CSC Armbian for RK322x TV box boards

[Scmel]

Hello. I have a tv box on rk3220. What version of Armbian do I need to install in order for Home Assistant to work? I tried 2 different versions and always got this kind of error

[jock]

Hello @guitoscan , two possible issues come up to my mind right now:

 

1. the system is unstable because some of some wrong cpu/memory setting (voltage too low, frequency too high, things like that)

2. the trust os is doing something bad, and since it is closed source, we could never know what it is doing.

 

To handle the former issue, you can try adding cpu-stability overlay in /boot/armbianEnv.txt adding a line like this:

 

overlays=cpu-stability

 

beware that running rk322x-config will overwrite the overlays line, so you will have to append cpu-stability to the other overlays if you run rk322x-config

 

The latter issue can't be solved easily right now 😕

 

 

[jock]

@Scmel Honestly, you should ask on homeassistant forums perhaps, or read the documentation. I have an instance of homeassistant core installed on a rk322x box and works fine, but you have to install it manually by yourself. The other versions may require virtualization or other unsupported/unavailable features.

[guitoscan]

Hello guys!

 

@jock, I burned another image in the SD card (Armbian 23.8.0 lunar and bookworm), changed the /boot/ArmibianEnv.txt like you told to do and, unfortunately, the freezing still happening.

 

I noticed some thing at these new tries:

1 - In both cases (Burned Image or Multitool) the board still alive for only 60s. Sometimes less than 60s but never more

2 - The "freezings" are a little bit different:

   2.1 - There's a Freezing that keep all the boot's information on the screen and the indicator led is off;

   2.2 - There's a freezing that's erase all the information of the screen but keep it alive, and the indicator led still on (most common);
3 - In a few times the board simply don't boot (rare).

 

Well, i think that my options are running low =P

So, I'll need help for those new tries:

 

1 - Do you know which is the voltage range of this board? I have a some good 12v sources but i don't know if this board have a voltage regulator (i believe so) of if this regulator can handle 12 volts;

2 - Maybe, I really don't know, but there's something i can try in the "maskrom" mode? I look for the board model on google but i didn't find anything about the points I have to short in this model (ZQ01 - V1.3 20210728). 

3 - How I said in the first post, I was a little bit sloppy and besides destroyed a SD card I complete erase the original OS from this board. There's a way to reinstall or recover this OS?

 

Finally, I'm very thankful for your reply.

I just order a new tvbox (same model, but hoping for a better board this time) yet I haven't give up from this one, so any tip, suggestion or advise is welcome.

 

A great week for everyone and TKS

 

ADDENDUM: I forget of mention that with the original SO (an Android), the board worked fine. I keep it running for, maybe, one hour or two before start the Armbian instalation. And, how i already mencioned, only in the Multitool boot the problems started.  

Edited June 13, 2023 by guitoscan
Addendum

[Scmel]

@jock I asked a question on the HA forum, but I was told, that's Armbian's problems Tthat's why I came here.
could you post a link to the HA version that works for you? I would like to try this option.
Thank you.

[fabiobassa]

@Scmel

Every One saying the problem Is elsewhere.

 

Old..old game

[jock]

@Scmel actually it is neither armbian nor homeassistant problem. I mean, armbian community does not have to tell you how to install homeassistant, and homeassistant does not have to tell you how to install it on every platform available on the planet.

You have to find the way through, as I said I installed the core version successfully following the instructions on the homeassistant site and it was sufficient to me.

[jock]

15 hours ago, guitoscan said:

1 - Do you know which is the voltage range of this board? I have a some good 12v sources but i don't know if this board have a voltage regulator (i believe so) of if this regulator can handle 12 volts;

5v, no less no more. Anything else will probably destroy the board.

 

15 hours ago, guitoscan said:

2 - Maybe, I really don't know, but there's something i can try in the "maskrom" mode? I look for the board model on google but i didn't find anything about the points I have to short in this model (ZQ01 - V1.3 20210728). 

Unfortunately I don't think you can do anything with maskrom mode; I don't have such a board so I absolutely don't know what is going on with that particular board. All we can do is guessing 🤷‍♂️

 

15 hours ago, guitoscan said:

3 - How I said in the first post, I was a little bit sloppy and besides destroyed a SD card I complete erase the original OS from this board. There's a way to reinstall or recover this OS?

rkdeveloptool via maskrom mode if you have a full-image backup, or AndroidTool and the upgrade images for your board you can find on the internet. You have to find the right one though, which can be a time consuming task.

 

15 hours ago, guitoscan said:

I just order a new tvbox (same model, but hoping for a better board this time) yet I haven't give up from this one, so any tip, suggestion or advise is welcome.

