Willy Moto

Just use the multitool to backup your current installation if you want to. We are going to erase everything on the NAND so if you want to keep the content just do a quick backup.
I suggest you to install from scratch, but if you spent time to do some configurations you don't want to lose again, the multitool will make your life easier.
 
What you need:
from the ilmich/rkflashtool you need to clone/download the repository and compile the binary using the instructions there.  
The procedure (if you are already in maskrom mode, go directly to step 8):
Do the backup using the Multitool Do "Erase Flash" using the Multitool Unplug the power cord, detach all unnecessary things: no network, no hdmi, no sdcard, no power cord and no USB things; if serial adapter is attached, keep only ground and TX wires (stock bootloader uses 1.5mbps speed) Connect the USB male-to-male cable to the computer and then to the USB OTG port of the box The box should turn on automatically, you should see a device with ID 2207:320b running lsusb command Erase the flash bootloader: invoke the command rkflashtool e 0 8192 and wait a few seconds Now we have to put the the board in maskrom mode: unplug the USB cable, wait a few seconds and replug the USB cable. If you don't see anything on serial adapter and the device is listed in lsusb, you are in maskrom mode! As an alternative to unplug/replug, you can also run rkflashtool b 3, but it is preferred to do a power cycle. If you have a serial adapter attached, depending on the loader, you may need to set the speed to 1500000bps or 115200bps to see the box output. Upload the loader to the board: rkflashtool l bin/rk322x_loader_v1.10.238_256.bin Update the loader on the board: rkflashtool a bin/rk322x_loader_v1.10.238_256.bin Unplug the USB cable Done!  
If you are at step 9 and rkflashtool is stuck at "info: send ddrbin vendor code", do a power cycle and use the alternative 1T bootloader: bin/rk322x_loader_v1.10.238_256_1t.bin
You can now restore the backup using the multitool (or do a new installation).
 
Note: I also attached to this post a couple of known working bootloaders in case the one I suggested above does not work and you need to restore back the functionality of your board.
Use them if the one above does not work.
 
 
RK322XMiniLoaderAll_V2.51_spectek_en_ddr2_rd_odt_180703.bin RK322XMiniLoaderAll_V2.47_spectek_en_ddr2_rd_odt_171127.bin

@JMCC  I checked your KODI-18 package on M1 (rk3328). Everything works fine, plays 4k video without any problems. The heating of the system is less than 50 degrees and KODI shows a load of less than 50%. Great job. It remains to add these packages to the Armbian network reps, so that users can easily install and use them.  

@ballerburg9005 I just wanted to add a few of my own thoughts to this thread.  Overall I can see both sides to the above discussion.  There are valid points made by everyone commenting.  While we all sometimes need to have 'grand visions' of the future we would like to work towards, we also have to deal with the reality of where we currently are.  I often think of a saying "crawl, walk, run".  While we all want to be running to the finish line of an Olympic race, we all start by crawling first.  As that relates to armbian and more specifically armbian on TV boxes, we are at the crawling stage.  There is a lot of work to be done to just get us walking.  That doesn't mean that crawling and walking in themselves aren't valid and productive stages (they are and you can use a lot of different TV boxes today to do a lot of productive stuff).
There is a lot of work to be done today to improve our crawling.  We need volunteers (like you) to pick up that work if we ever hope to get further along our path.  We need to build a community one volunteer at a time.  While visions are important, if we don't have people willing to do work today then we will never more forward.
If you hang around armbian for any extended period of time, you will learn that the single thing that most bothers the core maintainers of the project are people having grand visions or even small visions of what should be done but who don't contribute any time to help and expect others to do the work for them.
Whether intentional or not, that is how your post came across to Igor and Balbes and they reacted as they normally do to such posts.
If you want to run to the finish line with your vision, you need to start by crawling.  Spend time on these forums following the issues to build your knowledge.  Help support new users to allow others with the technical knowledge time to work on development and progress on our shared goals.  This all doesn't happen overnight.
I welcome your contributions to the efforts here, but starting off by getting into a disagreement with two of the core maintainers isn't likely the best way to have started.  Overtime you will realize we all share a lot of the same goals and can work together even through we have different personalities and sometimes have to overcome language/cultural differences.

If we rule out deliberate cheating by Amlogic (to show bigger numbers and numbers are what people are buying), then yes, others are nothing better. But what you are not understanding at all is the difference between a complete trash (Amlogic/Rockchip/Allwinner TV box) and single board computer, a board that comes at least with a documentation and a team of engineers to provide some support. Also if there is not enough additional people / community, that will dig "read" the hardware, you can simply forget about. Cost of support is everything and bringing some garbage hardware from zero to the average Joe level is insane if there is not heavily community backing. There is a lot more hardware out there then people with interest and knowledge to do something about. A lot more.
 

According to your posts you have no intention nor knowledge to work on. Perhaps I am wrong? Armbian maintainers have common stand to not support any hardware on the extreme end since frustration of not being able to get anywhere is too high and it also cost 10 - 50x more. Remember that dealing with is 99% our private money that goes into your pleasure. And ain't small. I lost on average around 10h every day working on this project. I just lost 1h trying to explain something. And I am not alone. 

