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Started fresh with a usb stick 3.0 32GB with the latest testing image as i mentioned in previous posts. USB not always picking up the boot process and some times system starts to LibreELEC that i have in eMMC. WiFi was not working ( it was able to see networks but was not connecting ) but after 3 reboot it picked up my nwtwork. Since then it is always working as expected. ( i run "rfkill unblock wifi" between those reboots, as my wifi was Soft Blocked, but i dont know if that helped any ). Bluetooth is not working ( no adapter at all ). Video playback with mpv still segfaults. Video playback with vlc segfaults too Audio is not working. Youtube in windows looks ok, in fullscreen looks acceptable but i have no audio to compare if video/audio was in sync. The first dtb tried was meson-gxbb-p200.dtd as /boot/dtb.img That's all the info i have for now. Tomorrow i will try another dtb ( if God wants so ).

@balbes150 The files in /boot/dtb and /boot/dtb-4.12.0-next-20170516+ are identical (checked with md5sum) There is no gxbb_p200 : all dtb's are prefixed with "meson-" So meson-gxbb-p200.dtb is the file i am looking for, of is there some other file i have to find? If yes, i will use this in the next boot. And a recommendation: For a pleasant Desktop experience, this image Armbian_5.27_S905_Ubuntu_xenial_4.12.0-next-20170516+_mate.img.xz needs some packages: ubuntu-mate-themes ( for correctly picking GTK theme that is in memory but not exists ) adwaita-icon-theme-full ( for correctly picking the mouse pointer that again is in memory but not exists ) Also there are some useless packages that left there from xfce ( thunar* for example as there exists caja already ).

@balbes150 Then it's eMMC as the carton box says: Model: Mini M8S TV BOX CPU: Amlogic S905 Quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex-A53 up to 2GHz GPU: Penta-core ARM Mali-450 Ethernet: 100Mbps/LAN RAM: DDR3 2GB ROM: eMMC 8GB WIFI: IEEE 802.11b/g/n,2.4G BT: 4.0 Adapter: 5VDC 2A Operation System: Android 5.1

I have no idea, but... 2 pictures = 2000 words :-D

Tried "https://yadi.sk/d/pHxaRAs-tZiei/Test/META-MESON/S905.dtb" Wifi worked after a few retries: dmesg says about my board: [Sun Jun 4 14:06:11 2017] Hardware name: Amlogic Meson GXBB P200 Development Board (DT) mpv still dies with error:

Hello to everyone! I just tested "Armbian_5.27_S905_Ubuntu_xenial_4.12.0-next-20170516+_mate.img" Wifi not connecting ( finds networks but dies when i try to connect to my wifi ). Ethernet seemed OK ( with the second dtb, with the first i didn't check extensively but looked like not connecting ). Video playback with mpv crashes with segmentation fault ( with the samples on desktop ). I have many RED messages in "dmesg --ctime" The board is recognized as another board ( development ) that i have no idea what it is. I used the dtb's from the dtb directory in /boot partition in the SDCARD ( meson-gxbb-p200 and meson-gxbb-p201 ). None seemed to work correctly, as none of them is for my box ( i believe ). Tried dtb's from kszaq but not even booting ( stays in Google TV logo for ever ). Question: is there any ready made dtb's for my box ( MiniM8S 2G 100M ) ? Thanks!

For the news about our TV boxes: Lakka has now ready-made images for game consoles emulation. Based on LibreELEC. Our boxes have enough guts, so it may be a good use as an emulation station. Sounds good, but i have NOT tested it.

The hardware and the operating systems supported. Android boxes are usually arm based and can run Android or Linux ( at least for now ). Intel boxes are usually atom based and can run Windows, Linux, Android and possibly others.

