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Newbie on Armbian. I have an Allwinner H313 (confirmed) box that I want to to use as a basic Samba server. CPU:Allwinner H313Quad Core ARM Cortex A53 GPU:Mali-G31 OPenGL ES3.2 Memory:2GB Flash:16GB OS:Android 10.0 The actual firmware is a secure image and, no matter what procedure I do, I can't load any other image but the secure one. Debugging shows that 'fastbootd' has the "secure" flag set. My intention is to create a basic secure arm64 Debian image but I am having a hard time in doing so. Any ideas (specific Wiki, procedures) on how to create the secure image or "reset" the "secure" flag will be very appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Basically it has 1 gb ROM 8gb ram h3 chip and I HAVE put many img files on SD card NONE of them boot and as soon as I take the SD card out it boots into android perfectly fine... I'm lost on words and what to do I have also tried FEL mode on linux but the request times out with error -7 power supply is 5v 2a which is fine for this so not that and I'm using a 256gb a1 rated SD card. This is from a generic Chinese tv box called meecom and it has ADX-H-V1.0 written on it. I also changed the dtb files a lot but it still gave no display or sign that it was booted into armbian idk what to do help ( btw I repasted it that's why it has no thermal putty on it)

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

­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 HK1 Max (board signature YX_RK3318) by @Constantin Gatej Ninkbox N1 Max RK3318 by @enigmasphinx Hongtop H50 (board signature t98-3318-221-v11) by @GmP 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: Nightly stables - built from trunk by Armbian servers and GPG-signed: https://github.com/armbian/community 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

@savznkvo if you followed my compile.sh steps from above, you should have a file Armbian-unofficial_26.05.0-trunk_Orangepirv2_trixie_current_6.18.21_minimal.img in ./output/images ready to be flashed to your SD card. Insert and boot. At this point you need TV / Kbd or UART to finish the wizard (set root PW etc). Now start armbian-install (see screen shot). Transfer *.img to /dev/nvme0n1, use netcat or similar. Then power down, remove SD and eMMC (if plugged). Restart from NVME, now you have to complete first time wizard again. Tested with current main and it works flawlessly. Addon: if you apt-get dist-upgrade, a newer kernel package from Armbian nightly builds is installed and the bcmdhd wifi kernel driver module is recompiled - which needs some time. This will DOWNGRADE from 6.18.21 to 6.18.20 currently - this works as designed. HTH // Sven-Ola

@savznkvo Installing headless (blind / via network) on a board this new will fail probably. Get a TV and connect an HDMI display or get a serial adapter and connect that for debug. I'll check later with a spare NVME, but I am pretty sure it works (provided, that you compiled the correct firmware). HTH // Sven-Ola

Hey everyone! I have a TV Box labeled “In Xplus”, running on an Allwinner H313 (most likely a generic/rebranded device). I was able to install Linux on it using Armbian 26.2.0-trunk (Trixie). The system boots normally, but I’m facing network issues: - Wi-Fi is not working (no interface detected) - Ethernet is also not working (only interface is lo) So basically, the system runs fine, but I have no network connectivity at all. My questions: - Is this a current limitation of Armbian support for the H313? - Is there any specific DTB or patch that could fix Wi-Fi/Ethernet? - Is there a more stable Armbian version or another distro with better support? - Has anyone managed to get networking working on this chip? Any help or shared experience would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