If average Joe wants bringing Linux on shit TV box, he can forget about seeking our free help, but otherwise, for normal hardware that comes with proper documentation and optional some vendor support we have "Board bring up section", so that posts as such are not scattered around forum. Its 2021. Market is saturated with all sorts of cheap hardware and all of them are seeking free community support without which they are just a paperweight. Currently its near to impossible to get eyes on something new. We barely can maintain / keep this hw usable. Each upstream upgrade kills some of the board or its primary function. That's the reality average Linux fan forgets and live his dream ... Vendor proprietary sw doesn't break since it never receives any updates. That is the key of "success", while maintaining mainline based sw is something different. More expensive and receive no support. Not from you, not from vendor. You want that, while vendor would like rather to push you their software where he might have some advantage from competition stored in closed library. Under their control. Its not about open / free so much, I agree on that point with you, but about the level of control.
 
 
You mean the most expensive part? Without any financial backing for developers / maintainers, free of charge. You already have a lot of that, you just don't notice and care and want more and better. That's the world of average Joe.

Documentation for average Joe: https://docs.armbian.com/ Images ready to run without any difficulties - burn and run, images are even tested for you https://www.armbian.com/download/?device_support=Supported so average "customer" doesn't waste their precious time. Then community supported tutorials for whatever you need: https://forum.armbian.com/forum/40-reviews-tutorials-hardware-hacks/ or 3rd party https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials
 

Starting at average Joe level - contribution to Linux kernel directly require more rules which are hard sticking to for a beginner. You can start at more user friendly level: https://www.armbian.com/get-involved/
 

https://www.armbian.com/donate
Start covering what you have - you only cover around 0.5% of our running costs, 0.0% for TV boxes. From paperweight to running Linux. TV box is not a PC so it can't run as a PC. Its closer to embedded experiences or lets say it is something in between. Its cheapest possible form of single board computer, of barebone. Also we don't have resources of a desktop PC and we don't have (yet) proper foss drivers to support hardware function, we don't have acceleration within web browser, ... Each ARM family is like another architecture. Diverse, purpose oriented ARM world is far more complicated than heavily standardised PC world ...

and due to lack of any technical specs, development is not possible. Only more wasteful hacking and reverse engineering. If hardware is not under full control of community, open, it's pointless to invest sw support. Vendor can screw you up at any time. Can disable & enable features, can manipulate numbers ... 
 

BSP kernels from all vendors are already at 4.4 - 4.9 but they are full of non-standard solutions, shitty cheaply made solutions, closed drivers, etc. Usually only vendor engineers maintain that private kernel which they "support". This hasn't changed.
 

Marketing BS.
 
But I heard they are supporting some Foss development, porting drivers to mainline, but could also be just rummers. And kernel is just one thing. The easy part. You have to load this kernel somehow ... and here, things are certainly not (yet) foss. Not at Amlogic, not with Rpi ...
 
Also please do some forum search - we have been through those questions many times.

Armbian implements some basic 'system logging' at every startup and shutdown and contains a little utility to provide this collected information combined with some more useful debug info from user installations. All that's needed is executing 'sudo armbianmonitor -u' (or armbian-config --> Software --> Diagnostics) and then all this support related information is uploaded to an online pasteboard service automagically (see example output) 
 

 
How to interpret this wall of text? The output is best read from bottom to top since the most important information is collected during upload:
 
At the bottom /proc/interrupts contents to check for IRQ affinity problems (interrupt collissions on some CPU cores negatively affecting performance) Then last 250 lines dmesg output are included. Here you might find important information wrt the last (kernel) events that happened on the machine uptime output including average load statistics (1, 5 and 15 min) free output telling how much physical memory is available and how much swap and/or zram is used (you need to look directly above whether zram is active or not to interpret the 'Swap:' line) vmstat output contains virtual memory usage information since last reboot iostat output contains the same but allows for a 'per device' view since all devices are listed with individual statistics (so it's easy to spot IO bottlenecks by looking at these numbers and also looking at %iowait value) 'Current system health' displays what the system is actually doing while uploading the debug log (on systems where DC-IN monitoring is available also allowing for underpowering diagnosis -- if you read here numbers below 5.0V stop reading the log and tell the user to fix his underpowering issues first) In case the installation has been moved from SD card to other storage nand-sata-install.log will be included in the output 'Loaded modules' allow to look for module related problems If it's an Allwinner board running legacy kernel the whole script.bin contents are included 'Installed packages' shows version numbers of relevant Armbian packages 'Group membership of' should list all groups the user is member of. If this line is missing ignore the whole contents and ask the user to re-submit debug info, this time doing it correctly not as root but using 'sudo armbianmonitor -u' (group memberships are important to understand certain problems, eg. users not being member of audio group won't have success getting noise out of their devices) If the board is PCIe capable list of attached PCIe devices is included The lsusb output lists all connected USB devices and also information about speed (12M, 480M, 5000M) and protocol/connection details (mass-storage vs uas for example) If the user installed the lshw utility and verbosity is set to 4 or above in /boot/armbianEnv.txt some more disk related information will be included  
Important: The debug output also contains all collected support files that follow this naming scheme: /tmp/armbianmonitor_checks_* -- so if a user complains about 'transmission so slow' or 'latest files are always missing' ask him to run 'armbianmonitor -c /path/to/torrent-storage' and afterwards 'sudo armbianmonitor -u' without a reboot in between since then the checking results will also be contained.
 
Everything above of this information at the output's bottom is result of regular logging at startup and shutdown (the contents of /var/log/armhwinfo.log). 
 
