CSC Armbian for RK3318/RK3328 TV box boards

[jock]

­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
• Ninkbox N1 Max RK3318 by @enigmasphinx

 

 

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:

• Archived images - built by Armbian servers and GPG-signed: https://imola.armbian.com/dl/rk3318-box/archive/
• Nightly stables - built from trunk by Armbian servers and GPG-signed: https://github.com/armbian/community
• Stables provided by me (unsigned): https://users.armbian.com/jock/rk3318/

 

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

 

 

[fabiobassa]

@jock

Great great work, as usual Jock !!!!

[lucky62]

Hi @jock
I am trying to boot MultiTool, but after booting nothing is displayed on monitor - only black screen and blinking cursor...
Few last messages from serial console:

[    4.119513] mali-utgard ff300000.gpu: resource[7].start = 0x0x0000000000000017
[    4.126745] D : [File] : drivers/gpu/arm/mali400/mali/platform/rk/rk.c; [Line] : 623; [Func] : mali_platform_device_init(); to add platform_specific_data to platform_device_of_mali.
[    4.143143] mali-utgard ff300000.gpu: Linked as a consumer to regulator.9
[    4.150011] mali-utgard ff300000.gpu: leakage=12
[    4.154684] mali-utgard ff300000.gpu: leakage=12
[    4.159327] mali-utgard ff300000.gpu: leakage-volt-sel=1
[    4.164815] mali-utgard ff300000.gpu: Failed to get pvtm
[    4.170838] mali-utgard ff300000.gpu: avs=0
[    4.175397] mali-utgard ff300000.gpu: l=-2147483648 h=2147483647 hyst=0 l_limit=0 h_limit=0 h_table=0
[    4.187424] Mali: 
[    4.187432] Mali device driver loaded
[    4.193995] dw-apb-uart ff130000.serial: got rx and tx dma channels
[    4.200757] Waiting for root device PARTUUID=20159be9-02...
[    4.285671] devfreq ff300000.gpu: Couldn't update frequency transition information.

 

I am not able to grab the complete log. I am using the NodeMCU/ESP-Link for serial communication, but seems that lot of messages is lost when NodeMCU is transmitting via WiFi...

My hardware is X88 Pro 10 - 2G/16G.
 

[jock]

23 minutes ago, lucky62 said:

Hi @jock
I am trying to boot MultiTool, but after booting nothing is displayed on monitor - only black screen and blinking cursor...
Few last messages from serial console:

[    4.119513] mali-utgard ff300000.gpu: resource[7].start = 0x0x0000000000000017
[    4.126745] D : [File] : drivers/gpu/arm/mali400/mali/platform/rk/rk.c; [Line] : 623; [Func] : mali_platform_device_init(); to add platform_specific_data to platform_device_of_mali.
[    4.143143] mali-utgard ff300000.gpu: Linked as a consumer to regulator.9
[    4.150011] mali-utgard ff300000.gpu: leakage=12
[    4.154684] mali-utgard ff300000.gpu: leakage=12
[    4.159327] mali-utgard ff300000.gpu: leakage-volt-sel=1
[    4.164815] mali-utgard ff300000.gpu: Failed to get pvtm
[    4.170838] mali-utgard ff300000.gpu: avs=0
[    4.175397] mali-utgard ff300000.gpu: l=-2147483648 h=2147483647 hyst=0 l_limit=0 h_limit=0 h_table=0
[    4.187424] Mali: 
[    4.187432] Mali device driver loaded
[    4.193995] dw-apb-uart ff130000.serial: got rx and tx dma channels
[    4.200757] Waiting for root device PARTUUID=20159be9-02...
[    4.285671] devfreq ff300000.gpu: Couldn't update frequency transition information.

 

I am not able to grab the complete log. I am using the NodeMCU/ESP-Link for serial communication, but seems that lot of messages is lost when NodeMCU is transmitting via WiFi...

My hardware is X88 Pro 10 - 2G/16G.
 

Thanks a lot for testing, I will double check tomorrow the multitool image, but as far as I remember that particular image was working without issues on my box.

According to my researches on your dtb the two boxes have some hardware differences about USB and Wifi. Wifi in particular may interfere with the boot process. The black screen with the cursor alone is a bit weird, but recently I made many fixes to the Multitool dtb that I will integrate soon.

 

If you get the NodeMCU serial adapter work it could useful to understand what is going on, but if you're not able just wait a few hours for the next Multitool image thay may fix your problem.

[lucky62]

good news, I found the solution to grab the serial console output... (bypassing the ESP8266, just using CH340 chip on NodeMCU).

 

android_serial.log MultiTool_serial.log

[jock]

1 hour ago, lucky62 said:

good news, I found the solution to grab the serial console output... (bypassing the ESP8266, just using CH340 chip on NodeMCU).

