Single Armbian image for RK + AML + AW (aarch64 ARMv8)

[rforcen]

On 7/24/2020 at 10:00 AM, Turgus said:

The bionic version of 20200723 (with added desktop) runs now for around 12 hours from internal on two of my x96mini 2/16G boxes without issues or problems as expected. By the way the bionics from 20200720 & 20200715 worked well on the p281 boxes too..

have you been able to transfer bionic to eMMC on x96-mini 2/16?

i did one try and bricked the device using install-aml.sh

[RMG]

5 hours ago, Werner said:

KVM is disabled in kernel by default because almost nobody is using it.

None. Just build a new kernel and enable KVM support and hope it does not break anything else.

 

Thanks @Werner for reply, is there any detailed steps available to do so and replace existing kernal with KVM enabled one?

[Werner]

3 minutes ago, RMG said:

 

Thanks @Werner for reply, is there any detailed steps available to do so and replace existing kernal with KVM enabled one?

I don't know if there is a difference with @balbes150's fork but with pure Armbian follow this guide to setup a build environment and get a kernel image Debian package which you can simply install via dpkg -i

 

https://docs.armbian.com/Developer-Guide_Build-Preparation/

[RMG]

Oops 😬, seems quite work, my only requirement is to open Adobe flash content html page.

Kid at home received DVD from kindergarten and I don't want to hand him my WIN10 laptop, 

so was looking at other options, sadly could not get flash work on chromium browser on my K3 PRO running Armbian Linux as it seems Adobe don't have plugin for ARM processor.

[zeno979]

Hi,

I just flashed 20.08 in a s905x box.

Were I can set ethaddr? uboot console give me an error (can't overwrite)

[Turgus]

9 hours ago, rforcen said:

have you been able to transfer bionic to eMMC on x96-mini 2/16?

i did one try and bricked the device using install-aml.sh

Yes, I install most builds to eMMC on the x96minis and never had any problems using

sudo /root/install-aml.sh

Which system did you have on eMMC when you bricked the device? Could you revive it via usb burning tool and android?! Does it still boot from cards?

[rna]

Is there anybody that successfully installed Armbian in AllWinner H5 SoC using @balbes150 image?

 

I tried using the old image (before 20.08) and the new image (20.08), but I still could not run armbian.

 

If I simply flashed the sd card and insert it, it automatically runs android when it is powered on.

 

However, when I pressed the reset button. My screen goes black without any activity (When I plugged my USB male to male, to my Ubuntu PC. the "lsusb" recognized that the box is in the flashing state)

 

PS:

* I also found that my MXQ Pro 4K which is based on AllWinner H3 SoC does the same thing. Black screen (flashing state) during reset button press. Thus I cannot boot to Armbian

 

Does anybody have a solution to this?

Help would be appreciated.

 

Many thanks

Edited August 20, 2020 by rna

[balbes150]

28 minutes ago, rna said:

Is there anybody that successfully installed Armbian in AllWinner H5 SoC using

Try adding this u-boot to your SD card after writing the Armbian image. And don't forget to configure DTB in (extlinux.conf) for H5. You don't need to press any buttons, the system must start itself.

 

https://yadi.sk/d/eNF-g3XvRrN_8Q

[zeno979]

13 hours ago, zeno979 said:

Hi,

I just flashed 20.08 in a s905x box.

Were I can set ethaddr? uboot console give me an error (can't overwrite)

The box is a Leelbox Q2 (s905x p212 2g). Image used is Armbian_20.08_Arm-64_focal_current_5.7.15_desktop.img booting from SD.

I have followed instructions, set dtb to /boot/dtb/amlogic/meson-gxl-s905x-p212.dtb in extlinux/extlinux.conf and copied u-boot-s905x-s912 in u-boot.ext.

Now u-boot sets my mac-address to 4e:6b:62:04:f1:00 which is not correct, from u-boot console i can't set ethaddr property (error is can't overwrite). I also tried to convert dtb to dts, add local-mac-address (and mac-address) property to ethernet and convert this dts to a dtb used in extlinux.conf but this doesn't work, mac address is always overwritten (by uboot I guess).

Another issue is that activity/link leds on port are not working.

Every thing just works booting original android image from internal flash.

[rna]

47 minutes ago, balbes150 said:

Try adding this u-boot to your SD card after writing the Armbian image. And don't forget to configure DTB in (extlinux.conf) for H5. You don't need to press any buttons, the system must start itself.