At startup the following items are logged: dmesg output, /etc/armbian-release and /boot/armbianEnv.txt contents, lsusb and lscpu output, /proc/cpuinfo and /proc/meminfo contents, network interface information, available partitions and filesystems, on Allwinner boards where /boot/script.bin points to, some metadata information for all MMC media connected to the host (eg. SD card and/or eMMC) and some system health information.
 
At shutdown iostat, vmstat and free output are added to /var/log/armhwinfo.log as well as the last 100 lines from dmesg output. If these '### shutdown' entries are missing after reboots the system crashed while shutting down.

DISCLAIMERS (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. THIS POST explains very well the troubles with TV Boxes and why they are not suitable for everyone 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).  
Following the recent thread on LibreElec forum about an unofficial image for rk3229 devices, I would like to make public the work made by me and @fabiobassa about bringing rk322x support to armbian.
The project is now in -> mainline Armbian <- development fork -> here <-
 
This first page and the last 3 or 4 pages of the thread are enough to get up to date with recent developments.
Many useful experiences are scattered through the thread, but the most important things are collected here in the first page, so please read it carefully!
 
Mainline kernel is fully supported and will receive most support in the future. Legacy kernel 4.4 is deprecated, but is kept around only for special purposes.
 
What works:
Should boot and work flawlessy on all boards with RK3228a, RK3228b and RK3229, with either DDR2 and DDR3 memories. Mainline u-boot Proprietary OPTEE provided as Trusted Execution Environment (needed for DRAM frequency scaling) All 4 cores are working Ethernet Serial UART (configured at 115200 bps, not 1.5Mbps!) Thermals, CPU and DRAM frequency scaling OTG USB 2.0 port (also as boot device!) EHCI/OHCI USB 2.0 ports MMC subsystem (including eMMC, SD and sdio devices) Hardware video acceleration NAND is available only on legacy kernel. To fully boot from NAND, use the Multitool and its steP-nand installation (instructions are below) Various WIFI over SDIO are supported (SSV6051P, SSV6256P, ESP8089, Realtek chips, etc...), ssv6256p driver is available only on legacy kernel Full GPU acceleration U-boot boot order priority: first the sdcard, then the USB OTG port and eventually the internal eMMC; you can install u-boot (and the whole system) in the internal eMMC 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 eMMC clock pin on the PCB. Here there is the procedure, but you can also google around if you get stuck on a faulty bootloader, the technique is pretty simple and requires a simple screwdriver.
 
There are however some unfortunate cases (expecially newer boards) where shorting the eMMC clock pin is difficult or impossibile, like eMMC or eMCP BGA chips with no exposed pins. In those cases pay double attention when burning something on the internal eMMC/eMCP and always test first the image from the sdcard to be sure it works before burning anything on eMMC/eMCP.
 
Some useful links with pins, pads or procedures for some boards:
Generic procedure for boards with non-BGA eMMC MXQPRO_V71 - eMCP H20 - eMCP ZQ01 - eMCP  
NAND vs eMMC vs eMCP difference:
RK3228 and RK3229 tv boxes comes with three different flash memory chips: eMMC, NAND and eMCP.
It does not depend upon the market name of the tv box and neither the internal board; manufacturers put whatever they find cheaper when they buy the components.
 
NAND chip is just the non-volatile memory eMMC chip contains both the non-volatile memory plus a controller. eMCP chip contains the non-volatile memory, a controller for the non-volatile memory (like eMMC), but also contains a bank of DDR SDRAM memory on the same physical chip.  
The difference is very important, because eMMC and eMCP are far easier to support at various levels: the controller deals with the physical characteristics of the non-volatile memory, so the software has no to deal with.
NAND chips instead are harder to support, because the software is required to deal with the physical characteristics and non-standard things that depends upon the NAND manufacturer.
 
If you have a NAND chips you're unlucky because mainline kernel currently cannot access it, but also because you need special care and instructions explained later.
 
You can discover if you have a NAND, eMMC or eMCP chip looking on the board are reading the signature on the flash memory chip.
The Multitool (see later) also can detect which chip you have onboard: the program will warn you at startup if you have a NAND chip.
 
NAND bootloader upgrade:
IMPORTANT: don't do this is you have an eMMC or eMCP; skip this paragraph if you are unsure too!
For very expert people who are having issues when (re)booting images, there is the chance to upgrade the bootloader on NAND.
The NAND bootloader is nothing else than a regular idbloader (see official rockchip documentation) but contains some bits to correctly access the data on your flash memory.
Upgrading requires to erase the existing flash content, in the worst case will require you to follow the Unbrick procedure above or restore an older but more compatible bootloader.
If you are not mentally ready to overcome possible further issues, don't do this!
 
The detailed instructions and the binaries are available at this post
 
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/ Deprecated legacy kernel: multimedia features, like OpenGL/OpenGL ES acceleration, hardware accelerated Kodi, ffmpeg and mpv you can take a look to this post An effective tutorial from @Hai Nguyen on how to configure a box as a hi-quality music player using an USB audio card, and controlling it via remote control is available in this post  
Brief explanation about kernel naming:
current kernel is the mainline LTS kernel version, most maintained and tested. This is the suggested version for production devices. If you don't know what to pick, pick this. legacy kernel (version 4.4) is provided by manufacturer; it is deprecated, unmaintained and not suggested. edge kernel is the development mainline kernel version, with experimental features and drivers; usually stable but perhaps suitable for production devices.  
You can switch from one kernel flavour to another using armbian-config or manually via apt.
 
