SteeMan

Board is not a supported Armbian SBC, moved to the Community Maintained forum section and reset the board tag to reflect the correct board.

Board is not a supported Armbian SBC, moved to the Community Maintained forum section and reset the board tag to reflect the correct board.

We are thrilled to launch this initiative to recognize and reward the incredible contributors who help keep Armbian running smoothly.
 
All existing and new contributors will be entering the pool to win modern powerful and sleek Intel powered workstation:
 


 
1 x Khadas Mind Premium + dock
and
1 x Khadas Mind Standard + dock

Review:
https://www.servethehome.com/khadas-mind-is-a-different-mini-pc-our-review-intel-1360p/
 
About:
 
 
More info:
https://www.armbian.com/newsflash/armbian-khadas-are-rewarding-contributors/
 
How to nominate?
Post into reply why you think certain forum member contributions stands out and should be added to the pool.

You would want to add: BUILD_MINIMAL=yes (the default is the non-minimal server build)

The instructions on above (under DIY) should be clearer to explain that.  When I looked at this earlier, I was guessing that is what the instructions assumed you needed to do (download that referenced file).
 
Edited the above instructions to clarify.

The instructions on above (under DIY) should be clearer to explain that.  When I looked at this earlier, I was guessing that is what the instructions assumed you needed to do (download that referenced file).
 
Edited the above instructions to clarify.

I deleted your other post as it is just a duplicate of this.  Please take the time to research.  There is a topic in the fourms for your type of box.  That is where your should be posting, and before you post you should read what has already been posted to see if others have already run into what you are seeing.  Don't waste other peoples time until you have used the resources available to you.
 

User space upgrades are not supported nor tested.  However I've upgraded recently a number of boxes from Focal to Jammy.  So generally they do work.  You are just using the standard Ubuntu upgrade mechanisms to do this (i.e do-release-upgrade).  But note that Ubuntu doesn't support the upgrade from Jammy to Noble yet itself.  That support comes with 24.04.1 to be released this summer.  I'm waiting for that to do my own upgrades to Noble.

Upgrade to what newer version?  A userspace version (i.e. ubuntu focal to ubuntu jammy) or a kernel upgrade (i.e. 23.02 based armbian kernel to 23.05 armbian kernel)?
For userspace it is recommeded to do an install, as upgrades are not tested (but I just did a focal to jammy upgrade last night and they generally do work).
For the kernel, you can just do apt update/upgrades to continue following the builds over time (assuming you don't have your kernel frozen in armbian-config).

Your extlinux.conf file is wrong.  The "fdt" line is separate from the fdtdir line.  You don't touch the fdtdir line and need to add the fdt line.
 
 

Moved to the correct forum.  Armbian does not support the Rock64.  It is Community Maintained, moved to the Community Maintained forums and added the correct board tag.

I was reacting to this comment.  No Armbian devs are going to look at this issue because it is reported on an unsupported board.  I was just explaining how the various support models work.  While it may or may not be a generic issue, the fact is that it is reported on an unsupported board.  With very limited resources the volunteer devs can't look into most things that are reported.  Thus I was encouraging you to contribute your time to submit a fix.  You did provide a workaround, but indicate here that you are looking for an underlying fix.  I'm just here saying that unless someone in the community steps up that isn't likely to happen.

Welcome to the world of Armbian on TV Boxes!
 
TV Boxes are not officially supported by the Armbian project.  This "TV Box" sub forum is for users interested in experimenting with Armbian on TV Boxes.
 
Overall you will be best served if you set your expectations low as to what you might be able to accomplish with your TV Box and Armbian.  Specifically you should think of your TV Box as a potential linux server - *not* as a desktop replacement.
 
Feel free to post and ask questions in the TV Box forums if you are interested.  But realize this is a peer-to-peer forum so you may or may not get an answer.  Don't expect or demand support as there are only a handful of people that participate in these forums and they are all donating their time.
 
Search is your friend.  There is a lot of historic information stored on this site.  Your question has likely already been asked previously.  However, a lot has changed over time and therefore be prepared for a lot of the information you find by searching the forums to be outdated and in some cases just plain wrong.  Even though that may be the case, please search the forums first before posting a question.  It shows you are willing to invest the time to do your part and makes those of us who volunteer our time to answering questions more likely to want to help you.
 