Well, tvboxes are not really serious things. If you really need the board to do something minimally serious, it is better to go with a proper SBC and even better a proper SBC officially supported by armbian.

if you want to toy around, tvboxes can be funny but beware they are often assembled with scrap parts stick together with hacks, especially the cheapest ones, and supporting them is quite painful.

[guitoscan]

32 minutes ago, jock said:

if you want to toy around, tvboxes can be funny but beware they are often assembled with scrap parts stick together with hacks, especially the cheapest ones, and supporting them is quite painful

Did you said that they are often assembled with scrap parts by the own manufacturer? Lol =P

 

Ok, my first option will be try to recover the original Android. I'll search and read a little bit about the rkdeveloptoll and AndroidTools procedures. Then, if I have success, I'll look for some apps and gather all possible information about the board and processor. But, only in the next week, since I'm stuck with the final work from my postgraduation     

 

When I start, having progress or no, I'll keep you update here in the forum.

I think I'm not the only one that's could be having trouble with this board.

 

TKS

[fabiobassa]

@guitoscan

 

Welcome in the club 🙃 

rk322x are often " assembled" with the first avaible piece of chip laying around in producer factory.

 

We have spent now more than 3 years reading of rkdevelootools android tools factory tools and so on and yet no clue with some boards we dont own

Edited June 13, 2023 by fabiobassa

[jock]

2 hours ago, guitoscan said:

Did you said that they are often assembled with scrap parts by the own manufacturer? Lol =P

It is widely known that often they reuse those chips which are not up to the specs. They pick parts from the trash and assemble the tvboxes.

 

2 hours ago, guitoscan said:

 

When I start, having progress or no, I'll keep you update here in the forum.

I think I'm not the only one that's could be having trouble with this board.

Sure you are not the only one, but helping solve the problem without the board in my lab for tests is difficult anyway.

[remlei]

On 6/13/2023 at 12:37 AM, Scmel said:

Hello. I have a tv box on rk3220. What version of Armbian do I need to install in order for Home Assistant to work? I tried 2 different versions and always got this kind of error

 

I successfully installed supervised install of HA using the images here https://users.armbian.com/jock/rk322x/armbian/stable/

 

what I did usually after armbian is installed is perform apt update and upgrade. after that I follow the most generic instruction how to install supervised install of HA, the only thing you need to watch out is install the right architecture for the os_agent.

 

after that its just a matter of how to fix that unsupported install to supported.

 

also a fair warning, do not install esphome on this box, the ram alone will make this box slow to crawl or worst crash the entire thing.

[MattWestB]

@remlei OS agent for ARM 32 and supervised select Pi 3 (not 64 bit version) and also need patching the boot parameters for getting the install working OK by faking GRUB settings.

[remlei]

On 6/14/2023 at 3:26 PM, MattWestB said:

OS agent for ARM 32 and supervised select Pi 3 (not 64 bit version) and also need patching the boot parameters for getting the install working OK by faking GRUB settings.

what I only did to get my installation to get supported is mess with that apparmor to properly work, I kinda remember changing stuff over /boot directoy.

 

still if you dont mind the unsupported install notification so you dont have to hunt how to get your instal lsupported since after installation, home assistant supervise install works just fine and already survived several monthly updates of HA.

[EmilB]

I received a MXQ Pro android Box as a gift, and I am planning to used it as a mini server.

The main issue is this board is very strange. After a lot of experimenting, I managed the next things:

 

1.I can boot directly from SD only “LibreELEC-RK322x.arm-9.2-devel-20220112104822-3ce5dd4-rk3228b-a8.img” and is working ok; only A8 version is working ; the “LibreELEC-RK322X.arm-11.0-nightly-20230322-c4a7662-rk322x.img” is staring to boot, but without success

2.I can create a botting SD version of “Armbian_23.5.1_Rk322x-box_jammy_current_6.1.30_minimal” or “Armbian_22.02.0-trunk_Rk322x-box_bullseye_legacy_4.4.194_minimal” with the guide of @hexdump from the firs page

                                                     "zcat working Librelec-xyz.img.gz | dd of=/dev/mysdcard bs=512 count=32768 status=progress"

                                                    then use "fdisk /dev/mysdcard" to create a partition starting at sector 32768 ( o, n, p, 1, 32768, enter, w, q ) and then dump the armbian image to it:

                                                    "xzcat Armbian-xyz.img.xz | dd of=/dev/mysdcard bs=512 skip=8192 seek=32768 status=progress"

 3.Moltitool ( both versions) are not booting from SD, but I modified them in hex editor and I added the u-boot from LibreELEC 11; so with Multitool I can see the nand and I can install “Armbian_22.02.0-trunk_Rk322x-box_bullseye_legacy_4.4.194_minimal”  on the NAND.

