CSC Armbian for RK3318/RK3328 TV box boards

[vkkindia]

On 12/18/2021 at 11:31 PM, jock said:

Yes, the FAT partition is limiting the size of the backup to 4gb. Probably your box has some content in it that is not easily compressible and this results in a very large backup.

The problem is not of easy solution: except splitting the gzipped file every 4gb (which I don't know how it could be done automatically via gzip command), the other proper solution would be another partition type.

Other options are NTFS, ext4 or exFAT.

NTFS is cumbersome on some linux systems, especially with some very old distros which may not have the write capability.

ext4 is not available on windows

exFAT cuts away Windows XP, but there should be a separate MS driver for it. This could be the way to go, but in this case the same drill as ntfs applies, with the malus that exfat is much more recent, there are less tools and older distributions may not work as well.

Anyhow i took the risk to restore it, because the system would be definetly  fit into the 17GB the extracted file.

And keeping my fingers crossed and rebooted

It got struck in H96 boot logo. 

Then pressed the reset using tooth prick and powered on and in the  diagostics menu displayed i selected to format the data .

Then tv box back to normal.

 

@jock, it would be safe to split the file after 3.5GB 

I use split with gzip  and dd to get the compressed file of the desired smaller size

and when uncompress it is usually cat compressed*.gz|gzip -d ...... as usual

If possible add split to multitool, split is also available in busybox if u use busybox

or if possible u can exclude userdata

 

[ASD2003ru]

I install armbian to eMMC, SDCard and External SSD on USB3.

After power on - os loaded from SDCard, if I reboot, loaded from SSD USB3.

If disable power, os loaded from sdcard.

How make sdcard for load from SSD USB3? 

Thanks.

[jock]

On 12/29/2021 at 9:23 AM, ASD2003ru said:

I install armbian to eMMC, SDCard and External SSD on USB3.

After power on - os loaded from SDCard, if I reboot, loaded from SSD USB3.

If disable power, os loaded from sdcard.

How make sdcard for load from SSD USB3? 

Thanks.

Don't put a bootable device in sdcard.

Why you need three armbian installations puzzles me, yet a cold reboot should not let USB3 boot since order is fixed and is sdcard -> USB -> eMMC

[ASD2003ru]

I understand. eMMC can be erased. But I'm talking about the effect. After turning on, tvbox is loaded with sdcard and then if you give the reboot command, the disk connected via USB3 is loaded.

Maybe this can be used somehow to create a boot with USB3?

[jock]

5 hours ago, ASD2003ru said:

I understand. eMMC can be erased. But I'm talking about the effect. After turning on, tvbox is loaded with sdcard and then if you give the reboot command, the disk connected via USB3 is loaded.

Maybe this can be used somehow to create a boot with USB3?

Well it should not be this way, maybe there is an issue with u-boot that needs to be investigated.

U-boot is programmed to have the fixed boot order which is always sdcard -> USB -> eMMC, so if it skips sdcard it behaves in the wrong way.

This could be an issue of your particular board, an issue from armbian or an issue from u-boot, thus needs to be investigated.

 

Just guessing, but it could also be that you have installed the same armbian image on sdcard and USB stick: boot happens telling the kernel the filesystem UUID and, if you installed the same armbian image on both media, rootfs on both sdcard and USB have the same UUID. The kernel takes one of them "at random", so it may boot from one or the other on every reboot.

 

[ASD2003ru]

Yes UUID same. But why after reboot he sees and can boot from USB3, U-boot does not support it?

[jock]

14 minutes ago, ASD2003ru said:

Yes UUID same. But why after reboot he sees and can boot from USB3, U-boot does not support it?

Can't be sure on what happens, surely if UUID is the same the kernel may get "confused".

The purpose of u-boot is to read the kernel and initramfs in memory from any suitable device. Then u-boot passes the UUID of the root filesystem to the kernel via command line, then the kernel inspects the available media for the given UUID and decides which one will be the root filesystem. So I just guess that having the same UUID for both filesystems is confusing the kernel during boot.

 

[lucky62]

6 hours ago, ASD2003ru said:

I understand. eMMC can be erased. But I'm talking about the effect. After turning on, tvbox is loaded with sdcard and then if you give the reboot command, the disk connected via USB3 is loaded.

Maybe this can be used somehow to create a boot with USB3?

Most probably the behaviour of reboot command is different than cold boot (u-boot)...
I am not sure, but his can be related:
https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/reboot.2.html

[boyshongke]

Hi is the wifi working, i can't connect to the wifi it's always ask for password even i input the right one

 

Thank you

[curse]

4 hours ago, boyshongke said:

Hi is the wifi working, i can't connect to the wifi it's always ask for password even i input the right one

 

Thank you

Which box do you have?