 
Amlogic (S9xx) based TV Boxes
1. There is a community build for Amlogic based s9xx TV Boxes - The key being community - so please contribute to make improvements
2. A single developer (@balbes150) had worked years on getting things to the state they are.
3. As of October 14th, 2020 balbes150 removed support for Amlogic CPUs, so that is the last active build from him
4. Expectations should be set low (i.e. don't expect anything to work) but if you do get the box to boot, get HDMI and wired ethernet to work, you are doing good.
5. You really shouldn't expect things like Wi-Fi, bluetooth, remote control, etc. to work.
6. There is a very small number of people on this forum/club that are able to provide any guidance.
7. Most likely no one on this forum owns your specific box and therefore generally can only provide vague guideance.
8. If you get this working on your box, it will likely only be useful for server type tasks, maybe a little light graphical desktop usage, but do not expect video playback, etc.
 
RockChip (rk3399, rk3328, rk3288, rk3228, etc) based TV Boxes
These are probably the best supported TV boxes currently.  They have the most active developers.  Feel free to post in the Rockchip TV Box sub forums your questions.
 
Allwinner (H6, H616, H313) based TV Boxes
There is no ongoing effort to support Allwinner based boxes.  Occasionally a developer will respond to a question, but in general if this is what you have, you will be expected to do a lot of work on your own, so you better be comfortable doing development for these type of boards.  You aren't likely to find anything that you can just install and have work.
 
Other Comments
The official recommendation from the Armbian project would be to not use TV Boxes and use officially supported SBCs. Taking this approach will likely result in an easier time, less hassle, better support and likely a more fully functioning device.
 
There are reasons you may choose to want to use unsupported Armbian on TV boxes, for example here are some of my ( @SteeMan ) reasons:
 
1) It is a challenge and therefore a learning opportunity.  I would never have learnt to build my own linux kernels from source if I was still exclusively using x86 hardware.  If you want a challenge you will find it here.
 
2) Price vs specs.  The Android TV boxes are built to be cheap consumer devices.  They are produced in larger quantities which drives down the per unit price.  You will generally not be able to get the same level of hardware for the same price with a standard SBC.  But that cheapness comes with - no support by the manufacturers and potentially sub-standard components.  If the manufacturers goal is to sell the lowest price box they are likely cutting corners somewhere to make that happen.
 
3) emmc is standard.  TV boxes always come with internal storage while most SBCs do not.  Again from a price/performance standpoint having internal emmc storage vs running off an SD card is a plus.  emmc storage *should* be faster and more durable than storage on an sd card.  The caveats here being that this is one of the areas that the manufacturers may cut corners.  For example I have two TX3 mini boxes that are supposed to have 16GB of emmc memory (like the other TX3 mini boxes I have), but they were instead manufactured with cheaper nand memory for which there is no mainline kernel support.  There is no visible difference between the identically packaged boxes that had emmc vs those that came with nand, other than opening the case and looking at the physical chips on the boards.
 
4) cases come standard.  TV boxes always come with cases, whereas for SBCs that is an extra cost.  For my uses having a case is a big improvement vs not having one.  A downside if that these cases are not necessarily well designed to provide adequate cooling.  So depending on your use case, overheating might be a problem.
 
5) While I own both SBCs and TV boxes, I personally find the TV boxes work best for my needs (running server based software) and I enjoy the challenge of getting them running and keeping them running with the great underlying work that the Armbian project is doing to build on top of.
 
If you have the correct expectations (set your expectations low) are looking to learn and are up for a challenge these are fun things to work with.  And I look forward to working with you on these forums.
 
 

Installing the uboot package shouldn't have any impact.  In fact from my understanding installing the package just downloads the files.  You need to run armbian-config to actually install the uboot files.

Why are you expecting these services to be pre configured for you out of the box?  Any file sharing service is a potential security hole, so any good distribution isn't going to have them enabled by default.