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 CSC/TVB/EOL boards and select "rk322x-box" from the list.
 
Download prebuilt images from the following links:
Archive builds (GPG-signed) - https://imola.armbian.com/dl/rk322x-box/archive/ SUGGESTED - Nightly built from trunk each week by Armbian servers (GPG-signed) - https://github.com/armbian/community Old images provided by me (unsigned and outdated) - https://users.armbian.com/jock/rk322x/armbian/stable  
Archived/older images:
https://armbian.hosthatch.com/archive/rk322x-box/archive/
 
Multitool:
The Multitool is a small but powerful tool to do quick backup/restore of internal flash, but also burn images and general system rescue and maintenance via terminal or SSH.
Compressed images will be uncompressed on fly.
Multitool - A small but powerful image for RK322x TV Box maintenance (instructions to access via network 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 sudo rk322x-config and select your board characteristics to enable leds, wifi chips, high-speed eMMC, etc... Run sudo armbian-config to configure timezone, locales and other personal options Congratulations, Armbian is now installed and configured!  
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 eMMC, the box may not boot anymore forcing you to follow the unbrick section at the top of this post.
 
Quick installation instructions on NAND:
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 legacy kernel 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 Armbian image via steP-nand" from the menu, then select the destination device (usually rknand0) 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 sudo rk322x-config and select your board characteristics to enable leds, wifi chips, etc... Run armbian-config to configure timezone, locales and other personal options Congratulations, Armbian is now installed!  
Alternative: you can install the bootloader in NAND and let it boot from SD Card or USB:
Download a copy of the Multitool and burn it on an SD card; 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; RECOMMENDED: make a backup of the existing firmware with "Backup flash" menu option; Choose "Install Jump Start for Armbian" menu option: the Jump Start uses the internal NAND to boot from external SD Card or external USB Stick; Follow the general instructions to boot from SD Card below, skip the first erase eMMC step.  
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 eMMC; 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 sudo rk322x-config and select your board characteristics to enable leds, wifi chips, high-speed eMMC or NAND, etc... Run armbian-config to configure timezone, locales and other personal options, or also to transfer the SD Card installation to internal eMMC; Congratulations, Armbian is running from SD Card!  
A note about boot device order:
With Armbian also comes mainline U-boot. If you install Armbian or just the bootloader in the eMMC or the Jump Start on internal NAND, the bootloader will look for valid bootable images in this order:
External SD Card External USB Stick in OTG Port Internal eMMC  
Installation (without SD card, board with eMMC)
If you have no sd card slot and your board has an eMMC, you can burn the armbian image directly on the internal eMMC using rkdeveloptool and a male-to-male USB cable:
 
Download your preferred Armbian image from Armbian download page and decompress it. Download the rk322x bootloader: rk322x_loader_v1.10.238_256.bin Download a copy of rkdeveloptool: a compiled binary is available in the official rockchip-linux rkbin github repository. Unplug the power cord from the tv box Plug an end of an USB Male-to-male cable into the OTG port (normally it is the lone USB port on the same side of the Ethernet, HDMI, analog AV connectors) while pressing the reset microbutton with a toothpick. You can find the reset microbutton in a hole in the back of the box, but sometimes it is hidden into the AV analog jack Plug the other end of the USB Male-to-male cable into an USB port of your computer If everything went well, run lsusb: you should see a device with ID 2207:320b Run sudo rkdeveloptool rd 3 (if this fails don't worry and proceed to next step) Run sudo rkdeveloptool db rk322x_loader_v1.10.238_256.bin Run sudo rkdeveloptool wl 0x0 image.img (change image.img this with the real Armbian image filename) Unplug the power cord Done!  
Installation (without SD card, board with NAND)
If you are in the unfortunate case you can't use an SD card for installation and your board has a NAND chip, you still have an option to use the quick Multitool installation steps via USB.
 
Obtain a copy of rkdeveloptool: a compiled binary is available in the official rockchip-linux rkbin github repository. Unplug the power cord from the tv box Plug an end of an USB Male-to-male cable into the OTG port (normally it is the lone USB port on the same side of the Ethernet, HDMI, analog AV connectors) while pressing the reset microbutton with a toothpick. You can find the reset microbutton in a hole in the back of the box, but sometimes it is hidden into the AV analog jack Plug the other end of the USB Male-to-male cable into an USB port of your computer If everyting went well, using lsusb you should see a device with ID 2207:320b Run sudo rkdeveloptool wl 0x4000 u-boot-main.img (download u-boot-main.img.xz , don't forget to decompress it!) Unplug the power cord  
Now you can follow the instructions on how to install on eMMC/NAND via SD card, just use instead an USB stick to do all the operations and plug it into the USB OTG port. Once you reboot, USB OTG port will be used as a boot device.
 
NOTE: NAND users without SD slot may be unhappy to know that it will be difficult to do extra maintenance with Multitool in case something breaks in the installed Armbian system: installing u-boot-main.img makes the installed system unbootable because it is missing the NAND driver.
 
 
Alternative backup, restore and erase flash for EXPERTS:
These backup, restore and erase flash procedures are for experts only. They are kept here mostly for reference, since the Multitool is perfectly able to do same from a very comfy interface and is the suggested way to do maintenance.
 
