mdel

@jeanrhum thx for the links @Shimon i have terminal installed but that android is not rooted so i need to do that first to get full access..

[ This thread started more or less here : And what do you think about porting to a cheap Android TVBox ] If anyone's interested we can discuss Armbian or linux for those rk3288 devices here. I'll start with mine (Q8 without front panel) which is the XT-Q8L-V10 from enybox (Chiptrip Q8 on gearbest or that other EKB328 on Aliexpress with front panel). I have a feeling that those boards are discontinued and being put on sale as end of stock. There are various other boxes with rk3288 which prices are pretty high (>80e) and were probably seen at some point as high end boxes. Other threads for that board can be found here : - freaktab.com serial header thread - Timp74 bitbucket.org (both pretty old sources from mid 2015) the board is the following : (front panel is optional) I already own and use many arm boards, regular ones like raspberry pi, odroid, orange pi and tv boxes mainly amlogic ones from s805 to s912. I favor amlogic for their large availability and good linux and armbian support (thx to @balbes150 ). My decision of trying to get a working rk3288 linux, is only driven by the high single core performance of that soc. Mostly in an (high speed >100Mbps) openvpn context (openssl), some figures showed it was 30-40% faster than the s905 which is already quite fast compared to other allwinner socs. I'm only looking for cheap tv boxes and for any price over 50e i would turn to dev boards with good support. The idea is to take advantage of the recent popularity of rk3288 dev boards, Miqi and asus tinker although other boards already existed which is not surprising considering that soc entered the market in 2014. Rockchip seems to be very active on the linux front and rk3288 is getting mainline uboot / kernel support.

yup sorry i won't hijack you thread anymore, i'll post to a new one.

I received my "Q8" box from gearbest, it's the exact same board without front panel board. i need to find a way to root that android 4.4.2 so i can get access to uboot env and try sd card or tftp boot. i'll have to study the miqi boot process and see if it has some similar loading of external boot script as aml_autoscript on amlogic. I'm more worried not seeing a serial header on the board, i have one weird candidate (3 pins labelled "G - R"). On that matter, i wanted to ask if the otg micro usb port present is used in any way to debug those rockchip boards ? does it provide uboot serial access and so on ? yup RTL8211E is on the bottom side surprisingly. My initial iperf tests from android are quite promising, i got about 850-900Mbps in both directions.

thx for those images i will test them shortly. Do you need tests on both s905 and s905x (i also have s912), do you want testers to check for specific things ? i'm using your latest 5.27 image on emmc, it seems to work fine, i haven't had time to try some fbset things to see if i can get hdmi output on my a95x (s905).

x86 is here http://www.gearbest.com/tv-box-mini-pc/pp_562952.html?wid=21 Partitions are mostly android related (at least for the android image provided by the manufacturer), i don't know for sure but i remember seeing some emmc with non android scheme but if you get it wrong you'll brick your device. if you clear your emmc you will brick the device, the same way you flash a wrong uboot to it. uboot in on the emmc and it initiates alternate boot (sd / usb). i don't now about low level boot sequence (before uboot), it's usually related to your specific soc or arm platform. unbricking a really bricked device involves flashing the emmc with an external tool and usually making a hardware modification to the circuit (shorting pins, nand only ?). but other more experienced users will tell you more about that..

for your info it looks like the "nofail" option (with or without x-systemd.device-timeout) produces weird behaviors when mounting the drive. it will often fail to actually mount it without reporting an error. When executing the command manually after the system has booted, mount executes without error, you can see the drive flashing but the mount point is not set. i reverted to "noauto", which prevents boot failure and mount from rc.local or manually will not fail.