@sukanime Everything you said is working ( except login manager i believe ) but not as you would expect from an amd64 or x86 Desktop machine. So my short answer to your question would be: Why not? You can watch videos with mpv ( not HD ), edit or create images with gimp, create vector graphics with inkscape, watch youtube, listen to music, etc etc etc and have all the power of linux for plenty of other uses, with minimum power consumption. All you need to have is some patience at times. Also these little boxes can make great thin clients ( that's my main use, but i have successfully created subtitles with subtitlekomposer using only my MiniM8S box ).

@sukanime For the trash error in mate you need to install mate-applets package. Auto mount of usb drives should be working on mate desktop out of the box ( you see the icons it in Desktop, and click - click ). In CLI though ( no GUI ) there is no auto-mounting.

@sukanime This is the dtb.img i was using before installing LibreELEC in my eMMC Remember: My box is "MiniM8S" and NOT "MiniM8S II" The specs of my box is: 8GB eMMC 2G RAM dtb.img

Some times i had to unplug the power, and plug it back again, 2 or 3 times. Not with the image in question, but anyway, you should try that a few times. Also some times the waiting time may be a minute or more. Make sure you wait enough. And a last bit of info about my situation: i have LibreELEC installed in my MiniM8S's eMMC, and i really don't know if this has any effect on booting this image. balbes150 is the expert on that field, and maybe he ( and others in this forum i believe ) can tell you more about that. I have many years of experience in Linux, but i am not "the hardware guy", and especially for these android boxes, i know even less for the hardware, and the stuff that makes them boot.

For Mini M8S the wifi drivers was always working for me, even with previous versions. All i had to do with Armbian_5.27_S9xxx_Ubuntu_xenial_3.14.29_mate_20170323.img was simply dd it ( Rufus it indeed as i was working with Rikomagic win10 32bit at the time) in my SD card, put it in the slot, and give power. Everything worked right from the start. No sources, no compilations, no dtb's, nada.

Here are the results for pigz VS gzip: backup and compress pigz 7752122368 bytes (7.8 GB, 7.2 GiB) copied, 193.749 s, 40.0 MB/s gzip 7752122368 bytes (7.8 GB, 7.2 GiB) copied, 292.576 s, 26.5 MB/s test the compressed backup pigz 0m26.781s gzip 1m18.495s decompress pigz 9m55.684s gzip 9m51.756s All in all pigz will be a good addition in the dd_backup script. So if balbes150 feels like adding pigz in his images, he only have to do: sed -i "s/gzip/pigz/g" /usr/sbin/dd_backup(_x) and if decompession is also desired sed -i "s/gunzip/unpigz/g" /usr/sbin/dd_backup(_x) and compression step will be faster and maybe decompression also a bit (according to pigz man pages). The only thing to be checked is if restoring will be working as expected ( should be, but not tested ).

I managed to get myself a new SD card Sandisk Ultra 32BG HC I Class 10 and i just put Armbian_5.27_S9xxx_Ubuntu_xenial_3.14.29_mate_20170323.img on it. I will mail the Rikomagic MK36 to its owner tommorrow ( fixed it ), so i have some time again to spend with my mini M8S box and armbian. First of all: The gui error about mate-panel and trash ( KEEP / DELETE ) should be gone if mate-applets package was present in the default images. The error comes up because the default panel layout have trash applet icon hardcoded in the far right of the bottom panel, but trash applet is not installed. Also: A good alternative image viewer for mate could be viewnior I also remove at first start: everything about xfce (mirage*, thunar*,lxtask*) also libreoffice*,mc*,thunderbird*,vim* I also always install: adwaita-icon-theme-full,gnome-themes-standard,gnome-themes-standard-data in order to have a pleasant desktop, and mate-applets and viewnior at first boot. Now: I am going to make some tests with pigz and report the time savings

pigz does a great job in compression part, but decompession is still single core ( correct me if things has changed ). SD/USB read/write bandwidth may be a bottleneck to backup/restore operations even with pigz in action ( just a guess ). I am testing a rikomagic MK36 the last 2 weeks, so i don't have easy access to my armbian box right now. Thus i don't know if balbes150 images have already installed pigz, but if it is, or if balbes150 wishes to include pigz in future images, we can create and test a new version of the script with pigz. Thats all

I've made this script especially for your images, in order to make life of newcomers to linux a bit easier. You can rename the script as you wish, improve it if you wish, and feel free to use it whatever way you see fit. No problem at all from me.