4."Install Jump Start for Armbian" – do not appear to work; only modified images are booting from SD and nothing from USB; I verified that  u-boot  was written on the NAND

5.  rkdeveloptool wl 0x4000 u-boot-main.img  temporary bricked my box; only with the modified multitool I recover my NAND and have the possibility to enter maskrom mode

6.  rkdeveloptool db rk322x_loader_v1.10.256.bin or upgrade_tool ul rk322x_loader_v1.10.256.bin command are not working :

root@mint:/home/mint/Desktop/rkbin-master/tools# ./rkdeveloptool rd 3


Reset Device OK.


root@mint:/home/mint/Desktop/rkbin-master/tools# ./rkdeveloptool ul rk322x_loader_v1.10.256.bin


Opening loader failed, exiting upgrade loader!




root@mint:/home/mint/Desktop/rkbin-master/tools# ./rkdeveloptool rd 3


Reset Device OK.


root@mint:/home/mint/Desktop/rkbin-master/tools# ./upgrade_tool ul rk322x_loader_v1.10.256.bin


Not found config.ini


Program Data in /home/mint/Desktop/rkbin-master/tools


Loading loader...


Loading loader failed!

6.       My bood aparenty is RK3229 ( acoding with hexdump) and with Samsung NAND ( confirm on board), but now is repoting also Micron ( verry strange board).
  

  

      uboot@rk322x-box:~$  hexdump -C /sys/bus/nvmem/devices/rockchip-efuse0/nvmem


          00000000  52 4b 23 92 81 f0 70 55  52 4b 4e 35 30 30 31 38  |RK#...pURKN50018|



Flash ID: 2C 64 44 4B A9

Chip Info:  41 32 32 33 FF FF 0 0 FF FF 0 0 FF FF 0 0


Chip Info:  41 32 32 33 FF FF 0 0 FF FF 0 0 FF FF 0 0


Flash Info:

        Manufacturer: MICRON, value=04

        Flash Size: 8192 MB

        Block Size: 2048 KB

        Page Size: 8 KB

        ECC Bits: 40

        Access Time: 32

        Flash CS: Flash<0>

         

mint@mint:~/Downloads/rkbin-master/tools$ sudo ./rkdeveloptool rci

Chip Info:  41 32 32 33 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0


Flash Info:

        Manufacturer: SAMSUNG, value=00

        Flash Size: 7668 MB

        Block Size: 512 KB

        Page Size: 2 KB

        ECC Bits: 0

        Access Time: 40

        Flash CS: Flash<0         

 

Did someone este encounter this board? My goal is to boot from USB if it is possible and not to create special modified armbian images.

 

P.S. I extracted the next info from my nand dump original ( 0x0). This is reporting RK2228 not Rk2239. And u-boot stated on 0x00002000 not 0x00004000 as I expected.

Please find some logs  https://paste.armbian.com/duwidozafu Ignore the wifi driver error ( I did not disable the driver yet). 

PARM/  FIRMWARE_VER:6.0.1
MACHINE_MODEL:rk3228
MACHINE_ID:007
MANUFACTURER:RK30SDK
MAGIC: 0x5041524B
ATAG: 0x60000800
MACHINE: 3228
CHECK_MASK: 0x80
KERNEL_IMG: 0x60408000
#RECOVER_KEY: 1,1,0,20,0
#CMDLINE:console=ttyFIQ0 androidboot.selinux=permissive androidboot.hardware=rk30board androidboot.console=ttyFIQ0 init=/init mtdparts=rk29xxnand:
0x00002000@0x00002000(uboot),
0x00004000@0x00004000(trust),
0x00002000@0x00008000(misc),
0x00000800@0x0000A000(baseparamer),
0x00007800@0x0000A800(resource),
0x00006000@0x00012000(kernel),
0x00006000@0x00018000(boot),
0x00010000@0x0001E000(recovery),
0x00020000@0x0002E000(backup),
0x00040000@0x0004E000(cache),
0x00008000@0x0008E000(metadata),
0x00002000@0x00096000(kpanic),
0x00400000@0x00098000(system),
-@0x00498000(userdata)   

 

Edited June 17, 2023 by EmilB

[MattWestB]

@EmilB As long you is having the original u-bootloader on the internal eMMC the device cant boot armbian on external storage.

Erasing the eMMC is making the internal ROM in the SOC looking for u-bootloader on the SD-card and you can then booting SD, USB and internal storage from it if doing  the config OK.

My box was not liking the standard bootloader but i was getting it working then finding one working one and flashing it from MASKROM mode on the eMMC and then i can booting from all connected device also USB if the internal not being OK and can fixing it from CLI.