i am running @balbes150 armbian ubuntu xenial server image (aarch64) on an s905 box. i can install docker.io from the ubuntu repository (apt-get install docker.io), then run : docker run aarch64/hello-world Unable to find image 'aarch64/hello-world:latest' locally latest: Pulling from aarch64/hello-world 8c5c4ac25476: Pull complete Digest: sha256:bd1722550b97668b23ede297abf824d4855f4d9f600dab7b4db1a963dae7ec9e Status: Downloaded newer image for aarch64/hello-world:latest Hello from Docker on arm64! This message shows that your installation appears to be working correctly. To generate this message, Docker took the following steps: 1. The Docker client contacted the Docker daemon. 2. The Docker daemon pulled the "hello-world" image from the Docker Hub. 3. The Docker daemon created a new container from that image which runs the executable that produces the output you are currently reading. 4. The Docker daemon streamed that output to the Docker client, which sent it to your terminal. To try something more ambitious, you can run an Ubuntu container with: $ docker run -it ubuntu bash Share images, automate workflows, and more with a free Docker ID: https://cloud.docker.com/ For more examples and ideas, visit: https://docs.docker.com/engine/userguide/ i had to use "run aarch64/hello-world", otherwise "run hello-word" would fetch the (arm ?) version and throw an "exec format error".. so i don't know if you will be able to run "armhf" containers, i don't know much about docker and don't use it personally.

okay well we'll have to hope that the kernel will not be tailored to very specific boards then. rockchip-linux seems "extremely" active compared to what i can see of allwinner / amlogic, any reason why you're not interested in their socs ? Right the PHY is up top near the hdmi connector then, i can never remember if those socs output directly to hdmi or not.. Okay yeah usb hub well, if you can reclaim the otg port maybe you get two hosts. Traces were kind of indicating that the usb ports were connected to the soc but well.. What kind of settings are you referring to ? I think you already told me about some timings (configuration of the PHY chip ?) and traces length but i couldn't find that post back.. i read on that thread "According to a user of Firefly forum , i modded the RX Delay of the gmac from 10 to 16" (he refers to the DTS file) I also noticed while testing my poor S912 Gbe box (barely 100Mbps uplink) that trying various dtb would influence that, but did not go any further. frankly i'd be perfectly satisfied with 400-500Mbps uplink (we "only" have 200Mbps net uplink here and lans are on powerline adapters almost everywhere so it'll never get that high) and 800Mps downlink..

i expect it will, and i suppose it will greatly depend on the quality of the kernel source provided by the MiQi or Asus projects.. But i can already see that the official Rockchip git (linux kernel) is quite active. @tkaiser will probably elaborate on that front. That's another nice cheap one i see, and very good to see it has gigabit, i hope my Q8 will be as well. Could i ask you to test the Gigabit speed quality on your android (adb or terminal with iperf or iperf3). Also i don't see serial headers on your picture, did you locate it ? It would also be nice to see if you can access command prompt i uboot. But considering its price, if your Gbe tests are good, i'll probably order one of those. -- edit -- can you tell me what's the reference of the small chip next to the mini/micro usb port ? thx

fstab is okay, i just added the "nofail" option that we discussed on the other tread. /boot/ is empty, only your script : ls -lA /boot/ total 4 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1676 Mar 27 09:13 amlogics905x_init.sh

i rebooted multiple times to try and fix my fstab i also tried to use run /boot/amlogics905x_init.sh manually, it returns "-en", from your "echo -en "\033[?25h"" probably the screen stays black and does not "move" i also tried to plug a usb keyboard on the box to see if keypresses would wake up the screen but nothing.

Well the simple way to look at it is to consider that "root is not a user" (so you should not use it). "root" is more like the "System" account on Windows, which you never use as a user. On windows you also immediately have a user account that you are forced to create during install. And that user will be an Administrator (part of the Administrators group) of the system, so it will also have the privileges to destroy your windows but windows will have the ability to alert you. On linux if you are root, no one will ever tell you that you're doing something dangerous, which in itself is a real problem. And finally on windows you also have the "Administrator" account which is disabled by default and is a real user account. Personally i always enable it (with a strong password of course), that way if (when) your user profile gets corrupted i can fix it easily. To my knowledge there's no lilo on arm devices (lilo is old, now it's grub/grub2 we use on linux) . But you can change the boot parameters from the system you're running (before reboot). So you could change the boot parameters (boot from sdcard or emmc), thus having android on emmc and linux on sdcard. You will also now find cheap (less than 100e) x86 (intel atom) boxes which will be able to have anything you want, they are basically regular PC that will run windows or linux.