Backup:
Obtain a copy of rkdeveloptool: a compiled binary is available in the official rockchip-linux rkbin github repository. If you prefer, you can compile it yourself from the sources available at official rockchip repository Unplug the power cord from the tv box Plug an end of an USB Male-to-male cable into the OTG port (normally it is the lone USB port on the same side of the Ethernet, HDMI, analog AV connectors) while pressing the reset microbutton with a toothpick. You can find the reset microbutton in a hole in the back of the box, but sometimes it is hidden into the AV analog jack Plug the other end of the USB Male-to-male cable into an USB port of your computer If everyting went well, using lsusb you should see a device with ID 2207:320b change directory and move into rkbin/tools directory, run ./rkdeveloptool rfi then take note of the FLASH SIZE megabytes (my eMMC is 8Gb, rkdeveloptool reports 7393 megabytes) run ./rkdeveloptool rl 0x0 $((FLASH_SIZE * 2048)) backup.data (change FLASH_SIZE with the value you obtained the step before) once done, the internal eMMC is backed up to backup.data file  
Restore: first we have to restore the original bootloader, then restore the original firmware.
Running rkdeveloptool with these switches will accomplish both the jobs:
./rkdeveloptool db rk322x_loader_v1.10.238_256.bin Downloading bootloader succeeded. ./rkdeveloptool ul rk322x_loader_v1.10.238_256.bin Upgrading loader succeeded. ./rkdeveloptool wl 0x0 backup.data Write LBA from file (100%) Download here:
 
Erase the flash memory: clearing the internal eMMC/NAND memory makes the SoC look for external SD Card as first boot option.
If there isn't any suitable SD Card, the SoC enters maskrom mode, which can then be used for full eMMC/NAND access using rkdeveloptool. This is perfectly fine if your box has an eMMC flash memory.
NOTE: In case you have a NAND flash memory this option is however discouraged. The original bootloader contains some special parameters to correctly access the data. Clearing the flash memory will probably garbage the NAND data and restoring the bootloader may require some special instructions.
 
Obtain a copy of rkdeveloptool: a compiled binary is available in the official rockchip-linux rkbin github repository. If you prefer, you can compile it yourself from the sources available at official rockchip repository Unplug the power cord from the board Plug an end of an USB Male-to-male cable into the OTG port (normally it is the lone USB port on the same side of the Ethernet, HDMI, analog AV connectors) while pressing the reset microbutton with a toothpick. You can find the reset microbutton in a hole in the back of the box, but sometimes it is hidden into the AV analog jack Plug the other end of the USB Male-to-male cable into an USB port of your computer If everyting went well, using lsusb you should see a device with ID 2207:320b run ./rkdeveloptool ef and wait a few seconds once done, the internal eMMC is erased and the device will boot from the sdcard from now on  
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;  
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 rk322x into armbian would not have begun without his support! Justin Swartz, for his work and research to bring mainline linux on rk3229 (repository here) @knaerzche for his great contribution to libreelec support and mainline patches @Alex83 for his patience in testing the NAND bootloader upgrade procedure on his board @Jason Duhamell for his generous donation that allowed researching eMCP boards and esp8089 wifi chip

All the images in the first page have been updated with the following news:
Single image for all boxes! Configure your box with sudo rk322x-config once the system has booted Support for Realtek 8188eu, 8189es/etv, 88x2bu and various other wifi chips General better stability eMMC in DDR mode for some boards Enjoy!

If it's a TV box, you might get better results in the TV box forum.
 
But some systems have the DTB embedded in the kernel image. If you can get to a shell, you can dump it from a running system sorta like:
 
dtc -I fs -o devicetree.dts /sys/firmware/devicetree/base  
Keep in mind that there are periodic changes to the DT format over time, and some vendors put in nonstandard hacks. Keeping these DTB files current is a major issue for Armbian devs. If it's for an unsupported box, it'll almost certainly require changes for everything to work properly.

Variant 2 (hardcore) : decompile dtb to dts, edit dts, compile new dtb.
 
    Step by step instructions for manual fix USB3-power and Bluetooth on tvbox "V96mini 6k":
 
1. Copy original dtb-file "sun50i-h6-tanix-tx6.dtb" from Armbian boot filesystem "/boot/dtb/allwinner/sun50i-h6-tanix-tx6.dtb" to empty work dir.

2. In work dir decompile original "sun50i-h6-tanix-tx6.dtb" to editable text:
$ dtc -I dtb -O dts sun50i-h6-tanix-tx6.dtb -o decompiled.dts
3. Open in text editor file "decompiled.dts" for make changes.
Insert new 6 text blocks exactly in places like showed in my example (spoiler below "SRC_DTS_TX6_MOD_FOR_V96MINI6K").
Note: All new 6 text blocks looks like :
/* ADDON part1of3 BEGIN */ ... ... /* ADDON part1of3 END */  

"SRC_DTS_TX6_MOD_FOR_V96MINI6K":
 
Save modified file as "modified.dts".

4. Compile modified DTS to new DTB:
$ dtc -I dts -O dtb modified.dts -o sun50i-h6-tanix-tx6_v96mini6k_0x.dtb
5. Copy new DTB-file to Armbian boot filesystem:
/boot/dtb/allwinner/sun50i-h6-tanix-tx6_v96mini6k_0x.dtb

6. Edit boot config file "/boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf":
###commented orig line:###FDT /boot/dtb/allwinner/sun50i-h6-tanix-tx6.dtb FDT /boot/dtb/allwinner/sun50i-h6-tanix-tx6_v96mini6k_0x.dtb
7. Reboot.
 
