Making Libreelec work on Bananapi M5 side by side with Armbian possible?

[SoSie]

Hello,

I know this is a forbidden question, I will adress specially to @chewitt and @Igor.

 

Why I dare to do this?  Because today, it is the fist time I managed to run Libreelec (LE) nighly https://test.libreelec.tv/11.0/Amlogic/bananapi-m5/
and have the somehow the same suffering with boot and so on and as I did not give up,

 

I shot the last bug preventing LE to boot. I don't want to register in every forum for each pack , christian forgive me I will put the explanation here.
The last image suffer from a missing link..in /flash as it is all momified in squashfs , this need extra skills.

wget https://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/libreelec/LibreELEC-AMLGX.arm-11.0.1-bananapi-m5.img.gz
gunzip LibreELEC-AMLGX.arm-11.0.1-bananapi-m5.img
partx -a LibreELEC-AMLGX.arm-11.0.1-bananapi-m5.img
losetup -a /dev/loop0
mount /dev/loop0p1 /media/LIBREELEC
cp /media/LIBREELEC/SYSTEM .
unsquashfs SYSTEM 
cd squashfs-root/flash
#here is the missing killing link
ln -s .. SYSTEM
cd -
mksquashfs squashfs-root/    -noappend  -comp zstd -Xcompression-level 15
cp SYSTEM /media/LIBREELEC/
umount /dev/loop0p1

Then use gparted to wipe out the sdcard, and use dd
 

dd if=LibreELEC-AMLGX.arm-11.0.1-bananapi-m5.img of=/dev/mmcblck1 bs=1M

Boot and ENJOY!

Edited April 1, 2023 by SoSie
typo

[SoSie]

Okay I filled an issue on Github.

[SoSie]

Better script: previous was buggy

 

wget https://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/libreelec/LibreELEC-AMLGX.arm-11.0.1-bananapi-m5.img.gz
gunzip LibreELEC-AMLGX.arm-11.0.1-bananapi-m5.img.gz
sudo su -
partx -a LibreELEC-AMLGX.arm-11.0.1-bananapi-m5.img
#this next command should give loop0p1=LIBREELEC , loop0p2=STORAGE (empty, resized with missing config created during install)
 losetup -a /dev/loop0
if [ ! -d "/media/LIBREELEC" ]; then mkdir /media/LIBREELEC; fi
mount /dev/loop0p1 /media/LIBREELEC
cp /media/LIBREELEC/SYSTEM .
unsquashfs SYSTEM 
cd squashfs-root/flash
#here is the missing killing link
ln -s .. SYSTEM
cd -
mksquashfs squashfs-root/ SYSTEM   -noappend  -comp zstd -Xcompression-level 15
cp SYSTEM /media/LIBREELEC/
umount /dev/loop0p1
losetup -d /dev/loop0

 

Edited April 3, 2023 by SoSie
Script Improvement

[chewitt]

@Sosie It took me a while to test my current branch(es) but I see no boot issue on the M5 that I have: https://pastebin.com/raw/sT3GiLa3

 

Note that all I ever do is gunzip the image and dd directly to an SD card. I do zero manipulation of anything beyond occasionally forcing SSH on via extlinux.conf

[SoSie]

@Chewitt, thanks for taking time to try and reply; the image boots correctly  on KERNEL  - I think the log you provided stop at this step - but when it passes the hand to the SYSTEM image it fails.

SYSTEM fails to be mounted because of the missing link in /flash leaving the user lost in space in initramfs level  but when you restore the missing link in the SYSTEM image
like I did , it works and I see LE logo and are able to use Kodi LE.

In LE,  infrared remote is better handled and we have Mali G-31 accel working ( this is on way to be solved in armbian (I enjoyed the constructive exchanges with the Armbian team busy but available here https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/5004  ) but I had video codec playing issues - it is a common mesa versioning nightmare on M5 - I got squared green video when I trigger some as if video was encrypted which is not the case as I can play without problem in Kodi Debian 19.4.

 

All this bring me, the idea that it will be good to gather  Kodi Debian and Kodi LE experiences to avoid regressions and redundant efforts at least on mesa, to determine which version works and reliable. I should build also a mesamonitor for LE  as I did here https://armbian.atlassian.net/browse/AR-1641

based on kodi logs.

Edited April 17, 2023 by SoSie