@balbes150 i have installed Armbian_5.27_S9xxx_Ubuntu_xenial_3.14.29_server_20170323.img to my a95x emmc using your install.sh script. The system boot fine from emmc, i connect through ssh, but has no display on hdmi, black screen, monitor to sleep. sdcard boot (exact same image) has correct hdmi output. I won't have much time debugging this so i'm just reporting it for now, i'm using my second a95x box (with serial) to test something else and i can't use it to flash the emmc right now. But i'll be able to test with serial debug later this week if you need. I've installed my vpn gateway on that a95x and will use it for a couple of weeks to see how it runs.

thx it worked it's also recommended to use x-systemd.device-timeout=1 along with nofail, otherwise timeout is 90 sec, but here the boot won't wait for that timeout. Also it adds a "TIME" error to the boot log..

the system boots but stops at : systemd[1]: Mounting Configuration File System... [ 10.139505@3] systemd[1]: Started Load/Save Random Seed. [ 10.159503@3] systemd[1]: Reached target Swap. [ 10.175676@3] systemd[1]: Started Create Static Device Nodes in /dev. [ 10.177515@0] sdio: new high speed SDIO card at address 0001 [ 10.177685@1] sdio: clock 50000000, 4-bit-bus-width [ 10.177685@1] [ 10.177686@1] [sdio_reinit] finish [ 10.229372@1] aml_nftl_dev: module license 'Proprietary' taints kernel. [ 10.234908@3] systemd[1]: Reached target Local File Systems (Pre). [ 10.243565@2] Disabling lock debugging due to kernel taint [ 10.259088@3] systemd[1]: Mounting /tmp... [ 10.272425@3] systemd[1]: Starting udev Kernel Device Manager... [ 10.285815@3] systemd[1]: Mounted /tmp. [ 10.297885@3] systemd[1]: Started Load Kernel Modules. [ 10.317779@3] systemd[1]: Starting Apply Kernel Variables... [ 10.330854@3] systemd[1]: Mounting Configuration File System... Give root password for maintenance (or press Control-D to continue): this is simply because it can't mount that USBLinux partition (which s not connected to the box) as set in fstab. it just drops to maintenance prompt .. here's some debug info showing that nothing should be wrong on that system : i've attached, the fstab error boot and full correct boot serial data. looking at the end, this is the only thing different : [ 10.479897@1] systemd[1]: Mounting Configuration File System... [ 10.495994@1] systemd[1]: Starting Apply Kernel Variables... [ 10.522178@1] systemd[1]: Mounted Configuration File System. Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS amlogic-s905x ttyS0 amlogic-s905x login: i don't remember that all fstab (non system) entries absolutely have to be present, in order for the system to fully boot .. ? Am i wrong ? [ there seem to be some differences between 14.04 and 16.04 with mountall ] screenlog.fstaberror screenlog.fullboot

yes armbian first login is : root / 1234 it will ask you to modify the root password immediately and then will ask to create a "real" user. "root" is not a regular user, for example some applications in linux will refuse to run as root. The convention is that it's bad practice to log in as root on linux, simply to avoid making errors that can't be fixed and for (system and user) security reasons. You usually log in with your user account and then use "sudo" to perform privileged "root" actions.

okay it's weird, i don't think the sdcard is corrupted at all. it looks like it fails to recovery login because of a fstab entry !? while configuring my new sdcard, i got the same problem after a clean reboot. As the only thing i changed was the fstab file, i just commented the USB disk line and then it booted again.. PARTUUID=9ca0ead7-01 /media/USBLinux ext4 rw,noatime,nodiratime,data=writeback 0 0 This is a usb disc that was not plugged in.. Of course adding "noauto" solves the problem but that's not what i want. Is this a normal ubuntu 16.04 behaviour ?

yes you can remove nexbox_a95x_s905.dtb, if it's not working it's better to remove it. i'll try to convert nexbox_a95x_s905.dtb to dts again and compare it to my original version to see if things are different.