 

https://yadi.sk/d/eNF-g3XvRrN_8Q

You are awesome @balbes150, Thanks for this u-boot and the image. It works flawlessly.

Many thanks,

rna

[rforcen]

14 hours ago, Turgus said:

Yes, I install most builds to eMMC on the x96minis and never had any problems using

sudo /root/install-aml.sh

Which system did you have on eMMC when you bricked the device? Could you revive it via usb burning tool and android?! Does it still boot from cards?

i'll try again, did you succeed with focal?,

originally i had android 9.0 on eMMC and revived it back with w10 usb burning tool/android 9.0 fw provided by supplier and yes it works now normally booting from SD card.

Edited August 20, 2020 by rforcen

[Vasy]

On 8/16/2020 at 6:26 PM, balbes150 said:

Version 20200816.

Restored system installation in eMMC.

Added a file (extlinux.conf-menu) for use with the system selection mode at startup.

Replacing u-boot files for s905 and s905x-s912 with menu support for system selection.

 

Tried this on a S905 2G/8G (Mini M8S) box.

Boots fine from Micro-SD, although only 1G of memory is now detected. I've used the S905 u-boot.  Upon writing it on emmc with the provided script for s905, the system does not boot at all. However, the toothpick method works for booting back from SD.

1 month ago, when booting from SD, 2 gigs were detected fine when booting from SD only,  also the emmc boot was working. but only 800MB of RAM were detected when booting from it.  

Can you please tell me where to start looking at? Thanks.

[balbes150]

25 minutes ago, Vasy said:

Can you please tell me where to start looking at?

With the recovery of the standard firmware and do not use the installation in eMMC.

[rna]

48 minutes ago, rna said:

Try adding this u-boot to your SD card after writing the Armbian image. And don't forget to configure DTB in (extlinux.conf) for H5. You don't need to press any buttons, the system must start itself.

 

https://yadi.sk/d/eNF-g3XvRrN_8Q

Now that I am successfully running armbian in Allwinner H5 by using the U-boot fix.

 

@balbes150: This reminds me a question that I want to ask regarding "is there any u-boot fix for amlogic"?

 

I have this old amlogic box called Huawei EC6108v9. despite it is old, but I like this box mainly because of two reasons:

1. It has power button

2. The specs is quite good for Armbian, despite its cheap price. The specs is available here: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/HOT-SALE-EC6108V9-Iptv-Quad-Core_62301857244.html?spm=a2700.7724857.normalList.15.77ab7ba7ajcHNC

 

It has Quad Core S905x CPU, 2GB of RAM and 8GB of ROM. The chip brand is HI3798M.

 

The only problem with this box is that, it doesn't have a reset button. Therefore booting from an SD Card is very hard. I don't know is there any way to make this board boot from an SD card? Is there any u-boot fix like in Allwinner or RK board? Is there any way to make this box run Armbian?

 

many thanks for your help.

 

[balbes150]

10 minutes ago, rna said:

The only problem with this box is that, it doesn't have a reset button.

There are various options for activating multi-loading on Amlogic (Android Update&Backup app, Android terminal, etc.). Look for details in the topics on this forum.

[rna]

1 minute ago, balbes150 said:

There are various options for activating multi-loading on Amlogic (Android Update&Backup app, Android terminal, etc.). Look for details in the topics on this forum.

I can confirm that those two options (Android Update&Backup and Android Terminal) are not working. The Android is locked, that is the biggest challenge

[rna]

4 hours ago, balbes150 said:

There are various options for activating multi-loading on Amlogic (Android Update&Backup app, Android terminal, etc.). Look for details in the topics on this forum.

After reading the posts in this forum. I can conclude that there are five methods to activate multi-boot for Amlogic SoC:

1. Android Update&Backup

2. Android Terminal

3. Reset Button

4. SSH

5. UART (USB-TTL)

 

In my case with the Ec6108v9 board. I don't have the first 3 options.

The only two options that is available are SSH and UART.

@balbes150: Do you have a suggested reading for both of this procedures?

 

I never used SSH before. Is there are reading for a beginner like me for Armbian?

 

In case of UART, I had opened the box case and found that I don't have male header pin for GND, TXD and RXD (This means, that I have to do some soldering job before being able to use USB TTL). I never done this before, but I just want to confirm that I am on the right track.