First of all thanks to the people maintaining armbian for helios64. I recently upgraded (well I reinstalled) to trixie and everything mostly runs stable for me. However I have a problem with the 2.5GB adapter. It is connected to a 2.5GB switch and when for example running iperf3 I get proper results close to 2.5 GBit. So in general it seems to be running ok. I have a DLNA server (minidlna) running on that machine and when I stream from my TV (streaming via VLC from my laptop triggers the same problems) the network connection drops for a moment and works again after a few seconds (which you can guess is super annoying when watching something). I am not sure what exactly is triggering this. most of the time the network is super stable but during streaming I get hickups. This is what my kernel log spits out when this is happending: ``` Apr 09 17:45:54 hermann-walter kernel: xhci-hcd xhci-hcd.0.auto: Event TRB for slot 4 ep 3 with no TDs queued Apr 09 17:45:54 hermann-walter kernel: xhci-hcd xhci-hcd.0.auto: Event TRB for slot 4 ep 3 with no TDs queued Apr 09 17:45:54 hermann-walter kernel: xhci-hcd xhci-hcd.0.auto: Event TRB for slot 4 ep 3 with no TDs queued Apr 09 17:45:54 hermann-walter kernel: xhci-hcd xhci-hcd.0.auto: Event TRB for slot 4 ep 3 with no TDs queued Apr 09 17:45:54 hermann-walter kernel: xhci-hcd xhci-hcd.0.auto: Event dma 0x00000000053f8f10 for ep 3 status 1 not part of TD at 00000000053f8ed0 - 00000000053f8ed0 Apr 09 17:45:54 hermann-walter kernel: xhci-hcd xhci-hcd.0.auto: Event dma 0x00000000053f8f20 for ep 3 status 1 not part of TD at 00000000053f8ed0 - 00000000053f8ed0 Apr 09 17:45:54 hermann-walter kernel: xhci-hcd xhci-hcd.0.auto: Event dma 0x00000000053f8f30 for ep 3 status 1 not part of TD at 00000000053f8ed0 - 00000000053f8ed0 Apr 09 17:45:54 hermann-walter kernel: xhci-hcd xhci-hcd.0.auto: Event dma 0x00000000053f8f40 for ep 3 status 1 not part of TD at 00000000053f8ed0 - 00000000053f8ed0 Apr 09 17:45:54 hermann-walter kernel: xhci-hcd xhci-hcd.0.auto: Event dma 0x00000000053f8f50 for ep 3 status 1 not part of TD at 00000000053f8ed0 - 00000000053f8ed0 Apr 09 17:45:54 hermann-walter kernel: xhci-hcd xhci-hcd.0.auto: Event dma 0x00000000053f8f60 for ep 3 status 1 not part of TD at 00000000053f8ed0 - 00000000053f8ed0 Apr 09 17:45:54 hermann-walter kernel: xhci-hcd xhci-hcd.0.auto: Event dma 0x00000000053f8f70 for ep 3 status 1 not part of TD at 00000000053f8ed0 - 00000000053f8ed0 Apr 09 17:45:54 hermann-walter kernel: xhci-hcd xhci-hcd.0.auto: Event dma 0x00000000053f8f80 for ep 3 status 1 not part of TD at 00000000053f8ed0 - 00000000053f8ed0 Apr 09 17:45:54 hermann-walter kernel: xhci-hcd xhci-hcd.0.auto: Event dma 0x00000000053f8f90 for ep 3 status 1 not part of TD at 00000000053f8ed0 - 00000000053f8ed0 Apr 09 17:45:54 hermann-walter kernel: xhci-hcd xhci-hcd.0.auto: Event dma 0x00000000053f8fa0 for ep 3 status 1 not part of TD at 00000000053f8ed0 - 00000000053f8ed0 Apr 09 17:45:59 hermann-walter kernel: r8152 2-1.4:1.0 enx646266d00873: NETDEV WATCHDOG: CPU: 0: transmit queue 0 timed out 5152 ms Apr 09 17:45:59 hermann-walter kernel: r8152 2-1.4:1.0 enx646266d00873: Tx timeout Apr 09 17:46:00 hermann-walter kernel: r8152 2-1.4:1.0 enx646266d00873: Tx status -2 Apr 09 17:46:00 hermann-walter kernel: r8152 2-1.4:1.0 enx646266d00873: Tx status -2 Apr 09 17:46:00 hermann-walter kernel: r8152 2-1.4:1.0 enx646266d00873: Tx status -2 Apr 09 17:46:00 hermann-walter kernel: r8152 2-1.4:1.0 enx646266d00873: Tx status -2 Apr 09 17:46:02 hermann-walter kernel: r8152-cfgselector 2-1.4: reset SuperSpeed USB device number 3 using xhci-hcd ``` the usb related messages are not always there but the r8152 related messages are always there. I found a similar problem here: https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/issues/22130 I tried replacing the firmware but that didn't help and I later found out that the helios64 uses a different firmware so that explains why it didn't help: ``` Apr 10 05:48:30 hermann-walter kernel: r8152 2-1.4:1.0: Loaded FW: rtl_nic/rtl8156a-2.fw, sha256: 7b50f4a307bde7b3f384935537c4d9705457fa42613eb0003ffbc4e19461a1e0 Apr 10 05:48:30 hermann-walter kernel: r8152 2-1.4:1.0: Loaded FW: rtl_nic/rtl8156a-2.fw, sha256: 7b50f4a307bde7b3f384935537c4d9705457fa42613eb0003ffbc4e19461a1e0 ``` does anybody know what is going on? I am quite sure that the problem wasn't there before the upgrade (but I might be mistaken because I only started observing the helios64 again after the upgrade. also it seems to be related to the amount of network traffic going on. i.e. lower bitrate streams seem to not trigger the problem). Streaming via the 1GBit NIC is working fine.