rebooting again with your Armbian_5.27_S9xxx_Ubuntu_xenial_3.14.29_server_20170323.img image and gxbb_p201.dtb video display is ok now, so the videos errors i saw earlier may not be a real bug.

would it help if i gave you the dtb in bin format taken from the android update file ? i think it'll be exactly the same, i only converted the bin to dts with linux tools and didn't get any errors or warnings in doing that.. Anyways it's not very important, the box seems to run fine with the generic gxbb_p201.dtb And with your new images the second usb port works directly, i don't need to activate it with the init script..

i did the same thing i usually do : cp /boot/dtb/nexbox_a95x_s905.dtb /boot/dtb.img i have 2 a95x s905 boxes here, i don't have serial on that second one, but it won't boot either.

@balbes150 tested your image (Armbian_5.27_S9xxx_Ubuntu_xenial_3.14.29_server_20170323.img) this morning with the nexbox_a95x_s905.dtb on the box from which my dts was extracted but it didn't boot. i've attached the serial boot log, it hangs there, i powered off after 1 minute. using the other file "gxbb_p201.dtb", it boots fine. -- edit -- [ I just noticed that the hdmi video output is not displayed properly (i can see lines of "text", but all the chars are unreadable). i believe it was okay with the previous image i've tested (Armbian_5.26_S9xxx_Ubuntu_xenial_3.14.29_server_20170302.img.xz), but i don't look at the screen so i may be wrong, i can test an older image if you want. ] rebooting a second time, the display is ok so it's not a permanent bug introduced by that image. screenlog.0.a95xs905dtb

i'm having a problem i don't understand. i'm using @balbes150 armbian ubuntu xenial image for s905 (sticky thread above) on nexbox a95x s905 1G/8G box. the system runs from sdcard without problems, i've been using a previous debian image for about 6 months without any problems. i recently had to modify the box physical setup and touching it (simply pluging an usb cable), the power connector switched off (very annoying thing about those a95x boxes). After that the system would not boot again (no screen display) so i simply figured the sdcard got corrupted. that's what seems to have happened as using a serial connector i get the kernel boot message which at some point hangs and breaks like this : Give root password for maintenance (or press Control-D to continue): last lines : i have attached the full boot log. so i tried fsck.ext4 and it gives me that on the live system : root@amlogic-s905x:~ fsck.ext4 -n -f /dev/mmcblk1p2 e2fsck 1.42.13 (17-May-2015) Warning! /dev/mmcblk1p2 is mounted. Warning: skipping journal recovery because doing a read-only filesystem check. Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes Pass 2: Checking directory structure Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity Pass 4: Checking reference counts Pass 5: Checking group summary information Free blocks count wrong (3307614, counted=3307612). Fix? no Free inodes count wrong (868976, counted=868974). Fix? no ROOTFS: 57168/926144 files (0.1% non-contiguous), 479298/3786912 blocks here's my mount output on the live system : not sure what that one is about : /dev/mmcblk1p2 on /var/log.hdd type ext4 (rw,noatime,nodiratime,errors=remount-ro,commit=600) touch /forcefsck, did not fix the problem. the boot process seems to always hang at the same point, then fail to recovery login. But when checking the sdcard i my ubuntu desktop, i don't get any fsck errors. So i'm wondering what's going on.. thx screenlog.0.recovery

i believe that @Shimon mentions the fact that s905 max real clock is 1.56GHz (not 2GHz as reported by the amlogic kernel), and there has been some work to try and "fix" that (by amlogic ? in the latest s905x kernel ?), and that fix would also try to make the s905 run a little faster (1.75GHz?).. Personally i don't think it'll make a difference but of course it would be nice to have real clock speed data in your system.. For an apparently far more powerful soc, i'm now looking at the rockchip rk3288 ("old" 32bit soc with turbo mode of 2GHz maybe 2.2GHz?), available on the Miqi and asus tinker board. For example performance with openssl on a single thread is 40-60% faster than on s905 (which is already quite fast) and on par with big boards like xu4..