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Armbian for Amlogic S912

chocho

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AndrewDB

AndrewDB

Posted
Posted
31 minutes ago, Seasalt said:

I could not get the flash memory on my Mecool to stop some how over writing itself with the internal Android image.

 

I used the Armbian utility to write the armbian image to the 8gb flash.

 

 

Seasalt, I am not sure what you mean by overwriting itself, could you please provide some more details? :huh:

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Seasalt

Seasalt

Posted
Posted
On 2/21/2019 at 6:46 AM, AndrewDB said:

Seasalt, I am not sure what you mean by overwriting itself, could you please provide some more details? :huh:

I tried to get the Armbian s912 image to write to the KM8p Mecool 1gb/8gb flash memory.

 

I used the utility i found in Armbian settings.

 

It is a control line interface app.

 

It gave me an option to write the image to Flash memory.

 

After writing the image, I could then look at the 8GB FLASH  using GPARTED and see that the flash memory was now partitioned differently.

 

Now I have 3 KM8 Mecool's and they were all bought separately. They seem to have different Android images on the flash memory.

 

To cut a long story it appears that on rebooting the KM8 i had written the Armbian image to flash on, it would reboot and go back or reinstall android and then boot.

 

In the end i gave up on installing Armbian to the flash  and just installed the same Android 7 image on all three km8's.

 

 

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AndrewDB

AndrewDB

Posted
Posted (edited)
15 hours ago, Seasalt said:

I tried to get the Armbian s912 image to write to the KM8p Mecool 1gb/8gb flash memory.

 

I used the utility i found in Armbian settings.

 

It is a control line interface app.

 

It gave me an option to write the image to Flash memory.

 

After writing the image, I could then look at the 8GB FLASH  using GPARTED and see that the flash memory was now partitioned differently.

 

Now I have 3 KM8 Mecool's and they were all bought separately. They seem to have different Android images on the flash memory.

 

To cut a long story it appears that on rebooting the KM8 i had written the Armbian image to flash on, it would reboot and go back or reinstall android and then boot.

 

In the end i gave up on installing Armbian to the flash  and just installed the same Android 7 image on all three km8's.

 

 

Ah, I understand now. It must be some kind of failsafe feature in the Android image, if the original u-boot detects that the Android partitions have been changed, it automatically launches a reinstall/reboot process. Good to know. I'll have to try the eMMC install on my Km8-P's and see what happens. Thank you for the warning. :thumbup:

 

Edit

====

 

OK, I have installed Armbian on the eMMC of my Km8-P 1G/8G Android TV box using the install.sh script, and it works perfectly - zero problems!

Edited by AndrewDB
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AndrewDB

AndrewDB

Posted
Posted
On 2/20/2019 at 4:23 PM, AndrewDB said:

Mecool Km8-P

 

I am testing Armbian_5.75_Aml-s912_Ubuntu_bionic_default_4.20.5_20190211.img.xz with meson-gxm-q201.dtb on Mecool Km8-P S912 1G/8G, booting from an SD card right now but I intend to flash Armbian on the eMMC later.

USB works. Ethernet works. Not tested HDMI output (using TV box as headless server).

 

Previously was using same TV box with Armbian 5.44 with 3.14.29 and that worked fine too.

 

As usual many many thanks to Oleg (balbes150) who has done an amazing good work on the Linux kernel and creating those images. :thumbup:

Just wanted to report on the status of my three Mecool Km8-P TV boxes.

- All three boxes have now had their firmware flashed with an older Android version which includes a u-boot that correctly boots 4.xx kernels. The u-boot version in the shipped factory firmware on this recent batch of Km8-P boxes would boot kernel 3.14.29 fine but would absolutely refuse to boot any 4.xx/5.xx kernel.

- All three boxes are now running Armbian_5.75_Aml-s912_Ubuntu_bionic_default_4.20.5_20190211.img.xz with meson-gxm-q201.dtb. This release has proved to be exceptionally stable on these Mecool Km8-P TV boxes.

- Two boxes are running Armbian from a Sandisk A1 SD card. On one box I have installed Armbian on the eMMC, simply executing the install.sh script did the trick without any problems.

- I use these boxes in headless mode (no monitor, keyboard or mouse, access through ssh) as distcc compile nodes and they perform admirably. I can compile the Linux kernel in under 15 minutes on my compile farm.