3D Graphics Acceleration on T95N (A98X Jackbox) - RK3229 with 2GB RAM / 16GB eMMC - Educational Project for Schools Hi, I’m working on a project using a specific TV Box model (A98X Jackbox) to repurpose these boxes as low-cost computers for schools. The goal is to provide students with a platform to use AI tools and basic productivity, but I need better browser rendering. Hardware Specs (Confirmed via board teardown and logs): Board ID: T95N-RK3229_512X4_V1.5 CPU: Rockchip RK3229 RAM: 2GB (Confirmed via free -m) Storage: 16GB eMMC (SanDisk SDIN9DS2-16G) OS: Armbian 21.08.8 Bullseye (Legacy Kernel 4.4.194-rk322x) What I have done so far: Installed the Minimal image and set up LXDE with LightDM. Optimized the system (Governor set to performance, swappiness set to 10). Ran glxinfo -B which confirms it's currently using llvmpipe (Accelerated: no). Tried searching for Mali drivers via apt, but armbian-config is not available in the repositories for this specific build/architecture. Verified Wi-Fi functionality (working fine with LED config 2 via rk322x-config). The system is stable and surprisingly fast thanks to the 2GB RAM, but the CPU is struggling with 100% spikes during browser rendering (Epiphany WebKit) because it lacks GPU acceleration. Question: Is there a way to enable Mali-400 MP2 drivers for X11 on this Legacy 4.4 kernel? Are there any specific packages, blobs, or workarounds to get hardware acceleration working and replace llvmpipe? I’m available to run any tests or provide further logs if needed. Thanks for this amazing project!

Is it possible to switch the operation to the OpenWRT system OR Linux OR DTB Q17 android tv box = Tanix TX11 android tv box = Q1 android tv box .... Works but ≠ X96Q android tv box AND ≠ Tanix TX1 android tv box .... It doesn't work current system firmware: Android 14 specs: - ARM Cortex-A53 - 32 bit - Mali-G31 - Allwinner H313 - arm,sun50iw9p1 4 GB RAM DDR3 32 GB HDD model = "sun50iw9"; compatible = "arm,sun50iw9p1";

Hey everyone, I’ve cross-flashed a MXQ 4K 5G (Allwinner sun8iw7p1 / H3) firmware onto a different H3-based TV box. Everything works surprisingly well, except for the IR Power-On/Wakeup. Since the hardware is different, my box's IR receiver is sending a scancode that the MXQ firmware doesn't recognize as the "Wakeup" key. Because this is an Allwinner (sunxi) build and not Rockchip, I know I can't just edit a remote.conf file in the system partition to fix the cold-boot power button. My questions: Where exactly is the Hardcoded IR Wakeup/Power-on scancode stored in these Phoenix-style Allwinner images? Is it buried in the Device Tree Blob (DTB) under a specific IR controller node, or is it hardcoded in the U-Boot/SPL? If I unpack the boot.img or kernel, what hex patterns should I search for to find the Power-key scancode table? If anyone has experience patching the primary boot scancode for sun8i chips, I’d love some guidance on which partition/file to hex-edit. Thanks!