[boyshongke]

2 hours ago, curse said:

Which box do you have?

H96 Max

 

[paradigman]

1 minute ago, boyshongke said:

H96 Max

 

I have two types of H96 Max boxes. I can connect to WiFi with one and not the other. I can't connect to the type that has a 6334 chip. The other has a 6330 chip, so I can connect with it smoothly.

[jock]

1 hour ago, boyshongke said:

H96 Max

 

A very detailed photo of the board may come useful, in particular the area around the wifi chip and its quartz clock generator.

Usually these kind of issues come from a bad nvram firmware file.

[boyshongke]

26 minutes ago, jock said:

A very detailed photo of the board may come useful, in particular the area around the wifi chip and its quartz clock generator.

Usually these kind of issues come from a bad nvram firmware file.

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y6j_YPJmh78AhODwLgfzvSDgKLc_4PJg/edit?fbclid=IwAR0UfodTNFJh039iGhXgWOpV2vPC_YInL7sojjDsESXEqm6-BJW98Q2ThTo

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sjKbsthKoek9HnFUnE-qWGrKDwiOM6bl/view?fbclid=IwAR0uHDc7Z5jk5A1kzjvHDv2lqCkF5DAhHlpcFnJllAYJvRUDpKc0slQauTs

[jock]

@boyshongke photos are not very well detailed and signatures on wifi chip and quartz are not readable at all.

You should take a closer look (maybe you need a magnifying lens) and see if you read "37.4", "26.0" or "24.0" or whatever on the quartz (it's the smaller "chip" nearby the bottom left corner of the wifi chip).

[Wester_Minsk]

Hello.
Thank you very much for the Image with ddrbin from my board.

Stable work in eMMC for 3+ months on Linux 5.10.64 kernel.

There are 2 problems:

1. When working in Multitool for a long time, the board freezes. For example, when restoring a backup. This process takes 10+ minutes and never reaches 100%. I believe Multitool is using the wrong ddbin.
How to fix it?

What other options are there to write a backup image to eMMC?

2. On new images with kernel 5.15.2, my board freezes, I believe that my ddrbin is not there.
Please give instructions on how to integrate my ddrbin into the new kernel.

[jock]

1 hour ago, Wester_Minsk said:

1. When working in Multitool for a long time, the board freezes. For example, when restoring a backup. This process takes 10+ minutes and never reaches 100%. I believe Multitool is using the wrong ddbin.
How to fix it?

What other options are there to write a backup image to eMMC?

Probably you are right, from a quick check I see v1.15 on multitool, got to update it there, but at the moment I am a bit busy elsewhere.

You can write a backup image from a running system from sdcard, for example: if you have a properly armbian image installed on eMMC, you can write the image with gzip and dd command.
Something like this would be suffice:

gzip -d backup.gz | dd of=/dev/mmcblk2 bs=512k iflag=fullblock oflag=direct status=progress

 

1 hour ago, Wester_Minsk said:

2. On new images with kernel 5.15.2, my board freezes, I believe that my ddrbin is not there.
Please give instructions on how to integrate my ddrbin into the new kernel.

That is strange, I see v1.16 (yours) is in use for the armbian image.

[Wester_Minsk]

1 час назад, jock сказал:

That is strange, I see v1.16 (yours) is in use for the armbian image.

I'll test it again.

[Wester_Minsk]

18 часов назад, jock сказал:

That is strange, I see v1.16 (yours) is in use for the armbian image.

 

I tested the 5.15.2 kernel , got an interesting result:

 

There is a good start with emmc.
The 5.15.5 kernel update has been installed
USB 3.0 is working,

The SDcard speed via USB 3.0 reader is not bad:

Скрытый текст

 

Problems:
1. The board starts badly with emmc after reboot. Starts only after: start multitool - reboot multitool - remove microsd 
The startup problem appears after setting the parameters: *rk3318-box-emmc-hc200 *rk3318-box-emc-dr.
Maybe the problem is a bad voltage?
Starting with a Microsd card slot, no problem.
2. USB 3.0 port does not see SSD disk partitions via USB 3.0 adapter.
3. After several restarts:
- The USB 3.0 port has stopped working.
- All parameters of RK3318 disappeared in armbian-config
- Script rk3318-config.sh starts, but the parameters are not activated after reboot.
- The problem of starting with emmc after reboot has gone away.

 

p/s Is it good to have a working USB 3.0? what do you think?

Give me a hint, I want to try to work with this, but I have little knowledge for this.

