mkultra

I use Q96 Max to run Pi-hole, Home Assistant in supervised mode, WireGuard, NFS, qBittorrent and Apache. I have openwrt box setup so that it redirects all outgoing DNS to my Pi-hole instance, and since I have wireguard on my phone, I get zero advertisement even on google apps.

cheers but no difference, same error
edit: the only slight change I had to do was this cos the program wouldn't compile at first:
Edit the main.cpp line 1491 from
static inline uint32_t convertChipType(const char* chip) {
char buffer[5];
memset(buffer, 0, sizeof(buffer));
to
static inline uint32_t convertChipType(const char* chip) {
char buffer[558];
memset(buffer, 0, sizeof(buffer));
No more error.
https://github.com/rockchip-linux/rkdeveloptool/issues/55

@mkultra yes, you can now unhold the packages

UPDATE!!
 
Hello, I'm pleased to announce that rk3318 CSC configuration has been accepted into mainline kernel!.
This means that next Armbian release (probably August) will provide regular kernel upgrades offered by Armbian ecosystem via normal apt upgrade command.
Until then, please stay stick to the usual manual upgrade!
 
But there is something more: new update for the rk3318/rk3328 images!
Most important changes:
Kernel upgraded to version v5.18.6 Memory clock set to 667 MHz (was 333 MHz), providing a nice boost in general, desktop and GPU performance; despite this works fine on my board I always warn you to test images first via sdcard Introduces MGLRU patches from @yuzhaogoogle (you can read about here and search google for more details), which should provide much snappier experience especially on low-memory devices You can find the images and deb packages for upgrades browsing the directory pointed on first page as usual.
 
You can visit the Armbian MGLRU topic, if you have questions about the features or kernel issues (like crash dumps which involve kswapd, for example)
 
 

Well, usually f2fs is the generally recommended filesystem for flash-based devices, but it's a matter of personal opinion, since many people say they get good results with btrfs or even ext4...
 

easy peasy!
ie
apt install docker.io apparmor
docker pull adguard/adguardhome:beta
docker run blah blah
eg https://hub.docker.com/r/adguard/adguardhome
have fun!
edit: to add a bit more...
with docker you download images then you 'create a container' which you then just stop/start
so ie I've just created a jellyfin container with
docker pull hotio/jellyfin:release
docker run --rm \ --name jellyfin \ -p 8096:8096 \ -e PUID=1000 \ -e PGID=1000 \ -e UMASK=002 \ -e TZ="Etc/UTC"  \ hotio/jellyfin
now I just point a browser to ip:8096
keep a list of useful docker commands like
docker images
docker rmi <image name> (to remove an image)
docker ps -a (to list your containers)
docker rm <container>
docker stop/start <container>
 

­DISCLAIMER (PLEASE READ): everything you can find in this thread (binaries, texts, code snippets, etc...) are provided AS-IS and are not part of official Armbian project. For this reason not people from Armbian project nor myself are responsible for misuse or loss of functionality of hardware.

Please don't ask about support or assistance in other non-community forums nor in the official Armbian github repository, instead post your questions in this thread, in the TV Boxes forum section (hardware related) or in the Peer-to-peer support section (general linux/software related).

Thank you!
 
This thread is to give stable and mature long-term range support to rk3318/rk3328 found in many tv boxes in Armbian project as Community Supported Configuration (CSC).
The current work is mainlined into Armbian project, but your mileage may vary; most recent developments live on my personal fork on github -> here <-
 
Important notes: is just a personal opinion, but apparently widely supported, that rk3318 chip is not an official rockchip part. They probably are scrap rk3328 parts which have not passed conformance tests but are sold anyway to tv boxes manufacturers. They don’t reach the same operating frequency of the rk3328, have much higher leakage currents (and thus higher temperatures) and often the boards they are installed on are low quality with low quality components, in fact a very very common issue is the eMMC failure due to bad parts and bad soldering. So said, I personally suggest not to buy any rk3318 tv box, but instead find a properly supported SBC (Single Board Computer) if you need a reliable product. In the unfortunate case you already have such product, this thread may help you have some fun with them.
 