Hello, I'm new to embedded linux installation, so please bear with me. So I purchased an android tv box labeled h96max S905L3 from TEMU. Specifications (if the label is trustworthy): RAM: 2GB, ROM:16GB, running android 14.0. On the pcb it says: s905_zx02_v01. It features an ethernet port, 2 USB, HDMI, AV port (looks like a headphone jack) and no hidden reset button or sd card slot. I was trying to install any kind of linux to it using a bootable usb, I just need a simple shell capable of running an http server. I have tried using the remote control to trigger boot to linux, but nothing works. I have then opened the thing, and connected uart to a RP2040 and wrote a simple script as a uart bridge. I now have access to u-boot shell, interupted setup. So far I used chatgpt to guide me, but couldn't get it to boot properly. It told me how to boot manually the image from the usb, but it failed every time. It told me to set these env vars, and over time it showed me different addresses. It said the issues were related to overlapping of the addresses, or using address range that was reserved. It also said the dtb which I used, the meson-gxl-s905x-p212.dtb won't work, since the device always threw an error bad_magic, even though I checked fdt header, and the magic was correct. setenv kernel_addr_r 0x20000000 setenv ramdisk_addr_r 0x24000000 setenv fdt_addr_r 0x21000000 I would then load the files fatload usb 0:1 ${kernel_addr_r} linux-android.img fatload usb 0:1 ${ramdisk_addr_r} uInitrd fatload usb 0:1 ${fdt_addr_r} vendor-expanded.dtb Notice: I used different images, firstly the Image file, and the meson-gxl-s905x-p212.dtb. After failed boots, chatgpt told me to expand, i.e. add padding to the dtb (first with the meson...dtb, and after that with the vendor.dtb). It didn't work, so it told me to generate an android like image using mkbootimg \ --kernel Image \ --dtb vendor-expanded.dtb \ --cmdline "console=ttyAML0,115200 console=ttyS0,115200 root=/dev/sda1 rootwait rootdelay=10 rw" \ --base 0x0 \ --pagesize 2048 \ --kernel_offset 0x1080000 \ --dtb_offset 0x1000000 \ -o linux-android.img and boot using the extracted vendor.dtb (pulled from android) and using bootm ${kernel_addr_r} instead of booti ${kernel_addr_r} ${ramdisk_addr_r} ${fdt_addr_r} The bootargs I used are setenv bootargs "root=/dev/sda1 rootfstype=ext4 rw rootwait console=ttyAML0,115200n8 console=tty0" Please, any help would be appreciated as I already spent over 6 hours with this little cheap bastard that wouldn't boot anything but that chinese android. I will post output of anything, just let me know if something is needed. I'm sorry for the messiness of this post, but I tried a lot of things that chatgpt told me, explained the errors, and supplied commands for the u-boot shell.