I'm sorry, but i can't help you any further, because i have MiniM8S only. The other boxes i mentioned in an older post, was for donation ( not mine ).

@etona sudo nano /boot/amlogics905x_init.sh the "file in question" is the file amlogics905x_init.sh

sudo nano /boot/thefileinquestion.sh edit the file and remove the "#" in front of 1080 line, put it in from of the 720 line. CTRL+O to save CTRL+X to exit sudo reboot. You are done.

A new version of the backup script ( and hopefully the final version, if no bugs found ). There are many improvements in this version, and is well tested ( by me, and in my box only ). The script is reimagined and redesigned from top to bottom. The most notable changes are: backup and restore is now separated ( if you just want to restore it won't stop you in low space scenario ) forcing compressed mode backup in low space scenarios ( at your own risk afted some warnings ) the script now accepts an argument for backup/restore to/from another mounted drive. cleaner code as the script have become very complex color changes for better compatibility with white background terminals ( mate default scheme ). the list goes on and on, but all the changes are in the script's comments. Some info can be seen here and here The script can be downloaded from here The code can be seen below

@sukanime First of all, thanks for your answer. MiniM8S with balbes150 ubuntu mate images runs very stable. I'm using it for my everyday work, and never had a problem for about 3 months now. Video playback is not very pleasant, but for my needs are OK. I don't watch many videos, and when i do, i can live mpv's somewhat poor performance. A 3.5 WATT desktop is what i wanted, and for this, i can forgive some performance issues. Now about the pin shorting method you will need: 1) The original ANDROID firmware for the box 2) A USB MALE to USB MALE cable of good quality. 3) A thick needle or some other metallic object. 4) USB image writer tool from manufacturer. 5) You need to open the box to gain access to AmLogic chip's pins. This method is not easy, and is dangerous too. You need this method only if you have really bricked the device. If the device can still boot from USB or SDCARD there is NO NEED for this method. Some info can be found here and a video here For many people the pin shorting is not needed, if windows sees the box when you connect it via the USB cable. Then you only need AmLogic USB Burning tool, firmware, and a Windows machine. Unfortunatelly for me, that never was the case. I always have to short pin 18 and 19 ( if i remember correctly ) for windows to idendify the tvbox when connected to USB, and play the "magic" sound.

@balbes150 Sorry to annoy you again, but i have a little question for you: Do i need to have the original android firmware in my MiniM8S box for the installation to EMMC to be successful? I tried 7 times yesterday with your latest ubuntu mate image, and although everything went well ( no errors ) the system was not able to boot after installation. I finally manage to brick my system, and the pin sorting method was mandatory ( again ) in order to bring it back to life. I must tell you that every time i tried installation to EMMC, i had LibreELEC on it. And yes, i removed many packages before attempting the installation, to a point where the used space is only 2.6G I'm trying to run the OS from EMMC, in order to improve dd_backup_x script in every situation . @everyone Has anyone managed to successfuly install ubuntu mate to internal EMMC in MiniM8S (not II) ??? If yes, how?

If the script allow the user with less space to continue, and then the user choose uncompessed backup by mistake, the system will hang. I could update the script to allow only compressed backup if the free is less than EMMC size, but again... you cannot predict the compessed size of the final backup ( depends of the compressibility of user's files ) and a hang can happen again. So i decided to leave it as is, for safety. If someone has to take a backup, it is better to use a USB/SDCARD that have space.

The new backup/restore script is ready and tested. Not a new script really, just some usefull additions. Some proof here You can download it from here All the changes are in the script's comments as usual. Hope it helps.