 

Armbian "current" (5.10.y) compiles without issues.
I second @Igor's opinion that a change somewhere in this diff broke the eMMC.
I tried reverting a few obvious parts of it, like the mmc driver changes, but without success.
 
However I did find that with the unit I have the issue happens only in hs400{,es} modes.
With those disabled my unit works fine and I can use nand-sata-install to transfer os from SD to eMMC successfully which is not possible with 5.10.60+ and hs400 enabled on eMMC.
 
If anyone wants to check if switching eMMC to hs200 mode works also on their unit, here is how:
Upgrade the kernel to 5.10.60, but don't reboot yet.
Run:
curl -o rk3399-kobol-helios64.dtb https://users.armbian.com/piter75/helios64/rk3399-kobol-helios64.dtb sudo cp rk3399-kobol-helios64.dtb /boot/dtb/rockchip/rk3399-kobol-helios64.dtb sudo reboot  
If this workaround works I will disable hs400{,es} (again) in Armbian until the underlying issue is found.
There will be a performance penalty to that change but keep in mind that Helios64 was originally released with hs200 and only recently gained hs400 back ;-)
Below you can find the comparison between hs400 and hs200 modes using iozone.
 

I would like to prevent this to happen, but this is not as simple as it might looks like. Luckily I do have experiences from professional / corporate world and I know how they are approaching and what kind of resources are needed to move a little up. In the place I have cooperated we were working on a few of different devices, which complexity was a bit higher then our most complicated SBCs, but we had more then 100 full time people just for quality control. They were conducting and improving testing procedures round the clock, but well paying customers which developers never had chance to be pressured from, were keep sending bugs ...

Armbian has some primitive bug detection tooling and nobody dedicated on this. Also no budget to expand - I have very little time to do more then this, We would need at least a full time person of my know-how level and strong dedication just for testing areas plus help of a few volunteers. Just to make a small noticeable difference.

For step 3 there is a way out of tweaking Jumper 10 if you want to boot force boot on SD.
From the serial console press a key on the keyboard while u-boot start. You will get the u-boot prompt.
from this prompt write:
run bootcmd_mmc1 and press enter. Helios64 will boot from SD.
To force boot from eMMC instead of SD, do the opposite:
run bootcmd_mmc0  
This saved me from opening the box.

If anyone has installed the update but *not* rebooted, it's a quick (temporary) fix:
 
sudo apt install linux-dtb-current-rockchip64=21.05.4 linux-headers-current-rockchip64=21.05.4 linux-image-current-rockchip64=21.05.4  

It worked, I have my eMMC system back!
 
Here are all the steps in case someone else has the problem and wants to repair his eMMC image...
 