These instructions are for Amlogic CPUs for TV Boxes. Note: If you have previously run other distributions on the box such as coreelec the below installation will not work. You will need to restore the original android firmware before attempting the install. coreelec changes the boot environment in ways that are incompatible with these Armbian builds. Download links: Weekly Community Rolling Builds: https://www.armbian.com/amlogic-s9xx-tv-box/ or build your own image using the Armbian build framework Once you download your chosen build, you need to burn the image to an SD card. Generally balenaEtcher is recommended as it does a verification of the burn. Also be sure to use high quality SD cards. Once you have the SD card with your chosen build, then you need to edit the boot configuration file on the SD card. In the BOOT partition of the SD card there will be a file /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf, that you need to edit. There will also be a extlinux.conf.template file to use as a reference. You will need to add a line into the extlinux.conf file for the Device Tree (dtb) file you will be using for your box. Place this line before the APPEND line as shown in the .template file. Basically you need to have the correct dtb for your box. You may need to attempt to use different dtb files until you find the one that works the best for your box's hardware (there are a bunch of dtb files in /boot/dtb/amlogic/... to try depending on your cpu architecture and hardware). It is unlikely that there will be a matching dtb file for your TV box. The idea is to find the one that works best for your box. This may mean that you try booting with different dtb files until you fine one that works good enough for your needs. By searching the forums you will find information about what dtbs other users have found work best for different boxes. Because you are booting from an SD card, you can easily try different dtb files. The dtd files are named by cpu family. So for example dtb files for the s905x2 cpu are named meson-g12a-*. Below there is a table that shows the identifiers for each familiy (g12a for s905x2 in this case). Next you need to copy the correct uboot for your box. This is needed for how these builds boot on amlogic boxes. There are four different u-boot files located in the /boot directory: u-boot-s905, u-boot-s905x-s912, u-boot-s905x2-s922, u-boot-s905x3 You need to copy (note copy not move) the u-boot file that matches your cpu to a new file named u-boot.ext in the /boot directory So for example with a TX3 mini box that has an s905w cpu you would copy u-boot-s905x-s912 to u-boot.ext: cp u-boot-s905x-s912 u-boot.ext (See table below for more details on which u-boot to use for which cpu) Once you have your SD card prepared you need to enable multiboot on the box. There are different ways documented to do this, but the most common is the "toothpick" method. The "toothpick" method means to hold the reset button while applying power to the box. The reset button is often hidden and located at the back of the audio/video jack connector. By pressing that button with a toothpick or other such pointed device you can enable multiboot. What you need to do is have the box unplugged, have your prepared sd card inserted, then press and hold the button while inserting the power connector. Then after a bit of time you can release the button. (I don't know exactly how long you need to hold the button after power is applied, but if it doesn't work the first time try again holding for longer or shorter times). You should now be booting into armbian/linux. Note that the first boot takes longer as it is enlarging the root filesystem to utilize the entire SD card. After you are satisfied that your box is working correctly for your needs you can optionally copy the installation from the SD card to internal emmc storage (assuming your box has emmc). (Note: Installing to emmc has some risks of bricking your box. Don't do this unless you feel you understand how to reinstall your box's android firmware) You install armbian to emmc by running the shell script in the /root directory: install-aml.sh. Note: It is not possible to install into emmc on boxes with the s905 cpu (s905x, s905w, s905x2, etc however should all be supported). It is recommended that you make a backup of emmc first. Also be prepared if anything goes horribly wrong with your emmc install to reinstall the android firmware using the Amlogic USB Burning Tool to unbrick your device. If you have or can find an original android firmware on the internet and you can generally (but not always) recover a bricked box using the Amlogic tool and the original firmware file. Mapping from CPU to uboot and dtb: u-boot-s905 s905 - gxbb u-boot-s905x2-s912 S905X - gxl S905W - gxl S905D - gxl S905L - gxl S805X - gxl S912 - gxm A311D - gxm u-boot-s905x2-s922 S905X2 - g12a S922 - g12b u-boot-s905x3 S905X3 - sm1 Not supported or not tested S805 - S905W2 - S905X4 - S805X2 - s4 A113D - axg A113X - axg Note: Followup posts in this thread should be limited to comments to improve or better understand these instructions. Other issues should be posted as new questions in the Amlogic CPU Boxes sub-forum.

Hi all, i've been going this forum long enough to try and root a tv box that i buyed recently, but this one is HEAVILY locked up, like nothing i have seen before. My objective here is to access 'su' so i can have access to rooting/overclocking this thing for emulators, and after that adding a heatsink, active cooling, etc. I tried ADB over all USBs (4 in total) but nothing. then i tried to see if root was available through some leftover app or vulnerability, but nothing. Then i tried following the specs from this thread (pretty similar in design to my PCB) but my UART displays nothing. (I leave the images from my setup below), i tried switching the wires, i tested the voltages and they return 3.3v, so they are ok. I tried the toothpick method to access recovery, but it has 2 buttons. 1 does nothing (AFAIK) and the other one goes directly to updating, so no menu. Any help is appreciated, as i'm out of any ideas. I leave my pictures below, and my specs: CPU: Alwinner H313 RAM: 1GB ROM: 8GB PCB: Z01S-v13.3, 2025.05.20 OS: Android 7-8 ish

And the email system for is emailing with me erroneos info about bedno report 2x a day, so call off the quard dogs, it been solved without any help from this forum. you've been yelling about dhcp w/out once offering me a single clue as to how I should configure it even when I showed you the results. FYI I have been doing odd things with little machines for a lot longer that most of you have been breathing on your own starting with an rca 1802 in 1978. Do any of you have a track record that long? That bit of production tooling for a medium market tv station was still in use 20+ times a day when the station burned to the ground in the late 90's. I prefer to call it efficiency since most production equipment at a tv station is so heavily used & long since worn out before the IRS lets them amortize the cost. I am also a CET, a test 95% of the EE's out there cannot pass. I call a backup server that draws 19 watts at full song in the middle of backing up 8 machines here, efficient. Took me a while to figure it out the hardware and around $1500 in hardware. But it works as fast as my cat6 wired local net can run.