You are choosing to use the edge kernel, which is the 'bleeding edge" development work area,  it is expected to be unstable.  If you want fewer issues you shouldn't be using edge.

When you have been involved with Armbian for a length of time (and read a few of igor's rants 🙂 ) you will realize why what was said here will not be received well by many within Armbian.
It isn't that what you are saying isn't a reasonable comment.  The problem is that Armbian is under resourced by probably an order of magnitude.  Discussions are continually occurring on how the project can survive let alone move forward.  Many of those conversations involve discussing how more can be done with less resources, ways to cut features/scope to make what exists manageable.  So by you saying to "put [more work] onto developers in Armbian is far better than ..." you are hitting a nerve.  In the current environment that will never pass muster.  Any proposed solution needs to maintain or reduce developer work in the long term.  So any feature suggestion is going to be measured first against that metric, then secondarily by the merits of that feature. 
 
This whole dtd discussion is fundamentally a request for a new feature for Armbian.  Regardless of the merits of your focus on the end user experience, that isn't the way Armbian has handled dtbs in any of the existing boards that are supported.  I'm not saying that what exists is good or desireable, but it is what it is.  Can it be improved, sure.  Can it be improved and at the same time not increase maintenance costs going forward, maybe.
 

What build and instructions are you using?
 
https://forum.armbian.com/topic/33676-installation-instructions-for-tv-boxes-with-amlogic-cpus
 
If you are using the above instructions, note the first sentence about having ever run another distro on the box.  If so a reinstall of the original android firmware is required to reset the box to a unmodified state (I point this out as you say you have run emuelec on the box - and yes running from sd card counts as running on the box).

You would use armbian-config to enable overlays.  But in a quick look there is no such overlay in Armbian.

They aren't officially supported, but there are many TV boxes that are Community Maintained and available on the Armbian download page.
 
No need to remove the binaries, your warnings are good enough.

They aren't officially supported, but there are many TV boxes that are Community Maintained and available on the Armbian download page.
 
No need to remove the binaries, your warnings are good enough.

This board isn't a supported by Armbian.  Moved to Community Supported/Unmaintained section of forums.

@ReneHegewald I'll add a couple of points to what @Werner has already mentioned.
The board you are using RockPi 5B is not supported by Armbian.  It is Community supported.  That means Armbian doesn't have any resources that work on this board.  All support for the board is done by community members like you.  There generally is little that happens to community supported boards.  Usually someone will submit some work to get the board initially setup and then shortly after disappear and nothing happens to the board again until it stops building at all and then it gets dropped.  Unfortunately this is the reality of support for these boards.  You are using software for free and it takes significant resources (both money and time) to make a board work well.  There are very few people that are willing to donate a hundred hours of time to work on getting a board fully supported and maintain it over time with no compensation.  Unfortunately the manufactures of these boards take advantage of the open source community.  They in house initially do some minimum work to get something running, then once released move on to their next board and don't support the software and hope the open source community does it for free. 
The best thing you can do, is build up your skills and contribute back to the community in exchange for the free software you are using.

@ReneHegewald I'll add a couple of points to what @Werner has already mentioned.
The board you are using RockPi 5B is not supported by Armbian.  It is Community supported.  That means Armbian doesn't have any resources that work on this board.  All support for the board is done by community members like you.  There generally is little that happens to community supported boards.  Usually someone will submit some work to get the board initially setup and then shortly after disappear and nothing happens to the board again until it stops building at all and then it gets dropped.  Unfortunately this is the reality of support for these boards.  You are using software for free and it takes significant resources (both money and time) to make a board work well.  There are very few people that are willing to donate a hundred hours of time to work on getting a board fully supported and maintain it over time with no compensation.  Unfortunately the manufactures of these boards take advantage of the open source community.  They in house initially do some minimum work to get something running, then once released move on to their next board and don't support the software and hope the open source community does it for free. 
The best thing you can do, is build up your skills and contribute back to the community in exchange for the free software you are using.

Actually the forums are what you want to follow.  The forums are the board issue logging system.  Github issues are only for build system issues.  If the r2s and r2s plus are boards you can help with (they are community maintained and don't have any Armbian staff support). You can fix issues on them and submit PRs to improve them.