What works:
    • Works on RK3318 and RK3328 TV boxes with DDR3 memories
    • Mainline u-boot
    • Mainline ATF provided as Trusted Execution Environment
    • All 4 cores are working
    • Ethernet
    • Serial UART (configured at stock 1.5Mbps)
    • Thermals and frequency scaling
    • OTG USB 2.0 port (also as boot device!)
    • EHCI/OHCI USB 2.0 ports and XHCI USB 3.0 ports
    • MMC subsystem (including , SD and sdio devices)
    • Hardware video acceleration (fully supported via RKMPP on legacy kernel, support via hantro and rkvdec kernel driver on mainline)
    • Various WIFI over SDIO are supported
    • Full acceleration on legacy kernel and mainline kernel
    • U-boot boot order priority: first the sdcard, then the USB OTG port and eventually the internal ; you can install u-boot (and the whole system) in the internal and u-boot will always check for images on external sdcard/USB first.
 
Unbrick:
Technically, rockchip devices cannot be bricked. If the internal flash does not contain a bootable system, they will always boot from the sdcard. If, for a reason, the bootable system on the internal flash is corrupted or is unable to boot correctly, you can always force the maskrom mode shorting the clock pin on the PCB. The procedure is explained here for rk322x, but for rk3318/28 is the same.

In most of the rk3318/28 boards, shorting the clock pin is difficult or impossible because eMMC are BGA chips with no exposed pins. Pay double attention when burning something on the internal flash memory and always test first the image booting from the sdcard to be sure it works before burning anything in internal flash.
 
This is a list of posts where forum users have been able to spot the eMMC clock pin to trigger the maskrom mode:
H96 Max+ (board signature: RK3318_V1.4) by @Gausus X88 PRO 10 (board signature: X88_PRO_B) by @mathgaming Ninkbox N1 Max RK3318 by @enigmasphinx  
 
Partecipation and debugging:
If you want to partecipate or need help debugging issues, do not hesitate to share your experience with the installation procedure of the boxes.
In case of issues and missed support, provide as many as possible of these things is very useful to try and bring support for an unsupported board:
 
some photos of both sides of the board. Details of the eMMC, DDR and Wifi chips are very useful! upload the device tree binary (dtb) of your device. We can understand a lot of things of the hardware from that small piece of data; and alternative is a link to the original firmware (you can do a full backup with the Multitool); dmesg and other logs (use armbianmonitor -u that automatically collects and uploads the logs online) attach a serial converter to the device and provide the output of the serial port;  
Multimedia:
Mainline kernel: 3D acceleration is provided by Lima driver and is already enabled. Hardware video decoding: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/19258-testing-hardware-video-decoding-rockchip-allwinner/ Legacy kernel: If you need multimedia features, like OpenGL/OpenGL ES acceleration, hardware accelerated Kodi, ffmpeg and mpv you can take a look to this post  
Installation (via SD card):
Building:
You can build your own image follow the common steps to build armbian for other tv boxes devices: when you are in the moment to choose the target board, switch to /TVB/ boards and select "rk3318-box" from the list.
   
Prebuilt images:
Archived images - built by Armbian servers and GPG-signed: https://imola.armbian.com/dl/rk3318-box/archive/ Nightly stables - built from trunk by Armbian servers and GPG-signed: https://github.com/armbian/community Stables provided by me (unsigned): https://users.armbian.com/jock/rk3318/  
Multitool:
Multitool - A small but powerful image for RK3318/RK3328 TV Box maintenance. Download it from here  
Quick installation instructions on eMMC:
Build or download your preferred Armbian image and a copy of the Multitool; Burn the Multitool on an SD card; once done, place the Armbian image in images folder of the SD card NTFS partition; Plug the SD card in the TV box and plug in the power cord. After some seconds the blue led starts blinking and the Multitool appears; OPTIONAL: you can do a backup of the existing firmware with "Backup flash" menu option; Choose "Burn image to flash" from the menu, then select the destination device (usually mmcblk2) and the image to burn; Wait for the process to complete, then choose "Shutdown" from main menu; Unplug the power cord and the SD card, then replug the power cord; Wait for 10 seconds, then the led should start blinking and HDMI will turn on. The first time the boot process will take a couple of minutes or more because the filesystem is going to be resized, so be patient and wait for the login prompt. On first boot you will be asked for entering a password for root user of your choice and the name and password for a regular user Run rk3318-config to configure the board specific options Run armbian-config to configure timezone, locales and other personal options Congratulations, Armbian is now installed!  
Despite the procedure above is simple and reliable, I always recommend to first test that your device boots Armbian images from SD Card.
Due to the really large hardware variety, there is the rare chance that the images proposed here may not boot. If a bad image is burned in , the box may not boot anymore forcing you to follow the unbrick section at the top of this post.
 
