firmware and restore according to manufactured instructions. Is the non helpful answer. You are going to have to Google search how it can be done for your specific box. But at the end of the day, what are you trying to accomplish? It is likely that that custom fork works better than Armbian will on that TV box. As it looks like that fork was created to get wifi and other things for that box working. Using generic Armbian you most likely won't have Wifi or many other features working. (Have you read the TV box faq on what to expect from Armbian)

@Wizzard where do you see Armbian in that url? Looking at that GitHub link, that is clearly a fork of Armbian. That build has 175 changed files from the Armbian version it was forked from. You could say that it used a three year old version of the Armbian build framework, but the image built has no similarities to the aml-s9xx-box Armbian community builds you are trying to install.

That is not an Armbian build. Where did you get that build from? The Armbian download pages?

@Wizzard Notice it says "run" not "installed on emmc". Running from SD card is running it. If you have run another non-Armbian build (which you have from the SD card) then you need to reinstall android firmware to run Armbian. That isn't a guarantee that Armbian will work, but is a necessary place to start from.

Are you following the installation instructions linked to from the download page: https://www.armbian.com/amlogic-s9xx-tv-box/ The most common issue is people ignoring the following: "Note: If you have previously run other distributions on the box such as coreelec the below installation will not work. You will need to restore the original android firmware before attempting the install. coreelec changes the boot environment in ways that are incompatible with these Armbian builds." So have you previously used any build other than a genuine armbian build downloaded from the official download page? If so, you need to reinstall a clean android firmware to reset the environment to what the armbian build expects.

It has been 1000M since the aml-s9xx-box community builds were introduced two years ago. (https://github.com/armbian/build/commit/8dcab2be64c253ed6554fbcd32d901ed6c882ead#diff-4ab8640d43fd31e3a33d5d74c4723e7004b0aeb107b4d573597c2be4221a654f) The value was inherited from the previous work done by balbes150. The reason that this space is preserved on the emmc is because various parts of the native android u-boot use various data in this space, and it seems to vary on different tv boxes how much space is being used. There are android partitions that store things like the android boot screen, etd. Over time by trial and error this 1000M safety buffer was chosen as seeming to work on all (or at least most) tv boxes.

I would suggest you consider a hybrid approach. Boot partition on SD and root partition on emmc. Leave the uboot on the SD card and only transition the rest to emmc. You get the benefits of performance you are looking for (as everything other than uboot is running from emmc), but you don't have the complexities of switching your boot environment from SD to emmc all in a script. Basically you on first boot need to format your emmc, copy the root filesystem over and adjust your fstab and armbianenv.txt entries to point to the new location of your root partion. Now that itself doesn't come with protential issues, but that is a valid way to have Armbian configured (I think it is an option in armbian-install to have boot and root partitions on different media). There is a script that the amlogic tv box builds use: https://github.com/armbian/build/blob/main/config/optional/boards/aml-s9xx-box/_packages/bsp-cli/root/install-aml.sh This script is just a fairly simple example of the steps involved in moving from SD to emmc, with some very specific amlogic tvbox stuff mixed in. It may be a good starting point to think from (as opposed to armbian-install which is a lot more complex as it is generically handling a bunch of different requirements)

I was thinking of asking the same question. Personally my feeling is if you are planning on helping Armbian by working to incorporate your efforts back into Armbian then I strongly encourage your efforts. But I would recommend working with the Armbian developers on how you plan to do this, as it can be frustrating for you if you put in a lot of work into something, only to find disagreement from the Armbian community about how you are implementing something that might prevent it from being accepted. If your intention isn't to incorporate your work back into Armbian, then you are creating just another fork (like the many that already exist), which you are entitled to do since this is open source. But in that case I would request that you not use the limited Armbian resources to do that (i.e. our developers and infrastructure like these forums). These forums are for Armbian developers and users, not for use by forks of Armbian that just attempt to take from Armbian without contributing back.

You need to be more specific on the CPU. What you have mentioned is a type of cpus, you need to specify the exact CPU you are interested in. Also you need to specify the exact box you are considering as well. And also you need to explain what you are looking to use the box for. Note tjay even the best supported boxes don't have everything working. So often wifi won't work and don't expect to use these as desktop computer replacements. But they often work well for servers.

Please share the source dts along with the binary format. That way someone, perhaps you, can submit a PR and have it incorporated into Armbian.

Please provide information what you are doing. What build? What steps you have tried.

Can you update the subject with the name of your tv box

Moved post

@Pita Bread Instead of using nearly two year old images, it probably would be best to start with the most recent images: https://www.armbian.com/amlogic-s9xx-tv-box

@rafman But be aware when pointing to a specific kernel version other than what is currently used, that you also need the set of patches for that kernel that gets added on top of the mainline kernel. Since you mention wanting a 6.7 based kernel, you would find those patches in patch/kernel/archive/sunxi-6.7. (Note that at some point this whole directory will be removed as it isn't maintained, and depending on what point version of 6.7 you are wanting to use, these patches may or may not apply cleanly). So you can't just point to any random mainline kernel version and expect that all the patches necessary will exist for that particular kernel version.

Try using armbian-config to set your min/max cpu speeds, or manually edit /etc/default/cpufrequtils

Yes, that added cost goes to paying people to provide the software support that users want and need. Instead people demand software support from other people for free and get upset with Armbian and others when things don't work the way they want them too. Nothing comes for free.

That 25€ is the problem. That amount of money doesn't cover any software costs. One reason those boxes are so cheap is there is no software support. It ships with some android version and will never get a security or bugfix update. Supported boards probably cost twice as much, but there you get some limited software support. But that added cost to the board manufactuer needs to get paid for in some way (thus the higher cost of a proper SBC). The real problem is that neither cheap boxes that provide zero support nor proper SBC boards that provide limited support truly reflect the huge cost of supporting software and security updates and bug fixes for those boards long term. That is a gap that Armbian fills, but no one really is willing to pay for that huge cost of support. Everyone expects that developers should donate all their time for free to open source projects like Armbian (or any of the upstream components) so that end users can have a perfect supported set of software for free on a 25€ box.

@MaxMar These forums are for Armbian. You are not using Armbian but a fork of Armbian. The developers behind that fork use the Armbian name without permission. They do not participate in Armbian development nor do they contribute to these forums. All posts regarding their work should be on their forums.

That is a false assumption. You have to configure smb if you want any smb/samba service to be started. smb is a completely different protocol to ssh. So being able to log in via ssh has nothing to do with smb.

Ubuntu only started supporting jammy to noble upgrades with the .1 release that come out not that long ago. So the upgrade to noble has only been available for a short time. But in general, Armbian doesn't test distribution upgrades. So Armbian will never recommend you do such an upgrade as it isn't supported. However, if you know what you are doing you should be able to upgrade from jammy to noble. I've done a couple of my own boxes and they have generally gone smoothly.

Only supported boards have specific forums. All community supported boards are discussed in the Community Supported Boards section of the forum. Moved post and added the correct board tag.

Thanks for posting this

Orange-pi-3-lts is not a supported board. It is Community Maintained which means there are no stable builds, only weekly rolling release builds that use the 'beta' repository. The stable repository is only for supported boards that receive stable builds.

I suspect that is your answer as to why one boots and the other doesn't when using the same kernel