Hi, welcome everyone. I’m using an H50 TV box that I was about to throw away because I thought I had completely bricked it. I disassembled it and found the pins to activate maskrom mode. I think this could be useful for everyone. I then installed the current image, and everything seems to work except for the HDMI output (blank screen). Do you have any suggestions? Thanks. Some data and photo below. In case you want to install please note that also multitool fails to activate the HDMI, so you will need SSH to config. SOC: RK3188 (Hopefully - I did not remove the heatsink) eMMC: Samsung KLMBG4GEAC-B001 32GB (64x4) eMCP: Samsung KMQN10006B 8 GB eMMC + 1 GB LPDDR3 RAM Wi-Fi IC 339S0209 2.4G/5G LAN working WIFI Working ---------------------------- root@rk3318-box:~# lscpu Architecture: aarch64 CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bit Byte Order: Little Endian CPU(s): 4 On-line CPU(s) list: 0-3 Vendor ID: ARM Model name: Cortex-A53 Model: 4 Thread(s) per core: 1 Core(s) per cluster: 4 Socket(s): - Cluster(s): 1 Stepping: r0p4 CPU(s) scaling MHz: 60% CPU max MHz: 1008.0000 CPU min MHz: 600.0000 BogoMIPS: 48.00 Flags: fp asimd evtstrm aes pmull sha1 sha2 crc32 cpuid Caches (sum of all): L1d: 128 KiB (4 instances) L1i: 128 KiB (4 instances) L2: 256 KiB (1 instance) NUMA: NUMA node(s): 1 NUMA node0 CPU(s): 0-3 Vulnerabilities: Gather data sampling: Not affected Indirect target selection: Not affected Itlb multihit: Not affected L1tf: Not affected Mds: Not affected Meltdown: Not affected Mmio stale data: Not affected Reg file data sampling: Not affected Retbleed: Not affected Spec rstack overflow: Not affected Spec store bypass: Not affected Spectre v1: Mitigation; __user pointer sanitization Spectre v2: Not affected Srbds: Not affected Tsa: Not affected Tsx async abort: Not affected Vmscape: Not affected root@rk3318-box:~# free -l total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 1504636 291372 1037440 46940 297848 1213264 Low: 1504636 467196 1037440 High: 0 0 0 Swap: 752316 0 752316 SOME TESTS ON THE HDMI ISSUE: hdmi_debug_20251008_230528.log hdmi_test_20251008_230948.log

I have an H50-labeled tv box with a different board (T98-3318-V2.3) but with exactly the same problem - no HDMI even though all the software debug traces show that everything video-related gets called and works. I first tried to make it work 5 years ago and failed and a few months ago I revisited it just to see if I can make it work now in the age of AI. I made a really deep dive into reverse engineering it. I rooted the original Android firmware and dumped anything I could, extracted and analyzed with Ghidra the vendor u-boot and kernel (wasn't particularly helpful) and finally managed to execute the u-boot binary in Renode by emulating a lot of hardware stuff with code or by simply replacing functions with successful returns all the way to the point of u-boot displaying the splash screen and with various hooks and warnings about peripheral accesses I collected a comprehensive trace of everything that u-boot was doing, and in that trace, the AI noticed a certain GPIO access and suggested replacing this vcc-host-vbus { compatible = "regulator-fixed"; enable-active-high; gpio = <0x74 0x00 0x00>; pinctrl-names = "default"; pinctrl-0 = <0x76>; regulator-name = "vcc_host_vbus"; regulator-always-on; regulator-min-microvolt = <0x4c4b40>; regulator-max-microvolt = <0x4c4b40>; vin-supply = <0x77>; phandle = <0x100>; }; with this vcc-display-en { compatible = "regulator-fixed"; gpio = <0x74 0x00 0x01>; pinctrl-names = "default"; pinctrl-0 = <0x76>; regulator-name = "vcc_display_en"; regulator-always-on; regulator-boot-on; regulator-min-microvolt = <0x4c4b40>; regulator-max-microvolt = <0x4c4b40>; vin-supply = <0x77>; phandle = <0x100>; }; in the standard rk3318-box.dts which made HDMI work.

