Simon-renegade Posted February 20, 2022 Posted February 20, 2022 I just bought hk1box with S905x3 chip, 4G RAM and 64G EMMC. It's a great box running android 9.0 smoothly. It has TTL pads so it can be used to check system boot up log. I've tried to run armbian on it. The good news is that the latest version of balbes150 - Armbian_20.10_Arm-64_focal_current_5.9.0.img can boot up successfully. The bad news is that the screen is green. I've learned from forum that the issue is caused by Amlogic‘s modification of u-boot and need to have u-boot.ext to solve the problem. But no matter the version with the image file or the version from NicoD can not boot up. Both of them has the following prompt and then reboot automatically. [mmc_startup] mmc refix success [mmc_init] mmc init success Failed to mount ext2 filesystem... ** Unrecognized filesystem type ** Failed to mount ext2 filesystem... ** Unrecognized filesystem type ** movi: not registered partition name, logo Can someone tell me how to break into interactive mode after loading u-boot.ext? Or it will be great can help to explain the details of u-boot.ext behavior. The u-boot with original firmware: U-Boot 2015.01 (Nov 28 2021 - 00:44:46) The u-boot.ext of NicoD: U-Boot 2015.01 (Dec 08 2019 - 22:01:28) balbes150's u-boot.exe copied from u-boot-s905x2-s922: U-Boot 2015.01-dirty (Aug 14 2020 - 19:56:34)
SteeMan Posted February 20, 2022 Posted February 20, 2022 You will need to provide some more information for others to help you, as some of the information you provided does not seem to make sense. You stated that the latest balbes150 version can boot successfully. And I am assuming you are following the instructions in the TV Boxes FAQ. Which would mean that you have chosen a dtb to use (but you do not state what dtb you are booting with), and if following the instructions you have renamed a file to u-boot.ext (which one/ones). You go on to state that the colors are off. You then later state that you can't get it to boot with u-boot.ext. But this doesn't make sense as you stated that you can boot with the balbes150 image which requires the u-boot.ext to boot. So I am not following your explanation of your problem. Could you help explain the problem and the steps you have taken in a bit more detail.
Simon-renegade Posted February 21, 2022 Author Posted February 21, 2022 Thanks SteeMan, Yes I followed the FAQ. I copied dtb files to dtb/amlogic Modified extlinux/extlinux.conf like this LABEL Armbian LINUX /zImage INITRD /uInitrd FDT /dtb/amlogic/meson-sm1-sei610-2.dtb APPEND root=LABEL=ROOTFS rootflags=data=writeback rw console=ttyAML0,115200n8 console=tty0 no_console_suspend consoleblank=0 fsck.fix=yes fsck.repair=yes net.ifnames=0 with the previous modifications, the system can boot update, but the screen is with green background. If I copy u-boot-s905x2-s922 to u-boot.ext or place the u-boot.ext from NicoD(he mentioned the file can solve green color issue), the system keep on prompting the following error and reboot. [mmc_startup] mmc refix success [mmc_init] mmc init success Failed to mount ext2 filesystem... ** Unrecognized filesystem type ** Failed to mount ext2 filesystem... ** Unrecognized filesystem type ** movi: not registered partition name, logo I want to know how to break the execution of u-boot.exe to interactive running mode so I can check the env setting or do some testing manually. Thanks! Regards meson-sm1-sei610-2.zip
SteeMan Posted February 21, 2022 Posted February 21, 2022 2 hours ago, Simon-renegade said: I copied dtb files to dtb/amlogic You say you followed the FAQ steps, but then you say you copied dtb files. There are no steps in the FAQ instructions that talk about copying dtb files. Also, you have meson-sm1-sei610-2.dtb in your extlinux.conf file. There is no such file in the balbes150 build. So clearly you are doing more than simply following the FAQ instructions. Can you please tell me what instructions/tutorials you are following. Clearly I don't know the steps you are doing as they are not part of the instructions in the FAQ. You mention a u-boot.ext from NicoD - again I don't know what this is as this is not in the FAQ instructions. . I guess I would recommend starting from scratch (preferably from a reflashed android firmware so you really are starting from a known point). Then following the steps in the FAQ (not trying to merge steps from other locations, tutorials, etc.
Simon-renegade Posted February 22, 2022 Author Posted February 22, 2022 Thanks SteeMan, Yes I followed FAQ, but as balbes150 said in his post for the last build. He has no S905X3 board. So I used the dtb from the forum. I attached it in my last post. Without the u-boot.ext, it can boot successfully and armbian is functioning well on the board except there is green background. Here is the link I've found the u-boot.ext for testing. My question is not about the FAQ for booting up armbian on the box. As armbian is already boot up and running well on the box. Instead, like I said in the subject, I just want to know the usage of u-boot.ext in order to solve the green screen background issue. Thanks again
SteeMan Posted February 24, 2022 Posted February 24, 2022 I think you and I are having trouble communicating. You keep referencing things I am not talking about. What your are stating doesn't make sense if you are following the instructions I keep pointing you towards. When I say the instructions in the FAQ I am talking about this: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/17106-installation-instructions-for-tv-boxes-with-amlogic-cpus If you are following these instructions, the box should not boot at all if you don't have a valid u-boot.ext file in place (which therefore leads me to believe since you say it boots correctly without a u-boot.ext file that you are or have followed other instructions and/or used older builds that the one linked to in the instructions I am pointing you towards.) Note I said this earlier, but will repeat with more detail here, if you have used other instructions and/or attempted to install other builds, you will need to reflash your android firmware to start from a known clean starting point in order to attempt your install. The way these builds work is by changing the boot environment stored on emmc. How this is done has changed over time in incompatible ways (and builds by others do it differently as well). But once the uboot environment is modified, you don't know what it is trying to do and the only way to ensure you are successfull is to start from a clean unmodified android environment that the scripts expect to modify (i.e. the scripts aren't smart enough to undo other incompatible changes to the boot environment). Again I suspect this is the case in your situation because if you are using the latest balbes150 build the box should not boot without the u-boot.ext file in place (whereas earlier builds didn't use the u-boot.ext file). So it sounds like you have a u-boot environment installed from an earlier incompatible build that is possibly preventing your box from booting with the u-boot.ext file that should fix the color issue. . To sumarize, you should reflash your box to a clean android firmware. Then follow the instructions in the FAQ post I linked to above. Do not attempt to use any other information found in various places in the forum or in other places at this point. If you are successful at this, then you can try to filter through the other information on the forum to try to get things working better (better dtb settings that your specific box may require). . After all of the above you may or may not get a working box, since balbes150 never supported (or had a s905x3 box to work with) and he has now long ago stopped working on amlogic cpus altogether. But I have a TX3 box with an s905x3 that works for me (minus wifi, bluetooth and gig ethernet). So the final balbes150 build does work for at least some s905x3 boxes.
Simon-renegade Posted February 28, 2022 Author Posted February 28, 2022 Thanks SteeMan, maybe the u-boot of my box is good for the booting firmware without u-boot.ext but just has issue on green screen. Anyway I found a u-boot.ext by hexdump which solved the problem.
SteeMan Posted November 26, 2022 Posted November 26, 2022 Doing some forum cleanup and moved this thread to the appropriate forum
Energokom Posted January 10, 2023 Posted January 10, 2023 On 2/28/2022 at 8:12 AM, Simon-renegade said: Anyway I found a u-boot.ext by hexdump which solved the problem. Hi. Tell me, do you still have a working u-boot.ext. Or tell me where to extract it from to defeat the green screen
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