Building Armbian for S905X3 TV box

[Luigi Calligaris]

Dear all,

 

I own a 4G/64G H96 MAX X3, and I have tried using the pre-compiled Armbian_20.07_Arm-64_focal_current_5.7.8_desktop.img multiplatform Armbian Focal image together with the DTB by @root-stas with very good success (it seemed to work quite well in my usage, I noticed some instability in the Chromium browser, I'm aware the graphics support was not yet ready). I tried the new 2020.10, so far without GUI and I see that it boots correctly, giving me a terminal on the UART terminals I soldered on the PCB (I kept the wires tidy, and hope those pads last). 

I have some experience with building a Linux kernel, creating a simple kernel module, and some marginal knowledge of configuring U-Boot on Zynq Ultrascale+ SoCs, but this is a different workflow from the Armbian one, on which I'm quite ignorant. I would like take the opportunity with my TV box to learn to walk on my own legs and build Armbian from source. I followed the Armbian build documentation, cloned the Armbian build repo, ran the compile script with the options below, chose the Odroid-C4 as the target board in menuconfig, and let the script and gcc crunch their way to the end.
 

./compile.sh KERNEL_ONLY="no" KERNEL_CONFIGURE="yes" BUILD_DESKTOP="yes" INSTALL_HEADERS="yes" EXTERNAL_NEW="prebuilt" EXPERT="yes" USE_MAINLINE_GOOGLE_MIRROR="yes" AUFS="yes" BRANCH="current" RELEASE="focal" BOARD="odroidc4"

By mounting the output image, I noticed that the boot directory does not match the one of the official image. I expect this, since I only target the S905X3 on an Odroid-C4, but some features like the U-Boot environment vars in extlinux/extlinux.conf is not there.  I would like to be able to build an image in synch with the current releases, especially regarding the U-Boot configuration. Can someone give me a tip on how should I change my build workflow?

Thanks!

Luigi

[SteeMan]

The build you have installed is an "Armbian TV" build from balbes150.  His builds are a fork of standard armbian. He has a github repository of his forked armbian source at: https://github.com/150balbes/Build-Armbian  It has been a while since I pulled his code and did a build, but this is where you should be looking if you want to recreate/modify what you currently have installed.

[Luigi Calligaris]

Thank you @SteeMan. I'm starting to get a grasp on how the full build process is done: you run Yocto on the backend of the build scripts to generate a U-Boot image. Right now I'm having a look at the meta-meson upstream repo. This is likely going to be painful...but "no pain no gain," and I'd like to learn to use Yocto as it is supposed to be used, without Xilinx's customizations in between  like in PetaLinux 

Edited November 3, 2020 by Luigi Calligaris

[Sam Jiang]

On 11/4/2020 at 1:02 AM, Luigi Calligaris said:

Thank you @SteeMan. I'm starting to get a grasp on how the full build process is done: you run Yocto on the backend of the build scripts to generate a U-Boot image. Right now I'm having a look at the meta-meson upstream repo. This is likely going to be painful...but "no pain no gain," and I'd like to learn to use Yocto as it is supposed to be used, without Xilinx's customizations in between  like in PetaLinux 

Hello, I am the ROM engineer and person in charge of the X96 series of Android systems. I am also in touch with the transplantation of Armbian. I am very happy to meet you

[Pctrend]

 

Hello, I found a description for installing Armbian on x96 max plus. I checked it and it works very well. Working for me like personal plex server .

I wonder if there is any way to get control of the front display in Armbian.  Maybe some hint whether display control is possible?

 

Link to Install Linux on X96 max and max plus :

http://mrbluecoat.blogspot.com/2020/10/install-linux-on-x96-max-x96-max.html 

 

 

[eric971]

Hi Pctrend, can you tell me if the wifi works ?