- These boxes run at a cool 38~42C (depending on room temperature) at idle and 72~76C under heavy load and do not require any special cooling. I have not observed any thermal throttling even under heavy load.

- I have benchmarked the Km8-P using both sbc-bench and the Phoronix Benchmark Suite, see the thread I started on the subject of benchmarking an inexpensive S912 TV box. In summary, these Km8-P boxes place in the middle of the pack for single-threaded benchmarks and at the top of the pack for multithreaded benchmarks, and are the best in terms of performance per dollar compared to any other SBC, as of February 2019.

- I have not tested any of the multimedia capabilities: audio, video decoding, 3D graphics acceleration, HDMI, etc.

 

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Michel

Michel

Posted
Posted
On 2/23/2019 at 10:21 AM, AndrewDB said:

Just wanted to report on the status of my three Mecool Km8-P TV boxes.

- All three boxes have now had their firmware flashed with an older Android version which includes a u-boot that correctly boots 4.xx kernels. The u-boot version in the shipped factory firmware on this recent batch of Km8-P boxes would boot kernel 3.14.29 fine but would absolutely refuse to boot any 4.xx/5.xx kernel.

- All three boxes are now running Armbian_5.75_Aml-s912_Ubuntu_bionic_default_4.20.5_20190211.img.xz with meson-gxm-q201.dtb. This release has proved to be exceptionally stable on these Mecool Km8-P TV boxes.

- Two boxes are running Armbian from a Sandisk A1 SD card. On one box I have installed Armbian on the eMMC, simply executing the install.sh script did the trick without any problems.

- I use these boxes in headless mode (no monitor, keyboard or mouse, access through ssh) as distcc compile nodes and they perform admirably. I can compile the Linux kernel in under 15 minutes on my compile farm.

- These boxes run at a cool 38~42C (depending on room temperature) at idle and 72~76C under heavy load and do not require any special cooling. I have not observed any thermal throttling even under heavy load.

- I have benchmarked the Km8-P using both sbc-bench and the Phoronix Benchmark Suite, see the thread I started on the subject of benchmarking an inexpensive S912 TV box. In summary, these Km8-P boxes place in the middle of the pack for single-threaded benchmarks and at the top of the pack for multithreaded benchmarks, and are the best in terms of performance per dollar compared to any other SBC, as of February 2019.

- I have not tested any of the multimedia capabilities: audio, video decoding, 3D graphics acceleration, HDMI, etc.

 

Juste received this TV box. I'll try it next week. Could you please point to the tutorial to downgrade android?

 

Thanks!

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AndrewDB

AndrewDB

Posted
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5 hours ago, Michel said:

Juste received this TV box. I'll try it next week. Could you please point to the tutorial to downgrade android?

 

Thanks!

Check my post here, you must prepare a micro SD card with the Android image from 4pda using one of the two methods in the CNX article, then:

- Flash it, including u-boot.

- Then prepare a USB key with Armbian 5.75 pointed above and install it using the usual method (see first post in relevant thread).

- Before you do all that, I suggest you try the Km8 P for a few days using Armbian 5.44 with kernel 3.14.29, installed with USB key, it works fine with this version too.

 

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AndrewDB

AndrewDB

Posted
Posted

Just noticed that Khadas has released a new version of their S912 Vim2:

https://www.khadas.com/product-page/new-vim2

It's certainly much more expensive than a TV box but if you are developing or experimenting with the S912 I think it's the best solution around.

I certainly hope Oleg gets a courtesy sample seeing as he has done so much work on Armbian for S9XXXX . :thumbup:

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AndrewDB

AndrewDB

Posted
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10 minutes ago, Seasalt said:

Ridiculously expensive when the s922x hard kernel for $63 has been announced and shipping next month.

Compared to other development boards the Khadas Vim2 is actually quite inexpensive. So I would say that if the $63 price for the S922X Odroid N2 is confirmed, it would provide exceptional value per dollar. And I certainly hope Oleg gets one, courtesy of HardKernel. Also the Panfrost developers should get one ASAP.

 

In the meantime though, I'll be very happy with my $25 S912 Km8-P TV boxes.  Just can't beat that low cost! ;)

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Seasalt

Seasalt

Posted
Posted
Just now, AndrewDB said:

In the meantime though, I'll be very happy with my $25 S912 Km8-P TV boxes.  Just can't beat that low cost! 

I could not agree more. On bang for buck no argument.

 

But when I bought mine only the Mecool km8p 1gb ram version was available.