 

android_serial.log 171.65 kB · 0 downloads MultiTool_serial.log 26.36 kB · 0 downloads

Very good, I didn't know the CH340 could be used directly but so far so good!

From the multitool serial log I see that the sdcard is getting detected and then dropped for a couple of times, then there is this error:

[    2.435342] print_req_error: I/O error, dev mmcblk0, sector 0

and that's the main reason the multitool does not boot.

Now what you can do is obviously use a different sdcard, what I can do is increase the strength of the sdcard slot signals (which I will do anyway).

I will add this other enhancement as soon as possible and then send you a freshly compiled multitool and images!

[lucky62]

Regarding the usage of NodeMCU as a USB-to-Serial adapter - the idea is very simple.

As board contains the USB-to-Serial chip (CH340 or CP2102 or FTD or whatever..) and this chip is connected to the MCU to RX/TX pins, then it is enough to block the MCU (by the ENABLE/RESET signal or by programming the RX/TX pins as input) and connect RX/TX pins to our serial interface (instead of MCU). Pins are usually on the headers so it is easy to connect. You can also use others boards with USB-to Serial chips like Arduino, STM32 blue-pill, etc..)
Here is the link from I learn this:

 

[lucky62]

6 hours ago, jock said:

[    2.435342] print_req_error: I/O error, dev mmcblk0, sector 0

and that's the main reason the multitool does not boot.

Now what you can do is obviously use a different sdcard, what I can do is increase the strength of the sdcard slot signals (which I will do anyway).

 

Using different SD card MultiTool is booting ok. Just note that on my laptop I can read both SD (full area).

I flashed the Debian Buster Minimal - mainline kernel 5.10.31. It is booting ok from internal memory.
Just small issue - armbian-config is missing...

[jock]

4 minutes ago, lucky62 said:

 

Using different SD card MultiTool is booting ok. Just note that on my laptop I can read both SD (full area).

I flashed the Debian Buster Minimal - mainline kernel 5.10.31. It is booting ok from internal memory.
Just small issue - armbian-config is missing...

Yup, it was the sdcard so; maybe the contact is a bit lousy or there is some oxyde on the sdcard connector of the box and it failed... Those moving parts are very delicate sometimes.

I'm glad you're ok, it means that even the old multitool was not so buggy!

Armbian-config is not installed in minimal installation, you have to install it via apt.

Beware that probably you don't have any wifi device, for that you will need the newer images I'm preparing.

[lucky62]

I did installation of armbian-config via wired ethernet.
I saw that armbian-config is quite big - almost 200MB with all dependencies.

Is this the reason why it is not in the minimal build?

 

It will be good to have some light-weight version of configuration utility also in minimal build - at least for WIFI config...

What do you think?

 

[jock]

12 hours ago, lucky62 said:

I did installation of armbian-config via wired ethernet.
I saw that armbian-config is quite big - almost 200MB with all dependencies.

Is this the reason why it is not in the minimal build?

 

It will be good to have some light-weight version of configuration utility also in minimal build - at least for WIFI config...

What do you think?

 

Yes it has many dependencies and I share that it is the reason it does fit into minimal builds.

For wifi config you can use the text-mode network manager GUI interface nmtui, which is available in minimal build too.

Nonetheless I think your wifi interface is not available yet because you need new armbian image with newer dtbs.

[lucky62]

For wifi I am using the small USB dongle with Realtek chip. Works very well.

But yes, I am waiting impatiently for built-in wifi support.. :-)

[jock]

Updated images!

 

Armbian and Multitool images have been updated with various enhancements:

• Multitool compatibility has been increased
• Split single device tree in base and overlays: each board can activate different device tree overlays to fit the specific configuration (eMMC DDR/HS200, alternate SDIO bus for Wifi, etc...)
• Add rk3318-config script to easily configure options via menus; just run it as sudo rk3318-config
• Add full support for AP6334 (and various clones) Wifi and Bluetooth
• Add support for AP6330 Wifi and Bluetooth (yet untested)

Issues so far:

• Lima driver acceleration has been disabled in X.org for the moment. It gave issues I need to investigate
• I2S subsystem has some problems that needs to be fixed, as result no sound can be produced for both HDMI and Analog outputs

[lucky62]

Hi @jock,

many thanks for your effort.

I briefly tested the new builds but they are quite unstable.

My USB keyboard is initially working but after some time it is stopped.

Also eMMC has the problems. Partition resizing failed (when booted from internal memory after flashing).

 

I was testing the builds as is - without any tuning. And I have no console logs.

I need more time to do the deeper testing.

 

[jock]

6 hours ago, lucky62 said:

Hi @jock,

many thanks for your effort.