1. download a previous Helios64 image from here...
https://wiki.kobol.io/download/
2. install the image on a microSD e.g. for Windows and macOS there is Etcher...
https://www.balena.io/etcher/
3a. boot your Helios64 with the microSD and Jumper 10, see here...
https://wiki.kobol.io/helios64/troubleshoot/#how-to-force-boot-from-microsd
3b. Alternative: from the serial console press a key on the keyboard while u-boot start. You will get the u-boot prompt.
From this prompt write and press enter. Helios64 will boot from SD... (thx @prahal)
run bootcmd_mmc1  
4. if you are logged in as root user (normal users must put a sudo in front of the commands) execute the following commands...
root@helios64:~# mkdir -p /mnt/system root@helios64:~# mount /dev/mmcblk2p1 /mnt/system root@helios64:~# cd /mnt/system/
5. The contents of the /mnt/system directory should now be filled with the contents of your eMMC....
root@helios64:/mnt/system# ll total 80 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Aug 30 2020 bin -> usr/bin drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Sep 1 03:01 boot drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Oct 15 2020 dev drwxr-xr-x 110 root root 12288 Sep 1 03:01 etc drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 22 2020 export drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Jun 10 04:12 home lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Aug 30 2020 lib -> usr/lib drwx------ 5 root root 4096 Oct 5 2020 lost+found drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Oct 15 2020 media drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Feb 9 2021 mnt drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Dec 2 2020 opt dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Oct 15 2020 proc drwx------ 7 root root 4096 Aug 31 23:36 root drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Oct 15 2020 run lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 8 Aug 30 2020 sbin -> usr/sbin drwxrwxr-x 2 root root 4096 Oct 5 2020 selinux drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 Jun 10 03:18 srv dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Oct 15 2020 sys lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 42 Sep 1 03:01 thermal_zone0 -> /sys/devices/virtual/thermal/thermal_zone0 drwxrwxrwt 2 root root 4096 Oct 15 2020 tmp drwxr-xr-x 12 root root 4096 Nov 27 2020 usr drwxr-xr-x 14 root root 4096 Oct 6 2020 var  
6. now download the 3 old packages...
root@helios64:/mnt/system# wget http://armbian.hosthatch.com/apt/pool/main/l/linux-5.10.43-rockchip64/linux-dtb-current-rockchip64_21.05.4_arm64.deb root@helios64:/mnt/system# wget http://armbian.hosthatch.com/apt/pool/main/l/linux-5.10.43-rockchip64/linux-headers-current-rockchip64_21.05.4_arm64.deb root@helios64:/mnt/system# wget http://armbian.hosthatch.com/apt/pool/main/l/linux-5.10.43-rockchip64/linux-image-current-rockchip64_21.05.4_arm64.deb  
7. now changes the root directory...
root@helios64:/mnt/system# chroot /mnt/system root@helios64:/# pwd / root@helios64:/# ll total 50996 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Aug 30 2020 bin -> usr/bin drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Sep 1 14:56 boot drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 1 16:15 dev drwxr-xr-x 110 root root 12288 Sep 1 03:01 etc drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 22 2020 export drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Jun 10 04:12 home lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Aug 30 2020 lib -> usr/lib -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 314304 Jul 8 19:32 linux-dtb-current-rockchip64_21.05.4_arm64.deb -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 11527696 Jul 8 19:32 linux-headers-current-rockchip64_21.05.4_arm64.deb -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 40290884 Jul 8 19:33 linux-image-current-rockchip64_21.05.4_arm64.deb drwx------ 5 root root 4096 Oct 5 2020 lost+found drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Oct 15 2020 media drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Feb 9 2021 mnt drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Dec 2 2020 opt dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Oct 15 2020 proc drwx------ 7 root root 4096 Aug 31 23:36 root drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Oct 15 2020 run lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 8 Aug 30 2020 sbin -> usr/sbin drwxrwxr-x 2 root root 4096 Oct 5 2020 selinux drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 Jun 10 03:18 srv dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Oct 15 2020 sys lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 42 Sep 1 03:01 thermal_zone0 -> /sys/devices/virtual/thermal/thermal_zone0 drwxrwxrwt 2 root root 4096 Oct 15 2020 tmp drwxr-xr-x 12 root root 4096 Nov 27 2020 usr drwxr-xr-x 14 root root 4096 Oct 6 2020 var  
8. now installs the downloaded packages...
root@helios64:/# dpkg -i *.deb dpkg: warning: downgrading linux-dtb-current-rockchip64 from 21.08.1 to 21.05.4 (Reading database ... 62558 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to unpack linux-dtb-current-rockchip64_21.05.4_arm64.deb ... Unpacking linux-dtb-current-rockchip64 (21.05.4) over (21.08.1) ... Selecting previously unselected package linux-headers-current-rockchip64. Preparing to unpack linux-headers-current-rockchip64_21.05.4_arm64.deb ... Unpacking linux-headers-current-rockchip64 (21.05.4) ... dpkg: warning: downgrading linux-image-current-rockchip64 from 21.08.1 to 21.05.4 Preparing to unpack linux-image-current-rockchip64_21.05.4_arm64.deb ... update-initramfs: Deleting /boot/initrd.img-5.10.60-rockchip64 Removing obsolete file uInitrd-5.10.60-rockchip64 stat: cannot stat '/proc/1/root/.': No such file or directory Unpacking linux-image-current-rockchip64 (21.05.4) over (21.08.1) ... Setting up linux-dtb-current-rockchip64 (21.05.4) ... Setting up linux-headers-current-rockchip64 (21.05.4) ... Compiling headers - please wait ... grep: /proc/cpuinfo: No such file or directory grep: /proc/cpuinfo: No such file or directory Setting up linux-image-current-rockchip64 (21.05.4) ... update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-5.10.43-rockchip64 W: Couldn't identify type of root file system for fsck hook update-initramfs: Converting to u-boot format  
9. reset the root change with exit and restart your helios64 with reboot...
root@helios64:/# exit exit root@helios64:/mnt/system# reboot  
10. after a reboot you should now boot from the eMMC again...
root@192.168.180.5's password: _ _ _ _ __ _ _ | | | | ___| (_) ___ ___ / /_ | || | | |_| |/ _ \ | |/ _ \/ __| '_ \| || |_ | _ | __/ | | (_) \__ \ (_) |__ _| |_| |_|\___|_|_|\___/|___/\___/ |_| Welcome to Armbian 21.08.1 Buster with Linux 5.10.43-rockchip64 No end-user support: built from trunk System load: 74% Up time: 3 min Memory usage: 34% of 3.77G IP: 172.18.0.1 172.19.0.1 172.20.0.1 172.17.0.1 192.168.180.5 CPU temp: 66°C Usage of /: 87% of 15G [ 0 security updates available, 3 updates total: apt upgrade ] Last check: 2021-09-01 16:38 [ General system configuration (beta): armbian-config ] Last login: Wed Sep 1 16:26:23 2021 root@helios64:~# root@helios64:~# uname -a Linux helios64 5.10.43-rockchip64 #21.05.4 SMP PREEMPT Wed Jun 16 08:02:12 UTC 2021 aarch64 GNU/Linux root@helios64:~#  
11. if the eMMC was used you can see with mount...
root@helios64:~# mount | grep /dev/mmc /dev/mmcblk2p1 on / type ext4 (rw,noatime,nodiratime,errors=remount-ro,commit=600) /dev/mmcblk2p1 on /var/folder2ram/var/log type ext4 (rw,noatime,nodiratime,errors=remount-ro,commit=600) /dev/mmcblk2p1 on /var/folder2ram/var/tmp type ext4 (rw,noatime,nodiratime,errors=remount-ro,commit=600) /dev/mmcblk2p1 on /var/folder2ram/var/lib/openmediavault/rrd type ext4 (rw,noatime,nodiratime,errors=remount-ro,commit=600) /dev/mmcblk2p1 on /var/folder2ram/var/spool type ext4 (rw,noatime,nodiratime,errors=remount-ro,commit=600) /dev/mmcblk2p1 on /var/folder2ram/var/lib/rrdcached type ext4 (rw,noatime,nodiratime,errors=remount-ro,commit=600) /dev/mmcblk2p1 on /var/folder2ram/var/lib/monit type ext4 (rw,noatime,nodiratime,errors=remount-ro,commit=600) /dev/mmcblk2p1 on /var/folder2ram/var/cache/samba type ext4 (rw,noatime,nodiratime,errors=remount-ro,commit=600)  

