Yvan P. Posted December 12, 2023 Share Posted December 12, 2023 Hello !! I ordered a box tv H96 MAX X3 With this configuration : -CPU: Amlogic S905X3 quad core BRAS Cortex A55; -GPU: ARM Mali-G31 MP2; - OS: Android 10.0; -Memory: DDR3 4GB, eMMC 32/64GB/128GB -Support: H.265, 8K @ 24fps, 4K @ 60fps, HD 2.1, USB3.0; -Support 10/100M/1000M Ethernet, 2.4 and 5G dual Wifi,BT4.0; I'd like to install Armbian on it to use it as a mini server. Except that I'm a complete idiot when it comes to computers, and I've tried to follow tutorials I've already seen, but I can't get the hang of it. I can't really find the right image and I don't really understand how to do it. When I try on my own and plug in my USB key, the box reboots in a loop and when I unplug it, it boots on Android. Thank you, I'm also aware that I can "brick" it etc. . 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
queeks Posted December 13, 2023 Share Posted December 13, 2023 (edited) NOTE: This will overwrite the Android ROM on the eMMC flash and attempt to install Armbian. Before beginning, make sure you have a backup of the stock Android ROM in the event the installation fails or you want to revert back to Android in the future. Proceed at your own risk. You can copy the working Armbian environment from SD card/USB drive to eMMC using the install-aml.sh script. This file does a physical copy of whole system to eMMC. You can install Armbian to eMMC by running the shell script in the /root directory. Run the following commands in a terminal window: Quote sudo su; cd /root/; sudo ./install-aml.sh Once the Armbian finishes copying to the eMMC, shutdown Armbian, unplug power from the box, remove the SD card/USB drive from the box, power the box back on to boot from the eMMC storage, if everything worked as expected, Armbian should boot from the internal eMMC storage and no longer require the SD/microSD card. Edited December 13, 2023 by queeks 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alec Posted February 21 Share Posted February 21 On 12/12/2023 at 7:04 PM, Yvan P. said: When I try on my own and plug in my USB key, the box reboots in a loop and when I unplug it, it boots on Android. The same story with Armbian on SD or USB. How to fix it? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteeMan Posted February 21 Share Posted February 21 7 minutes ago, alec said: The same story with Armbian on SD or USB. How to fix it? What build are you using? What instructions are you following? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alec Posted February 26 Share Posted February 26 On 2/21/2024 at 9:18 PM, SteeMan said: What build are you using? What instructions are you following? Tried the below options: Images Armbian_24.2.0_amlogic_s905_jammy_6.6.13_server_2024.01.25.img Armbian_24.2.0_amlogic_s905_bookworm_6.6.13_server_2024.01.25.img Armbian_23.11.1_Aml-s9xx-box_bookworm_current_6.1.63.img FDT=/dtb/amlogic/meson-sm1-h96-max-x3.dtb and FDT=/dtb/amlogic/meson-sm1-h96-max-x3-oc.dtb u-boot.ext copied from u-boot-x96max.bin and u-boot-x96maxplus.bin Sold the box so cannot try more cases But would be great to hear what I did wrong 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteeMan Posted February 26 Share Posted February 26 1 hour ago, alec said: Armbian_24.2.0_amlogic_s905_jammy_6.6.13_server_2024.01.25.img Armbian_24.2.0_amlogic_s905_bookworm_6.6.13_server_2024.01.25.img These are not Armbian images. Where did you get them? 1 hour ago, alec said: u-boot.ext copied from u-boot-x96max.bin and u-boot-x96maxplus.bin This is not part of any Armbian image. 1 hour ago, alec said: Armbian_23.11.1_Aml-s9xx-box_bookworm_current_6.1.63.img Images prior to current nightlies and after 23.02 are known not to work with the s905x3 based boxes. But current nightly builds should work. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xuraax Posted March 1 Share Posted March 1 HI, I have installed Armbian_community_24.5.0-trunk.93_Aml-s9xx-box_jammy_current_6.6.18_cinnamon_desktop.img.xz from github on my H96 Max Plus 2 using u-boot-s905x3 for u-boot.ext and meson-sm1-x96-max-plus-100m.dtb. The installation goes on without a hitch and the OS runs almost perfectly. However when I run sudo apt update; sudo apt upgrade, upgrading appears to proceed properly but when I switch on the box again the software hangs and I have to start anew. Any ideas please? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteeMan Posted March 1 Share Posted March 1 5 hours ago, xuraax said: meson-sm1-x96-max-plus-100m.dtb Something doesn't make sense as there is no such dtb in the release 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xuraax Posted March 2 Share Posted March 2 You are correct, none of the dtb's I tried from the release worked for me. Maybe I did not try them all! That dtb had been downloaded and used by me about a year ago when I had made another attempt to install Armbian on my box. At the time installation process worked but the actual install was buggy. Anyway I am happy to report that since yesterday's message, I made another attempt at installation and this time there were only minor issues whilst upgrading which were fairly easily resolved. I am sorry I cannot find the notes I took were I had recorded the actual error but I believe it was something about the system not able to register certain upgrades. These were then cleared and I had no further issues. I even went ahead and installed to EMMC with no issues whatsoever so now I don't need the SDcard anymore which I hope will improve the speed a bit as well as reliability. So far no more issues. I have now only one question, given that I am now operating from EMMC, if in the future I would want to install a new upgrade how would I do it? Will installing from SDcard work or would it be sufficient to use the Upgrade Manager or sudo apt update; sudo apt upgrade? Thanks. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteeMan Posted March 2 Share Posted March 2 The entire system is now in your EMMC storage, so you just upgrade from there, no need for SD card going forward. Although it can be convenient to boot front an SD card, use the ddbr command to make an image backup of the EMMC once you have everything configured that you can always rollback to if necessary 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xuraax Posted March 2 Share Posted March 2 thank you SteeMan. I am glad I don't need to go through the SDcard route for future upgrades but how does one transfer a .img version into the EMMC directly? Can you also point me to a link where the use of the ddbr command is explained? Also my box is supposed have the 1000G LAN but that dtb is actually intended for the 100G LAN which is to be found in some versions of the box. Therefore can I directly replace the current dtb with a version suited to 1000G directly or will I be risking blocking everything? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteeMan Posted March 2 Share Posted March 2 You don't need to transfer a .img. You use apt update/upgrade like any other Linux system. You can test other dtb files, but I would recommend testing those from the SD card to verify they work. If you test on the EMMC and you do something wrong, then it won't boot and it will be a pain to fix. This the recommendation to do everything on SD card first to make sure you are happy with the system before moving that configuration to emmc as a last step. ddbr is a very simple utility. I don't know if it is properly documented anywhere, but you can do an internet search to see discussions about it. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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