 

I wish I had the 2gb version.

 

My KM8p one gb version shows up as only having approximately 812mb of Ram in htop? Not 1gb as I see on my 1gb orange pi's with zram running.

 

are you seeing on you km8p the same amount of 812mb ram?

 

Oleg made zram  ram compression work and that has been a godsend.

 

Have you any idea where the missing 180mb of Ram is being used. If it is allocated to video I want it back.

 

When I run Corelec it says from memory about 812mb ram available as well.

 

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AndrewDB

AndrewDB

Posted
Posted
2 minutes ago, Seasalt said:

I could not agree more. On bang for buck no argument.

 

But when I bought mine only the Mecool km8p 1gb ram version was available.

 

I wish I had the 2gb version.

 

My KM8p one gb version shows up as only having approximately 812mb of Ram in htop? Not 1gb as I see on my 1gb orange pi's with zram running.

 

are you seeing on you km8p the same amount of 812mb ram?

 

Oleg made zram  ram compression work and that has been a godsend.

 

Have you any idea where the missing 180mb of Ram is being used. If it is allocated to video I want it back.

 

When I run Corelec it says from memory about 812mb ram available as well.

 

Check the beginning of the output of the dmesg command, you'll see how the kernel allocates RAM, it actually reserves those 180MB for various purposes.

  

andrew@km8p1:~$ dmesg
[    0.000000] Booting Linux on physical CPU 0x0000000000 [0x410fd034]
[    0.000000] Linux version 4.20.5-aml-s912 (root@vbox) (gcc version 7.2.1 20171011 (Linaro GCC 7.2-2
017.11)) #5.75 SMP PREEMPT Mon Feb 11 17:40:28 MSK 2019
[    0.000000] Machine model: Amlogic Meson GXM (S912) Q201 Development Board
[    0.000000] OF: reserved mem: failed to allocate memory for node 'linux,cma'
[    0.000000] cma: Reserved 256 MiB at 0x0000000023400000
[    0.000000] On node 0 totalpages: 224000
[    0.000000]   DMA32 zone: 3520 pages used for memmap
[    0.000000]   DMA32 zone: 0 pages reserved
[    0.000000]   DMA32 zone: 224000 pages, LIFO batch:63
[    0.000000] psci: probing for conduit method from DT.
[    0.000000] psci: PSCIv0.2 detected in firmware.
[    0.000000] psci: Using standard PSCI v0.2 function IDs
[    0.000000] psci: Trusted OS migration not required
[    0.000000] random: get_random_bytes called from start_kernel+0xa8/0x400 with crng_init=0
[    0.000000] percpu: Embedded 23 pages/cpu @(____ptrval____) s54744 r8192 d31272 u94208
[    0.000000] pcpu-alloc: s54744 r8192 d31272 u94208 alloc=23*4096
[    0.000000] pcpu-alloc: [0] 0 [0] 1 [0] 2 [0] 3 [0] 4 [0] 5 [0] 6 [0] 7  
[    0.000000] Detected VIPT I-cache on CPU0
[    0.000000] CPU features: enabling workaround for ARM erratum 845719
[    0.000000] CPU features: detected: Kernel page table isolation (KPTI)
[    0.000000] Built 1 zonelists, mobility grouping on.  Total pages: 220480
[    0.000000] Kernel command line: root=LABEL=ROOTFS rootflags=data=writeback rw console=ttyAML0,1152
00n8 console=tty0 no_console_suspend consoleblank=0 fsck.fix=yes fsck.repair=yes net.ifnames=0
[    0.000000] Dentry cache hash table entries: 131072 (order: 8, 1048576 bytes)
[    0.000000] Inode-cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 7, 524288 bytes)
[    0.000000] Memory: 586756K/896000K available (12990K kernel code, 1020K rwdata, 4176K rodata, 576K
init, 787K bss, 47100K reserved, 262144K cma-reserved)

For my use case, 1GB has been enough, I have never run out of memory. But yes, the 2GB Km8-P for $33 or so is also a very good value.
 

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Seasalt

Seasalt

Posted
Posted
3 minutes ago, AndrewDB said:

Check the beginning of the output of the dmesg command, you'll see how the kernel allocates RAM, it actually reserves those 180MB for various purposes.

Can we steel some of that ram memory back? 812 is not enough to run a basic web page browser. It just chokes but an extra 50k Ram might just be enough to get over the ram shortage.