Hi, so after many hours of trial and error I have managed to get the latest Armbian with Kernel 6.1.27 running on my old mxq s805 tv box. Albeit only thing that is not working is hdmi output and wifi. So for anyone else trying to accomplish something similar, my steps were: https://github.com/hzyitc/armbian-onecloud Downloaded the latest release of this build for the onecloud device as it also runs on the s805 amlogic chipset (props to the developer for still updating) Burn the image to your sd card. Then after the image is burned, create a textfile on the root of the sd card and name it „uEnv.txt“ Paste the following and adjust the .dtb file to your corresponding device. My case is the mxq LINUX=/uImage INITRD=/uInitrd #VMODE=1080P50HZ VMODE=1080P FDT=/dtb/meson8b-mxq.dtb APPEND=root=LABEL=armbi_root rootfstype=ext4 rootflags=data=writeback rw console=ttyAML0,115200n8 console=tty0 no_console_suspend consoleblank=0 fsck.repair=yes net.ifnames=0 Save the file, insert the sd card in your device connect it to LAN and ssh in to the device (check the ip in your router) So, ssh root@your.ip.adress.x Password is 1234 by default. And that is that. I currently have it running for 4hrs with no outage. PiHole and PiVPN both installed and running. I hope this could help anyone out trying on a similar device. Credit goes to the devs and contributors. I just put the pieces together and made it work as my own builds wouldnt run so I resorted to this much better solution. p.s: If anyone is interested for my reasoning of updating from a old build, it was because i was using 5.14 rc2 kernel that was bugging with wireguard. And as mentioned no hdmi output and no wifi. Wifi should be fixable hdmi rather not to my understanding. Take care and have fun

Currently working on a build for this device. It boots and is about 90% functional on 6.6 and 6.7 Kernel https://github.com/sicXnull/armbian-build/tree/X96Q-TVBOX-LPDDR3 Working - Desktop - Ethernet - Wifi Not working - DTS could use some work. Right now it does not detect internal EMMC so installing to EMMC is not an option. - Likely other things i've missed. I've uploaded two images to my git. Full w/Mate Desktop Minimal/Server Feel free to compile this yourself if you don't trust my images, it's encouraged. Changes are on the X96Q-TVBOX-LPDDR3 Branch Full W/Desktop ./compile.sh build BOARD=x96q-tvbox BRANCH=current BUILD_DESKTOP=yes BUILD_MINIMAL=no EXPERT=yes KERNEL_CONFIGURE=no KERNEL_GIT=shallow RELEASE=bookworm Minimal/Server ./compile.sh build BOARD=x96q-tvbox BRANCH=current BUILD_DESKTOP=no BUILD_MINIMAL=yes EXPERT=yes KERNEL_CONFIGURE=no KERNEL_GIT=shallow RELEASE=bookworm

Hello, sorry for my very bad english. I recently I bought a TV box with an h618 processor And I want to install Linux to make it a server but I only find images for the h616 processor, can I install one of these images on my TV box? It seems that the h616 processor and the h618 procesador are almost the same Thanks :D