I briefly tested the new builds but they are quite unstable.

My USB keyboard is initially working but after some time it is stopped.

Also eMMC has the problems. Partition resizing failed (when booted from internal memory after flashing).

 

I was testing the builds as is - without any tuning. And I have no console logs.

I need more time to do the deeper testing.

 

Well, at least it boots, thanks for testing though!

As usual, a dmesg log is appreciated so we could get some hints about instabilities. Any detail you may notice is also very helpful

 

[lucky62]

Hi, 

today I tested the Debian Buster minimal (mainline) and it seems stable.

Yesterday I was using the Focal desktop [xfce], maybe I was doing something wrong...

I think the kernel is the same, yes? So it should be stable..

 

Wifi was not detected. Also LED is not working.

I am not sure  if the selected overlays are suitable for my box..

 

Serial console logs and dmesg attached.

 

 

Debian_Booster_first_boot.log Debian_Booster_with_overlays.log Multitool_boot_flash_shutdown.log dmesg.txt dmesg_with_overlays.txt

[jock]

3 hours ago, lucky62 said:

Hi, 

today I tested the Debian Buster minimal (mainline) and it seems stable.

Yesterday I was using the Focal desktop [xfce], maybe I was doing something wrong...

I think the kernel is the same, yes? So it should be stable..

Yes the kernel is the very same for both.

 

3 hours ago, lucky62 said:

Wifi was not detected. Also LED is not working.

I am not sure  if the selected overlays are suitable for my box..

 

Okay, I checked again the device trees and found this:

__overlay__ {
	status = "enabled";
};

I should have been very flipped yesterday, enabled is clearly not the right word

Anyway I attach a couple of dtbo files, put them in /boot/dtb/rockchip/overlay directory overwriting the existing ones, then reboot and let's see what happens...

 

Note also that you should run again rk3318-config to complete the wifi and bluetooth configuration!

 

rockchip-rk3318-box-wlan-ext.dtbo rockchip-rk3318-box-led-conf2.dtbo

[lucky62]

thanks for new dtbo.
applied, but I see this in serial console before kernel start:
 

Applying kernel provided DT overlay rockchip-rk3318-box-wlan-ext.dtbo
248 bytes read in 6 ms (40 KiB/s)
Applying kernel provided DT overlay rockchip-rk3318-box-emmc-ddr.dtbo
250 bytes read in 5 ms (48.8 KiB/s)
Applying kernel provided DT overlay rockchip-rk3318-box-emmc-hs200.dtbo
918 bytes read in 6 ms (149.4 KiB/s)
Applying kernel provided DT overlay rockchip-rk3318-box-led-conf2.dtbo
failed on fdt_overlay_apply(): FDT_ERR_NOTFOUND
Error applying DT overlays, restoring original DT

 

[lucky62]

sorry, my mistake, I tried other DTB and forgot to revert back.

now wifi is detected, LED still not working.

 

 

dmesg_new.txt Serial.log

[lucky62]

root@rk3318-box:~# iipp  aa
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: eth0: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state DOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/ether ce:fb:1a:cf:97:e9 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
3: wlan0: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state DOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/ether e0:76:d0:71:23:52 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff

 

just strange is, that armbian-config is not showing the wireless connection:

 

[lucky62]

even the wifi is detected, I am not able to bring it to working state...
 

[jock]

@lucky62

From dmesg I see that a piece of the firmware is missing: it is looking for the nvram file brcmfmac4330-sdio.rockchip,rk3318-box.txt

The nvram for Ap6330 is already there, just with another name. You should be able to make it work with these commands:

cd /lib/firmware/brcm
sudo ln -s brcmfmac-ap6330-sdio.txt brcmfmac4330-sdio.rockchip,rk3318-box.txt

 

It may still be necessary to do some adjustments in the dtbo, but I hope the wifi starts working after reboot

[lucky62]

perfect, after creating the symlink, the wifi is working!

Many thanks.

 

One tip for Multitool - it will be good to have the possibility to upgrade the system keeping the configuration and installed packages. Or possibly to update only some parts - uboot, dtb, kernel.

 

anyway good work, very appreciated.

[lucky62]

trying to use bluetooth - behavior is similar as with wifi before.
Bluetooth is detected, but not working.
 

root@rk3318-box:~# hciconfig
hci0:   Type: Primary  Bus: UART
        BD Address: 43:30:B1:00:00:00  ACL MTU: 0:0  SCO MTU: 0:0
        DOWN RAW
        RX bytes:2294 acl:0 sco:0 events:249 errors:0
        TX bytes:54918 acl:0 sco:0 commands:249 errors:0

root@rk3318-box:~# hciconfig hci0 up
Can't init device hci0: Operation not supported (95)
root@rk3318-box:~#
root@rk3318-box:~# hciconfig hci0 reset
Can't init device hci0: Operation not supported (95)

 

[jock]

3 hours ago, lucky62 said:

trying to use bluetooth - behavior is similar as with wifi before.
Bluetooth is detected, but not working.
 