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AndrewDB

AndrewDB

Posted
Posted
3 minutes ago, Seasalt said:

Can we steel some of that ram memory back? 812 is not enough to run a basic web page browser. It just chokes but an extra 50k Ram might just be enough to get over the ram shortage.

Probably you could get some RAM back by passing the kernel some command line parameters, check adding "cma=64" to the command line and see what happens.

 

https://lwn.net/Articles/396707/

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Seasalt

Seasalt

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Posted
10 minutes ago, AndrewDB said:

Probably you could get some RAM back by passing the kernel some command line parameters, check adding "cma=64" to the command line and see what happens.

 

https://lwn.net/Articles/396707/

Interesting read.

 

So since Corelec and Armbian Oleg's s912 show approx 812mb ram available then they possibly both pre-use about the same amount of Ram.

 

If I type cma=64 into a terminal Oleg's armbian s912 should / could allocate a smaller amount of reserved ram?

 

 

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AndrewDB

AndrewDB

Posted
Posted (edited)
On 3/9/2019 at 11:32 AM, buvaluy said:

Are there  any news about mali driver for s912? I have beelink gt2 with debian-xfce installed. Mouse pointer is blinking...

glxinfo show it uses vmware driver...

That is the Panfrost driver. Check these news: https://cgit.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/commit/?id=77fea552f69d02497fad8aa4e3a49c424c4b95c0&utm_source=anzwix

 

Someone still has to integrate the Panfrost driver, kernels drivers and an Armbian image to make the whole thing work. 

 

Edit: more news from the Panfrost front.

See: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Mesa-19.1-Panfrost-Taps-DRM

 

Panfrost driver will soon work with kernel DRM driver (I expect in time for kernel 5.1 we'll have a working 3D stack for the T820 GPU in the S912).

Edited by AndrewDB
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Elias

Elias

Posted
Posted

Hello everyone,

 

I own a Alfawise H96 Pro Plus and have sucessfully installed Armbian_5.77_Aml-s912_Ubuntu_bionic_default_5.0.2_20190318 using the following tutorial:

I was able to boot without any modification and was able to install it to emmc without any problems.

However the wifi is still not working, it shows the following output: 

[    8.130729] ath10k_sdio mmc2:0001:1: WARNING: ath10k SDIO support is incomplete, don't expect anything to work!
[    8.158338] ath10k_sdio mmc2:0001:1: Unsupported hardware version: 0x5020001
[    8.158353] ath10k_sdio mmc2:0001:1: could not get hw params (-22)
[    8.158466] ath10k_sdio mmc2:0001:1: could not probe fw (-22)
[    8.161542] Bluetooth: hci0: BCM: Read verbose config info failed (-56)
[    8.436796] zram: Added device: zram0

 

Does anyone has the same error? I suppose that it has something to do with the drivers compiled into the kernel...Can it be related to the dtb?

 

Many thanks in Advance,

Elias

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AndrewDB

AndrewDB

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From the kernel message it seems you have an ath10k-based WiFi module which is unsupported. I think the message "... don't expect anything to work!" is rather self-explanatory, no? ;)

 

Simplest solution if you absolutely need wifi is a $2.70(shipped) USB wifi dongle from AliExpress, based on Realtek 8188eu chip.

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Mashhup

Mashhup

Posted
Posted
On 3/18/2019 at 11:09 PM, Elias said:

However the wifi is still not working, it shows the following output: 


[    8.130729] ath10k_sdio mmc2:0001:1: WARNING: ath10k SDIO support is incomplete, don't expect anything to work!
[    8.158338] ath10k_sdio mmc2:0001:1: Unsupported hardware version: 0x5020001
[    8.158353] ath10k_sdio mmc2:0001:1: could not get hw params (-22)
[    8.158466] ath10k_sdio mmc2:0001:1: could not probe fw (-22)
[    8.161542] Bluetooth: hci0: BCM: Read verbose config info failed (-56)
[    8.436796] zram: Added device: zram0

 

Does anyone has the same error? I suppose that it has something to do with the drivers compiled into the kernel...Can it be related to the dtb?

 

Kernel needs patching for the new version of the chip (0x5020001). Looks like there is one available, see:

 

https://gitlab.com/Codeaurora/platform_vendor_qcom-opensource_wlan_qcacld-2.0/commit/d610b2296adb5073e52a01e465b8e1ba95c46514

 

But it was never mainlined, so you'd have to patch the kernel yourself, or find out why it was never mainlined and if it was never submitted, submit a pull request to Linus and see what happens on the mailing list.