Hello community, I am looking for help to boot Armbian on a generic TV Box sold as "MXQ Pro 4K 5G". I have tried multiple images (including official and community builds from sicXnull), but I only get a black screen or signal loss immediately after the boot attempt. Device Specifications: Model on case: MXQ Pro 4K 5G Board ID: IK316Q-EMCP_V4.1 SoC: Allwinner H313 (identified as sun50iw9p1 in Android) RAM: 1GB (Single chip configuration) Storage: 8GB eMMC Current Status: I am able to boot into the stock Android. To attempt the Armbian boot, I am using the reboot update command from a terminal emulator within Android. The issue: Upon executing the reboot command, the Android system shuts down, the display signal cuts off (or stays black), and the device never initializes Armbian (no HDMI output, no LEDs blinking differently). What I have tried: Builds from sicXnull repository (Kernel 6.x). Ophub community builds (H616/H313 variants). I have updated the extlinux.conf / uEnv.txt to point to the sun50i-h313-x96-q-lpddr3.dtb (and others like x96-mate), but the result is always the same failure to initialize. Has anyone successfully booted this specific board revision (IK316Q_V4.1)? Is there a specific bootloader argument or a different DTB required for this MXQ clone? Photos of the board are attached. Thanks!

Hello everyone, I have three Amlogic S905x TV boxes with a dead EMMC, and one with a desoldered EMMC (since I thought without it, they would boot from the microSD card). Is there a way to force them to boot into Armbian? Holding the power button doesn't work, and desoldering the EMMC didn't help either. I was able to boot Armbian using UART. A workaround is to use Ardruino, which sends commands to boot Armbian after a while, but that's a workaround, and I'd like a more elegant solution. 1) Download the *.img.gz image for the amlogic_s905x 2) Write the image to the microSD card using Rufus. 3) Connect the UART. Steps 2-6 in the brick instructions. 4) Insert the microSD card with Armbian into the console. 5) Turn on the console, close the testpoint, and at a certain point, the UART boot log will stop at gxl_p212_v1#. 6) Execute the following commands: mmc dev 1 env default -a -f;save setenv preboot 'if fatload mmc 0 1020000 aml_autoscript; then autoscr 1020000; fi; if fatload usb 0 1020000 aml_autoscript; then autoscr 1020000; fi; if fatload mmc 1 1020000 emmc_autoscript; then autoscr 1020000; fi;' save reboot Is there a simpler way to boot from a microSD card to default settings? Maybe I need to cleverly write a bootloader to it?

Hi all, I have an RK3318 TV box (A95X R2_V20). The front panel controller is TM1628. I’m running Armbian 23.11.1 with kernel 6.19.0‑edge‑rockchip64. Problem: tm16xx is not enabled in this kernel (CONFIG_TM16XX_* not set), and there is no rk3318x-config in this image. I tried to locate tm16xx sources in current Armbian kernel trees and mainline, but the driver is missing, so I can’t build it from the local headers. I have active Docker projects (avito-bot) on this box and don’t want to reinstall the system, and previous two reinstalls ended with apt issues, so I’d prefer to avoid a fresh image. Question: Is there a known external tm16xx driver repo (or patch) that can be built as an out‑of‑tree module for RK3318? If yes, could you point me to the source and any required device‑tree overlay/pin mapping for TM1628? I already posted board photos and dtb above (my post is still unanswered), so please refer to that if needed. Thanks!

Hello. I have a problem that's been driving me crazy, and I think I'm not the only one. I'm using Armbian version v25.05.0 for Aml.S905x running Armbian Linux 6.12.19-ophub Debian stable (bookworm), and I managed to install RealVNC Connect, for which I have a license. The problem I'm having, and I can't find a solution, is that by default the GDM3 desktop launcher uses Wayland, and when I connect externally to the server, I only get a black screen with a message saying "the desktop cannot be displayed at this time." I'm using GNOME, and I've tried different desktop environments, but they never work, even after selecting them from the gear icon. It just acts like it's going to launch and then returns to the user's home page. It doesn't matter if I use Xorg; no desktop environment ever loads. Only GNOME and GNOME Classic work. If I modify the /etc/gdm3/custom.conf file by deselecting Waylan, I get a black screen and can't even log in. It's a vicious cycle that prevents me from using this server that I like. I've also tried installing other screen launchers like LightDM, but they don't work on my system; the startup process either freezes or I get a black screen. I'm quite desperate. The device where Armbian is installed is an Amlogic TV Box, which is otherwise working perfectly, but this server issue is really frustrating me. Could anyone offer a solution so I can use this server that was working before? Thank you very much.

Hello averyone I'm trying to download the multitool.img.xz can someone please help me find it or share a valide link?