I need to check out this.

I'm using the in-kernel serdev things to connect bluetooth to SoC UART, which is far better than the legacy and discontinued user-space applications like hciattach and friends.

The odd thing is that the AP6334 on my rk3318 board works fine, but the AP6330 (that I have on a RK3288 box) never really worked.

 

I need to check things on the other board to get it working, but in the meantime thanks for spotting this!

 

Quote

One tip for Multitool - it will be good to have the possibility to upgrade the system keeping the configuration and installed packages. Or possibly to update only some parts - uboot, dtb, kernel.

When (and if) this project will be merged into mainline Armbian, you will get such updates (u-boot, kernel, bootloaders, etc...) via regular apt upgrade command, as much as a common Debian/Ubuntu installation

[lucky62]

13 minutes ago, jock said:

When (and if) this project will be merged into mainline Armbian, you will get such updates (u-boot, kernel, bootloaders, etc...) via regular apt upgrade command, as much as a common Debian/Ubuntu installation

 

Yes, but what to do till the project will be merged to the Armbian?.. :-)

 

For experimenting it will be good to have the tool to update what is required only, not to flash whole build...
But I understand, it's also about the priorities.

 

[jock]

6 minutes ago, lucky62 said:

 

Yes, but what to do till the project will be merged to the Armbian?.. :-)

 

For experimenting it will be good to have the tool to update what is required only, not to flash whole build...
But I understand, it's also about the priorities.

 

Armbian build system provides the debs packages of the kernel, u-boot, dtbs and bootloaders that can be manually installed without reinstalling the whole system using regular dpkg package manager.

When there will be enough people reporting the image works, I will ask Igor for merging the work. In the meantime, since they are experimentation images, it is better to avoid kernel upgrades at all (maybe lock them out with armbian-config) to not risk to break the system.

[lucky62]

One more point - I cannot boot from USB.
Armbian is starting always from internal flash. After start I see the USB disk available.

Part of fdisk -l output:

Disk /dev/sda: 14.5 GiB, 15514730496 bytes, 30302208 sectors
Disk model: USB DISK 3.0    
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xf82e59a0

Device     Boot Start     End Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sda1       32768 5849087 5816320  2.8G 83 Linux

 

Also I see that during the boot the storage device is detected - see serial conslole log attached.

 

 

Serial_log_with_USB.txt

[kruzer]

Thank you, great work!

It worked on the first try. Using multitool I've installed Armbian_21.08.0-trunk_Rk3318-box_buster_current_5.10.32_minimal on my:

Android TV H96 Max RK3318 4/64 GB

I set the frequency to 1.3Ghz and the box is running stable from eMMC.

output of 7z b:

7-Zip [64] 16.02 : Copyright (c) 1999-2016 Igor Pavlov : 2016-05-21
p7zip Version 16.02 (locale=en_US.UTF-8,Utf16=on,HugeFiles=on,64 bits,4 CPUs LE)

LE
CPU Freq:  1287  1292  1292  1293   797  1047  1292  1292  1292

RAM size:    3975 MB,  # CPU hardware threads:   4
RAM usage:    882 MB,  # Benchmark threads:      4

                       Compressing  |                  Decompressing
Dict     Speed Usage    R/U Rating  |      Speed Usage    R/U Rating
         KiB/s     %   MIPS   MIPS  |      KiB/s     %   MIPS   MIPS

22:       1671   358    454   1626  |      53582   398   1149   4571
23:       1652   371    454   1684  |      52157   398   1134   4513
24:       1590   378    452   1710  |      50663   399   1115   4447
25:       1522   382    456   1738  |      45897   391   1044   4085
----------------------------------  | ------------------------------
Avr:             372    454   1689  |              396   1111   4404
Tot:             384    782   3047

 

now I am going to try Ubuntu Focal desktop

dmesg.txt

[jock]

1 hour ago, lucky62 said:

One more point - I cannot boot from USB.
Armbian is starting always from internal flash. After start I see the USB disk available.

Part of fdisk -l output:

Disk /dev/sda: 14.5 GiB, 15514730496 bytes, 30302208 sectors
Disk model: USB DISK 3.0    
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xf82e59a0

Device     Boot Start     End Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sda1       32768 5849087 5816320  2.8G 83 Linux

 

Also I see that during the boot the storage device is detected - see serial conslole log attached.

 

 

Serial_log_with_USB.txt 2.06 kB · 1 download

Thanks for spotting this also, I will check out ASAP! U-boot issues are the worst ones...