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8a8asik

8a8asik

Posted
Posted
On 7/3/2018 at 12:12 PM, pro777 said:

To obtain the hardware acceleration OpenGLES fbdev on the S912 platform, do the following:

- Download the firmware of Armbian 5.44 Ubuntu Mate with the kernel 3.14, created by balbes150.

- Burn the loaded image on the SD-card and and run Ubuntu Mate from the SD card. 

- Download the archive with the kernel 3.14 packages with the Mali driver and the archive with Mali samples and libhybris package. Install all deb packages with the 3.14 kernel from the archive. To do this, go to the unzipped folder aml-s9xx-kernel-3.14.29-with-mali-r16p0-debs, run the command: sudo dpkg -i *.deb.

- Unzip the mali-hybris-s912-packages.tgz. Copy the folder etc to the root of ROOTFS partition to set permissions for the mali and ion devices, and also for configuring ld for libhybris.

- Unzip the system.tgz and copy the contents to the root of ROOTFS partition (sudo tar xzvf system.tgz -C / )

- Unzip Mali-OpenGL-ES-Samples-Linux-Arm-Bin.tgz in the home directory.

- Reboot system.

- After reboot the system, add the armhf architecture for the system: 


sudo dpkg --add-architecture armhf
sudo apt update
sudo apt install libc6:armhf libstdc++6:armhf

- Install libhybris-arm_0.1-1-opt_arm64.deb package and configure ld: sudo ldconfig.

- Everything is ready for the test, run: /opt/libhybris/bin/test_glesv2.  A picture should appear, as shown in the first screenshot.

- To run Mali OpenGLES Samples, go to the Mali-OpenGL-ES-Samples-Linux-Arm-Bin folder and start the executable files.

 - Freeze the kernel update with the armbian-config.

 

 

Hi, its real to add cryptsetup and dm-crypt modules to this system? And use install.sh with mbr from armbian > 5.55, i edit script and install but box not boot Thanks.

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AndrewDB

AndrewDB

Posted
Posted
51 minutes ago, pel.hu said:

but cannot get any VNC server work on it.

That is completely unrelated to Armbian. In your case, I would suggest trying an Ubuntu desktop image, it shouldn't take more than 5 minutes to get a VNC server working on it. Firefox should be working out of the box and Chrom(ium) is an extra 3-minutes install.

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bthoven

bthoven

Posted
Posted

I've installed Ubuntu to several machine. Following vnc server setup works every time.

 

In terminal mode:

 

Install vnc server

sudo apt-get install x11vnc

 

Create password

x11vnc -storepasswd

 

Create it as service

sudo nano /lib/systemd/system/x11vnc.service, then put following content in the file

(note: if you have GUI editor like geany, you may replace the above 'nano' to 'geany' (no quote)

 

[Unit]
Description=Start x11vnc at startup.
After=multi-user.target

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/bin/x11vnc -auth guess -forever -loop -noxdamage -repeat -rfbauth /home/yourhome/.vnc/passwd -rfbport 5900 -shared

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

 

Now back to terminal mode:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable x11vnc.service
sudo systemctl start x11vnc.service

 

Now reboot your machine and try vnc viewer

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Petee

Petee

Posted
Posted

Purchased two more Amazon sold Octocore / 32Gb emmc / 3Gb RAM / Gb NIC boxes a couple of days ago. 

 

These are T9SZ Max devices.  The reset button is inside of the AV port (PITA).

 

Less than $60 USD on Amazon now with one day shipping.

 

T95z1.thumb.jpg.22981fb22298837876454ad9df5e1a16.jpg

 

Booting in Android WLAN and LAN work fine.  USB Wireless keyboard does not work.

 

Coreelec works fine except for the USB wireless keyboard.

 

Using image:

 

Armbian_5.78_Aml-s912_Ubuntu_bionic_default_5.1.0-rc1_20190412

 

Boots fine except that the USB wireless keyboard doesn't work and it never connects to the network via DHCP.

 

Any suggestions?

 

Got it it going.  Noticed that I had to change the dtb file for ethernet to work.  USB is working fine.

 

 

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Petee

Petee

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Posted

For whatever reasons here cannot get an ethernet LAN DHCP address.  I see the ethernet mac address fine.

 

Wireless works fine.

 

Should I give up and look for another device?

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