Quick installation instructions to boot from SD Card:
If you are already running Armbian from eMMC, skip to the next step. Instead if you are running the original firmware you need to first erase the internal flash; to do so download the Multitool, burn it on an SD Card, plug the SD Card and power the TV Box. Use "Backup flash" if you want to do a backup of the existing firmware, then choose "Erase flash" menu option. Build or download your preferred Armbian image; Uncompress and burn the Armbian image on the SD Card; Plug the SD Card in the TV Box and power it on; Wait for 10 seconds, then the led should start blinking and HDMI will turn on. The first time the boot process will take a couple of minutes or more because the filesystem is going to be resized, so be patient and wait for the login prompt; On first boot you will be asked for entering a password for root user of your choice and the name and password for a regular user Run rk3318-config to configure the board specific options Run armbian-config to configure timezone, locales and other personal options, or also to transfer the SD Card installation to internal ; Congratulations, Armbian is running from SD Card!  
Tutorial - How to install Armbian on your TV Box (by @awawa) :
https://www.hyperhdr.eu/2022/01/tv-box-mania-i-part-x88-pro-10.html
A note about boot device order:
With Armbian also comes mainline U-boot. If you install Armbian, the bootloader will look for valid bootable images in this order:
External SD Card External USB Stick in OTG Port Internal  
The Multitool does not boot / How to burn image directly on eMMC:
 
Some boards have the sdcard attached to an auxiliary (called also sdmmc_ext or external) controller which is not the common one.
Forum findings declare that those boards are not able to boot from sdcard with stock firmware and they neither do in maskrom mode: the stock firmware always boots even if you put the multitool on sdcard.
 
In such case, burning images directly on eMMC is the only way to have a working Armbian installation.
You can follow these instructions by @fabiobassa to burn images directly on eMMC:
 
https://forum.armbian.com/topic/17597-csc-armbian-for-rk3318rk3328-tv-box-boards/?do=findComment&comment=130453
 
Notes and special hardware:
Script to change DDR memory frequency here Wireless chip AP2734, SP2734, HY2734C and similars: they are clones of AmPAK AP6334 which is combo wifi + bluetooth of broadcom BCM4334/B0 chips. You may need a special nvram file, instructions by @paradigman are here  
Critics, suggestions and contributions are welcome!
 
Credits:
@fabiobassa for his ideas, inspiration, great generosity in giving the boards for development and testing. The project of bringing rk3318 into armbian would not have begun without his support! @hexdump for his precious support in early testing, ideas and suggestions
@MX10.AC2Nfor his patience in testing mxq-rk3328-d4 board support
All the rockhip64 maintainers at Armbian project who have done and do most of the work to support the platform
 
 

You can try YUNoHost, it's cool I use it on my beelink gt-king pro with armbian-meson64 works fine and have many apps.
Today I try install of Swizzin, on my RK3328 box that's work ( install process need root user "su -" )
it's another possibility..
https://github.com/swizzin/swizzin
https://swizzin.ltd/getting-started/

i'm intrigued, why do poor, elderly people need a linux server? 

!! DEPRECATED !!
Instructions in this thread are oudated and superseded by the new experimental APT repository for hardware video decoding ffmpeg.
Please refer to this thread from now on!
 
Hello, recent upgrades to armbian are regarding kernel 5.15.
I noticed that many v4l2 fixes and enhancements went into this release, so I decided to compile ffmpeg using LibreELEC patched version and mpv over it.
mpv turns out to be statically linked with ffmpeg, so I propose it here for people who is interested in cutting edge kernel and wants to do some tests.
 
This has been tested on Debian Bullseye and Ubuntu Hirsute on following platforms:
Rockchip RK3228/9 (kernel 5.10, 5.14) Rockchip RK3288 (kernel 5.14) Rockchip RK3318/28 (kernel 5.15)  
It should work on allwinner platforms too, but I didn't test it there.
Binaries are built by me on developing boards.
 
