Hi guys
Just to thank you for the very relevant information I found in this forum. I am posting my experience with armbian.
I successfully installed the unofficial armbian version "25.05.0 onecloud noble 6.12.17 xfce desktop" on a generic MXQ TV Box S805 with HTC-MXQ-V4 card.
It was hard work! this box calls the aml_autoscript on boot... but need to be adjusted to allow booting.
this procedure works for the board i mentioned, i don´t know about others. Use at your risk !!! But booting from SD is a relativelly safe procedure.
download "Armbian-unofficial_25.05.0-trunk_Onecloud_noble_current_6.12.17_xfce_desktop.img.xz"
uncompress the image (7zip)
save to SDcard (8GB recomended) - I have used rufus
Two partitions will be created. Two partiotions will be created ... first FAT32 (armbi_boot) and second EXT4 (armbi_root).
On FAT32 partition (boot):
file: aml_autoscript (copy commands below and put inside aml_autoscript.cmd)
# Define boot only from SD Card
setenv bootdev "mmc 0" # SD card
# Load armbianEnv.txt
fatload ${bootdev} 0x10800000 /armbianEnv.txt && env import -t 0x10800000 ${filesize}
# Boot Arguments (provided by armbianEnv.txt)
#setenv bootargs ""
setenv bootargs "${bootargs} rootwait rw"
setenv bootargs "${bootargs} ${consoleargs}"
setenv bootargs "${bootargs} ${extraargs}"
# Booting
fatload ${bootdev} 0x14000000 /uImage || exit 1
fatload ${bootdev} 0x15000000 /uInitrd || exit 1
fatload ${bootdev} 0x11800000 /dtb/meson8b-onecloud.dtb || exit 1
bootm 0x14000000 0x15000000 0x11800000
file: armbianEnv.txt (copy parameters below and put inside armbianEnv.txt)
consoleargs="console=ttyS0,115200n8 console=tty0 no_console_suspend splash=verbose"
bootargs="root=LABEL=armbi_root"
extraargs="loglevel=7 rootfstype=ext4 earlyprintk ip=dhcp"
On Linux, put aml_autoscript.cmd on an directory and compile "mkimage -C none -A arm -T script -d aml_autoscript.cmd aml_autoscript"
Copy both aml_autoscript.cmd and compiled aml_autoscript to root of FAT32 partition
Adjust (with above parameters) or create a file and copy armbianEnv.txt to root of FAT32 partition.
Rename "meson8b-mxq.dtb" to "meson8b-onecloud.dtb" to be compatible with same name defined on aml_autoscript (you could rename the file ou change the script ... choose)
Boot from SDCard (Turn tvBox off, with a toothpick, click the button inside AV conector, hold down and turn on the TV box, hold the button for 5 to 15 seconds )
if everything went well the firt boot occur and your tvbox could boot from SD in armbian Linux with kernel 6.12
The first boot is extremelly slow... a lot of time...
Good luck!!