 

Many Thanks

rna

Edited August 20, 2020 by rna

[Vasy]

8 hours ago, balbes150 said:

With the recovery of the standard firmware and do not use the installation in eMMC.

I read this "with buying a new one"  And this is not a bad idea.

I am looking for a platform/box supporting the following: hardware-based AES-NI, eMMC boot, full memory detection, reasonable price, supported by your Armbian, for a Linux router with VPN. Gigabit Ethernet would be a plus. What would you recommend, please? 

So far I read that AES-NI is implemented in S905x, Allwinner H3, H5 and H6. Not sure about others, but looking forward to your advice. 

[sengsu]

@rna hi, are you sure that Huawei ec6108v9 have armv8 cpu?

AFAIK, it has hisilicon hi3798mv100 which is a armv7

Regarding Linux on this box, i have found on chinese forum, someone managed to install Ubuntu 16.04 using serial console and hitool. But the sad news is, it uses ancient kernel 3.10

Unfortunately, i cant try to install it on my box, because the file was uploaded at pan baidu, and i am outside of China mainland. 

This box is actually very promising, because it has enough ram and emmc, and in my country, second hand from local telco will costs under usd 8

[Turgus]

12 hours ago, rforcen said:

i'll try again, did you succeed with focal?,

originally i had android 9.0 on eMMC and revived it back with w10 usb burning tool/android 9.0 fw provided by supplier and yes it works now normally booting from SD card.

on a tanix tx3 mini (also p281 board) I had issues with an android 9 FW too, maybe burn an android 7 variant like this one as startpoint!?..

[zeno979]

@balbes150 I have successfully booted your image with mainline u-boot (2020.07). The only problem is usb keyboard not working. What can I check? Can you please provide config you used to build u-boot-s905x-s912?

Thanks

[balbes150]

19 hours ago, rna said:

4. SSH

I'm not familiar with this method.

 

19 hours ago, rna said:

In case of UART, I had opened the box case and found that I don't have male header pin for GND, TXD and RXD (This means, that I have to do some soldering job before being able to use USB TTL). I never done this before, but I just want to confirm that I am on the right track.

It is not a fact that you can use the UART console to activate multi-loading. The manufacturer could block the startup process from being interrupted in u-boot, in which case you will only be able to see the startup process itself.

 

17 hours ago, Vasy said:

hardware-based AES-NI

I am not familiar with this functionality and do not track which models have it.

 

27 minutes ago, zeno979 said:

Can you please provide config you used to build u-boot-s905x-s912?

This configuration is only for u-boot-2015 and will not work with u-boot-2020

[balbes150]

The new version of the image is 20200820.

The configuration for the core build has changed significantly.

[balbes150]

Ver 20200821-dev kernel 5.9.0-rc1

[Vasy]

3 hours ago, balbes150 said:

 

 

I am not familiar with this functionality and do not track which models have it.

 

 

 

OK, one last question then: which platform are your releases supporting better for native hardware H.264 and H.265 decoding / media playback: Allwinner H6 or RK3328? Which one would you recommend for a great mediacenter running your releases?

Thanks once again.

[balbes150]

38 minutes ago, Vasy said:

which platform are your releases supporting better for native hardware H.264 and H.265 decoding / media playback:

H6 and rk3399 in LE

[Vasy]

11 minutes ago, balbes150 said:

H6 and rk3399 in LE

Thanks again, all the best!

[panos1205]

Thank you for all your hard working. With latest 20.08 H96 pro plus is stuck at kernel loading

[Turgus]

While Ver 20200820 & 21 (bionic + Desktop) works like a charm from internal and card on my x96mini 2/16 boxes, I can't get the dev-builds (Ver 20200821-dev or Ver 20200818-dev working as I got no USB and so no Keyboard.. On U-Boot keyboard is shown and soundcard (same without it) has LED on, but with booted system all USB devices are dead. Tried several gxl-dtbs..

[Uwu]

Hello, I am using the latest image of 20.08.

I can't figure out how to install to eMMC.

armbian-config doesn't have the Install option anywhere, and nand-sata-install returns "command not found: nand-sata-install"

 

I am following along with the guide here: https://docs.armbian.com/User-Guide_Getting-Started/

 

Maybe i missed something in the guide, but it did work to install to eMMC with the install-*.sh scripts in the directory i was in. I used the install-aml script as root and now can boot to Armbian on the X96 Air without SD or USB, ethernet works.