The binary for armhf is available here
The binary for arm64 is available here
 
Copy the binary into /usr/local/bin directory of your system (mpv-armhf for 32 bit systems, mpv-arm64 for 64 bit systems):
sudo cp mpv-armhf /usr/local/bin/mpv  
Install dependencies for Debian Bullseye and Ubuntu Hirsute:
apt install libass9 libbluray2 librubberband2 libsdl2-2.0-0 libva-drm2 libva-wayland2 libva-x11-2 libva2 libvdpau1 libx264-160 libx265-192 libxss1 libxv1 libfdk-aac2  
I have had issues with dependencies on Debian Buster/Ubuntu Focal, in particular libx264-160 and libx265-192 are not available there.
I Solved the issue downloading the packages from Debian Bullseye web page and manually installing them.
There may be the need for some other dependency depending upon your actual installation.
 
Run mpv in a virtual terminal (videos up to 4K) with this CLI:
mpv --vo=gpu --hwdec=drm --gpu-hwdec-interop=drmprime-drm --drm-draw-plane=overlay --drm-drmprime-video-plane=primary <video.mp4>  
Mpv can be run in X11 with this other CLI, but due to buffer copying it requires a good CPU - rk3228 and rk3328 won't even play 720p, rk3288 do 720p fine:
mpv --vo=gpu --hwdec=auto-copy --gpu-context=x11egl --gpu-hwdec-interop=drmprime-drm <video.mp4>  
This is an experiment and your mileage may vary a lot:
H.264 codec should be well supported around the boards; H.265 has more limited support VP8 should be generally supported VP9 seems to still require some work.

Update!
 
New testing minimal and xfce desktop debian images are available on first page!
Latest kernel 5.15: plenty of fixes and upgrades for hardware video decoding Initial (and untested) support for boards with sdcard on external controller U-boot v2021.07, should make USB2 boot more reliable To test hardware video decoding capabilities follow this link to a tutorial with prebuilt mpv binary and instructions on how to use it.

it appears that someone has made a method to install libreelec for 3318/3328 on an sd card simply write the img file from libreelec to a usb sd card reader then fire up vmware with ubuntu and mount the usb sd in vmware and have the trust.img on the vm and send the command as root 
dd if=trust.img of=/dev/sdb seek=24576
unmount ant shut down the vm, then edit /extlinux/extlinux.conf to point to rk3318-box.dtb
then put the rk3318-box.dtb wherever you pointed the /extlinux/extlinux.conf file to.
eject the usb sd adapter from windows.
insert the sd card into the box and boot it up, it will resize the sd card to any remaining free space for libreelec
use version 10.0.1 rk3328-arm a1 box and it mostly works except bt/wifi/led/ir, but everything else more or less works normally

ok I just discovered the 'like icon' - I wasn't seeing it on my bright monitor so apologies for the 'late likes' 
will revisit the interesting rkdeveloptool tomorrow but still getting some errors
$sudo ./rkdeveloptool db MiniLoaderAll.bin
Creating Comm Object failed!
 

cheers but no difference, same error
edit: the only slight change I had to do was this cos the program wouldn't compile at first:
Edit the main.cpp line 1491 from
static inline uint32_t convertChipType(const char* chip) {
char buffer[5];
memset(buffer, 0, sizeof(buffer));
to
static inline uint32_t convertChipType(const char* chip) {
char buffer[558];
memset(buffer, 0, sizeof(buffer));
No more error.
https://github.com/rockchip-linux/rkdeveloptool/issues/55

making a bit of progress lol
It goes into 'mask mode' without shorting anything.....just toothpick and diy bodged male to male USB cable in the USB2 port
Bus 005 Device 008: ID 2207:320c Fuzhou Rockchip Electronics Company RK3328 in Mask ROM mode
BUT when I try and flash I get an error that I can't solve at the mo 
sudo ./flash_tool.sh -c rk3328 -p system -i image/image.zip
PARTITIONS OFFSET: 0 sectors.
The device does not support this operation!
 

@Gaususcool find cheers
I found this interesting procedure for reflashing, especially if you use linux  https://www.armbian.com/z28-pro/

help please! I hosed this box some months ago, tried the multitool image but nothing
strangely the first time I tried that latest debian image from the 1st post I got a H96 Max+ splash screen and I got a bit excited but nothing afterwards and even when I burnt the SD card again I got nothing 
anyone know where pins 7 and 8 on the BGA chip are? Or is there any point trying to do the UART serial thing?
Thanks!
 