 

[jock]

1 hour ago, Wester_Minsk said:

Problems:
1. The board starts badly with emmc after reboot. Starts only after: start multitool - reboot multitool - remove microsd 
The startup problem appears after setting the parameters: *rk3318-box-emmc-hc200 *rk3318-box-emc-dr.
Maybe the problem is a bad voltage?
Starting with a Microsd card slot, no problem.

This is clearly stated in rk3318-config.sh if you paid attention to what the script tells.

In particular, it tells you that if you have issues, you should NOT activatate those options and you have to try what's best for you.

1 hour ago, Wester_Minsk said:

2. USB 3.0 port does not see SSD disk partitions via USB 3.0 adapter.

USB3 driver is what it is, I guess all rk3328 boards have same or similar issues. 🤷‍♂️

 

[Wester_Minsk]

7 минут назад, jock сказал:

 

USB3 driver is what it is, I guess all rk3328 boards have same or similar issues. 🤷‍♂️

 

I put the image again - Armbian 21.11 - Debian Bullseye desktop [xfce] - mainline kernel 5.15.2
Did not do: upgrades and rk3318 parameters.
Stable operation.
USB 3.0 works, except USB SSD.
I will continue testing.

[jock]

8 minutes ago, Wester_Minsk said:

I put the image again - Armbian 21.11 - Debian Bullseye desktop [xfce] - mainline kernel 5.15.2
Did not do: upgrades and rk3318 parameters.
Stable operation.
USB 3.0 works, except USB SSD.
I will continue testing.

Good!

[Wester_Minsk]

To my luck, on the 5.15.2 kernel, the USB 3.0 port is working stably. On older kernels, USB 3.0 didn't work on my board.
I was able to enable SSD Disk on port 3.0 and started SMB server on it.

Скрытый текст

It remains only to dream about starting the system with a USB 3.0 port. Maybe there are some beta releases to start with USB 3.0?

[jock]

4 minutes ago, Wester_Minsk said:

It remains only to dream about starting the system with a USB 3.0 port. Maybe there are some beta releases to start with USB 3.0?

You have to ask u-boot people about. Honestly I don't know the current state of USB 3 port in u-boot, I didn't go deep into the matter.

It is strange it does not even work in USB2 mode, maybe there is something missing from the dtb but cannot be sure about.

 

[Wester_Minsk]

1 минуту назад, jock сказал:

You have to ask u-boot people about. Honestly I don't know the current state of USB 3 port in u-boot, I didn't go deep into the matter.

It is strange it does not even work in USB2 mode, maybe there is something missing from the dtb but cannot be sure about.

 

I was able to start the system from USB 2 today only if I didn't do eMMC erasure.

 

[jock]

17 hours ago, Wester_Minsk said:

I was able to start the system from USB 2 today only if I didn't do eMMC erasure.

 

Of course, you need u-boot installed in emmc or sdcard to boot from USB.

AFAIK no rockchip chips are able to boot from USB on their own, just eMMC, NAND (<- not the rk33x8 case) or sdcard

[Zippy]

Hello,

I am new to this , and playing around with a T9 Box.
i was able to boot from a sd card 
in :  rk3318-config
i am able to see :
 

Quote

Detected board features:                                     x
                     x Chip type: RK3328 - Serial: URKPXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX         x
                     x CPU Leakage: 0x0d - Logic Leakage: 0x0b - CPU Version: 0x1   x
                     x Internal flash: eMMC                                         x
                     x Wifi device: Realtek RTL8703bs - Device ID: 024c:b703

 

however i cannot make the wifi to work
and the front led do not work as well.

want to know what can be done or any doc i should read

Thanks

[Wester_Minsk]

13.01.2022 в 14:42, jock сказал:

Of course, you need u-boot installed in emmc or sdcard to boot from USB.

AFAIK no rockchip chips are able to boot from USB on their own, just eMMC, NAND (<- not the rk33x8 case) or sdcard

I still can't build a  u-boot image for our boards myself, tell me where can I download it?

or share a link to a simple instruction.

thank you

[jock]

1 hour ago, Wester_Minsk said:

I still can't build a  u-boot image for our boards myself, tell me where can I download it?

or share a link to a simple instruction.

thank you

No simple instructions for such task, you need quite a deep knowledge of both u-boot and platform to get something usable.

If I have to tell you where to download u-boot probably you won't be able to do anything with it (it is available on github anyway)

 

[jock]

9 hours ago, Zippy said:

Hello,

I am new to this , and playing around with a T9 Box.
i was able to boot from a sd card 
in :  rk3318-config
i am able to see :
 

 

however i cannot make the wifi to work
and the front led do not work as well.

want to know what can be done or any doc i should read

Thanks

First post: there is a list of things useful for support and debug.