The easiest way to downgrade linux on emmc now would be to copy those files to /mnt/system (root directory of your emmc) - and then change root with  'chroot /mnt/system' and install the packages with 'dpkg -i *.deb'   (while your active system is on SD).
 
You can leave the chrooted environment by typing 'exit'. emmc should now be bootable again. If not, you need to update the bootloader on emmc as described earlier in this thread.

https://github.com/armbian/build/actions/workflows/build.yml
Or by using nightly kernels which are 24h old in worst case.

Hi all.
I've done a collaboration with @Igor, the creator of Armbian.
He shows and talks about the hardware that is used to maintain the project. Servers, boards, other electronics, ...
Enjoy!

More videos to come.
 

Starting 5.12, no kernel patches are needed for H264. With 5.14 (due in about a week or two), only HEVC needs patches. Other supported codecs (MPEG2, VP8, H264) do not.
 
You still have to make sure that you have enough CMA memory available. 4k videos can be pretty demanding in worst case. I would suggest 256 MiB just to be on the safe side.

Wanted to add that I purchased a HDMI to DVI cable and hooked up the T95 Mini to a 1920x1080 PC monitor after reversing the change to /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf
 
Everything works fine now.
 
Hopefully this extract from dmesg output means the flash is eMMC and I don't have to open the box to check :-)
 
[    5.007627] mmc1: new high speed MMC card at address 0001
[    5.031035] mmcblk1: mmc1:0001 MAG2GC 14.6 GiB
[    5.035956] mmcblk1boot0: mmc1:0001 MAG2GC partition 1 4.00 MiB
[    5.042251] mmcblk1boot1: mmc1:0001 MAG2GC partition 2 4.00 MiB
 

Unfortunately, you have NAND not EMMC flash so can't flash the OS to the board.  EMMC would have a chip mounted in the empty socket above the flash you have (lower right corner of the board).  That is the biggest problem when buying these things is you don't know what they populate and it can vary from order to order unless you specify (and they understand what you are asking).  I have a couple sources that have been reliable.  I am not sure where you are, but in the US on Amazon, this source "EasyTone" seems to always  use EMMC (and they confirmed this as well).  https://www.amazon.com/Android-Quad-Core-Decoding-T95MINI-Internet/dp/B07XCPRSXR.  On Alibaba, use "Shenzhen Reeshine" (ask for Richard Cheng).  He is very helpful and honest and understands what you mean if you say "must use EMMC not NAND".

... and be aware that there are quite a few fake tv boxes around (very popular for q+ too) which are sold as 4gb (and in android they even hacked it to look like this), but only have 2gb of memory built in ... so it can be that the box simply only has 2gb in the end ... maybe do an "apt-get install memtester" followed by "memtester 2500M" on the box with your 3072M setting - if it runs through stable you seem to really have 3gb, if it hangs or crashes doing so you most probably only have 2gb
 
good luck and best wishes - hexdump

Thanks KY69! the "problem" was extlinux.conf changed to 3072 and working. This is a distribution of only a specific partition (ext4) for h6 and I was not sure if extlinux.conf file had to be modified. 
This image have the "sun50i-h6-tanix-tx6.dtb" file as default and seems that all is ok but have not tested sound and hdmi quality, because I use it as a headless sever. 
I don't knmow if this is de best .dtb image for Q+ box, but seems fine

On the TX6, I removed the bottom cover of the case and use this model upside down (so that the radiator looks up and has a good run for air movement). I do not know what kind of idiot designs TV boxes in China, they put the board in the case with the radiator down, this is complete idiocy. Apparently, these "engineers" did not go to school and do not know the laws of physics at all - hot air always moves up (if there is no fan). Therefore, with passive cooling (without forced air supply from the fan), it is necessary to place the radiator so that the air passes to it as best as possible and the heated air freely goes up.

I can also report that the "Q+" model works as well ("works" as always means w/o WiFi, Bluetooth).  This is another model worth considering, although in my experience it runs hotter.  All these boxes are best used as a small server as @SteeMan suggests.  But for that purpose and for the reasons he states (price, EMMC flash, case), they are excellent.  I have tried several AMLogic (before they were dropped) and RockChip models in the past, but was never able to get them to work, at least not easily.  So, if you are looking for a small server box that just "works", I would highly recommend that you save yourself considerable grief and get/use one of these H6 models (before buying, confirm that they use EMMC and not NAND! - I had one batch I bought on Amazon that was NAND - all the ones on Alibaba have been EMMC).  The models I have tested are the TX6, T95 Mini (and Max), and Q+.  They are completely interchangeable and use the same images that @Balbes150 posts here.