@mkultra
 
If you go to my post of 5 November you will find all the necessary instructions. You need upload a loader before doing anything
 
If you are tired or lazy to read the whole 3ad... Well...... that might be a obstacle...... ;-)

@mkultra

It seems to me that the information you are getting is wrong, as @jockalready said to you. you have two possibilities:

1) if effectively you already are in MASROM it means that you HAVEN'T ANY MINILODER  into your board. Maybe some previous attempt erased miniloader
2) you reporting bad infos and the only method to understand in which mode you are is using rkdeveloptool and not the tool you are using ( flash tool)

Flash tool " speaks " to the board using some PRE-DEFINED partitions contained in a text file called rkparameter... infact the parameter " -p system " would tell to the tool to program ONLY the partition called " system".
That approach is wrong since we use gpt partitioning now so leave alone that tool and compile rkdeveloptool

That is not maskrom mode, lsusb is telling you a wrong information.
You are in rockusb mode, which is provided by u-boot and allows limited operation.
 
To enter maskrom mode from rockusb mode, you need to get rkdeveloptool from rockchip github repository and run rkdeveloptool rd 3

I have heard lots of people saying this, actually.
 
I did not immediately realize the importance of your "multiarch" comment (especially for us here at Armbian!), until I was reading something at r/docker about someone who was trying to use x86 container on ARM which of course is not going to work.  As containers are, after all, just some upper part of filesystem overlay + some isolation, but still relying on underlying hardware of course.
 
I went to linuxservers.io and was checking out their blog last night, some good and relevant articles there, IMO.  Seem like pretty cool bunch of dudes.    A much smaller (and less slickly marketed) group than I was expecting, to be honest, based on their very outsized awareness / reputation in container circles around the Internet already.  Good for them!
 
---
 
Another article I came across some time ago, which I thought was a pretty good exposition of some of these various technologies and products I keep reading about around (and under) containers, including which companies they came from, along with a bit of history:
 
You Don’t Have to Use Docker Anymore
 
That sort of thing is very valuable for someone like me that is new to it all and may not have been following the evolution of it all along as some of you have.  I think it's also important to understand what companies are behind which technologies and why, as an important metric before investing any significant amount of my own precious personal resources (time, energy) into learning any more about said technologies (much less using or becoming more "invested" in them).
 
One of main things I have been picking lanefu brain about is why he like certain tools he does in preference to Docker.  I don't think they mention his preferred tools in the above article, however I suspect he may agree with the general gist of it.

Generally speaking, there are several boards meeting your requirements, as "server" use-cases (as opposed to "desktop") have been much better supported for a much longer time now.  I used Cubietruck for such tasks for very long time (and still do) however there are better boards available nowadays for actually even less money (read on).
 
Now to specifics, I used to think SATA was necessary, too, until I read this glowing review of particular USB to SATA adapter by tkaiser (from 2017!).  Surprisingly, this device is still available here.  I have several of them and they have worked well for me.
 
If you are willing to consider such adapter (instead of strictly sticking with SATA requirement, which as you noticed is more rare), this of course open up the possibilities a lot.  When I needed to buy another little "server" board a year or two ago, I chose ODROID-XU4 at that time which are (like Cubietruck) still 32-bit, however still quite powerful with a lot of CPU and USB3 and RAM, etc. and can be had for ~60 USD these days.  Other than the adapter caveat, this meet all your requirements and I think you might be happy with, I know I (and others) have been.  I think they went down in price because they are "only 32-bit" however this means (to me) just a good deal to be had (maybe?).    To make "apples to apples" comparison, you will need to add the price of PSU, eMMC, SATA adapter, etc. to that figure, though.
 
And that is where I personally am at, currently.
 
Now going forward, there are a lot more newer and more interesting boards, especially some of RK3399 (64-bit) based ones as Werner brought up.  One of these will probably be my next purchase at some point.  They will cost a little more (I think?) but as always, add costs of PSU, flash (eMMC or sdcard), etc. to get the full picture on any price comparison.  Some of RK3399 even support fancy stuff like NVMe, etc.
 
One final generality, I always recommend to stick to Armbian Supported Devices list as a starting point for any research.  But you probably know that already.    And remember, even some boards that look great "on paper" can have little gotchas, or be better for this use case or that, e.g., N2 have most raw power in CPU but is limited by I/O.
 
I learned that on some NicoD (YouTube) video, he has made some good ones, maybe you want to check them out.  He is focused more on "desktop" usage, but has a lot more experience with a lot more boards than I do, especially some of these newer ones and so I find his videos still very informative.
 
Let us know your thoughts more and how your research is coming along, if the right person see your post maybe they save you from one particular little problem or another.