[fabiobassa]

@MattWestB

 

Quote

As long you is having the original u-bootloader on the internal eMMC the device cant boot armbian on external storage

 this in not true Matt ! Infact the "hacked"  multitool by emilb is booting and is booting from SD that IS AN EXTERNAL STORANGE !!
and arranging the env or/and the commandline could even transfer to a real external usb drive all the process

@EmilB

 

Quote

00000000 52 4b 23 92 81 f0 70 55 52 4b 4e 35 30 30 31 38

indeed your board is a 3229 since efuse is quite hard to " hack and fake" and 3229 are really horse power. I guess you have maybe ddr3
would you upload a photo or take a look here , the post where ALL BEGAN, maybe you have same board.
the aproach on this post is still based on repalcing internal parameters, we moved on zapping all and having a real gpt partition

https://forum.armbian.com/topic/12401-long-story-linux-on-rk3229-rockchip/


But I guess you are " mixing up " too many things.

What do you wanto to achieve ?
Boot from external storage totally ?? ( very easy indeed)
Install armbian on nand? ( remember that newer kernels are not gentle with nand)

What is your purpose ?
 

Edited June 17, 2023 by fabiobassa

[fabiobassa]

@EmilB

beg pardon I realized you asked to boot from USB

 

Quote

My goal is to boot from USB if it is possible and not to create special modified armbian images

well the  uboot is complicated, a bit refusing to boot straight from USB , sometimes uboot doesn't wake up correctly the usb and other devilish things

But you can boot from internal kernel, dtb, init and then simpy passing the whole control to external rootfs

I always do this when i want real hard disk spinning the os

Edited June 17, 2023 by fabiobassa

[EmilB]

@fabiobassa

 

Thank you for the quick response. You can find the picture of the board:

https://pasteboard.co/jYJeY7V0Pc0G.jpg

https://pasteboard.co/flGnLHCiD04S.jpg

Yes, my goal is to boot from USB. From my test, NAND is slower that SD, so USB should be a good idea.

I did some tests with the latest image of armbian to boot from NAND, and I archived only  the (initramfs) error screen ( from what I remember there was an error regarding the /boot - missing).

 

Regarding your recommendation "boot from internal kernel, dtb, init and then simply passing the whole control to external toofs" I honestly do not how there to start ( it is over my current knowledge in Linux). Can you please guide me in the right direction?

I did some modification in the past at fstab level, but I didn't went further with linux boot process.

 

And the second problem is why my board is only working with hacked u-boot from LibreELEC11 or 9 ? I have to modify armbian img files every time?

 

Edited June 17, 2023 by EmilB

[jock]

@EmilB from the logs you posted above, I see "Opening loader failed"; did you download the bootloader file in the same directory of the tools?

Looking into the rkdeveloptool source code, the error comes out because the file is not found. 🤨

 

Also to upgrade the loader upgrade_tool is the only one which was reported to be working: rkdeveloptool will tell that everything went fine, but actually won't upgrade anything.

 

The procedure is described in this post, but I guess you already read it.

 

edit:

about the hack you had to do to boot the multitool correctly, I don't know where the problem lies. We know that in some cases the multitool does not boot but instead libreelec do. We did some speculation with @ilmich and thought it was some sdcard "power" missing in the multitool device tree, but after doing the changes, it still does not work.

 

edit2:

I update the nand bootloader installation process in this post to use rkflashtool in place of rkdeveloptool/upgrade_tool.

It is suggested to use that tool and the shipped bootloader binaries which have tested.

Also I checked the multitool jumpstart feature with an USB stick right now and it works pretty well.

[EmilB]

@jock

Thank you for the reply. Apparently my rk322x_loader_v1.10.256.bin file was corrupted ( it was only 8kb in size) and after I re-download the file the upgrade when from the first try.

 

Program Data in /home/mint/Desktop/rkbin-master/tools
Loading loader...
Support Type:RK322A	Loader ver:2.56	Loader Time:2021-03-13 16:06:57
Upgrade loader ok.

 

After the upgrade nothing change in the behavior of the board. I will try to find a possibility to boot from USB, if not I will use SD boot. When the Raspberry Pi 4 didn't have the possibility to boot from USB, I kept only the /boot partition (FAT32) on microSD and ext4 partition on USB external SSD ( with a little modification in fstab). Maybe there is a possibility to do the same (some files on NAND the rest on USB) but i don't know where to start. My current booting armbian SD card has a 16MB unnalocated space ( the u-boot is here - and is not recognized by linux or windows), and the ext4 partition. I was expected to have a FAT32 partition for /boot; in fstab is defined only the ext4 partition. 

I have another mini server with Amlogic S912 CPU, but there things are more clear ( there is armbi_boot partition FAT32 and armbi_root partition ext4) and internal storage booting is working.

 

 

Edited June 18, 2023 by EmilB

[jock]

@EmilB No, the upgrade of the loader does not magically gives you the USB boot. I didn't even understand why you had to this loader upgrade, on NAND boards it is not suggested to do.

 

The only thing you should have done (and you have to do right now) is installing the jumpstart thing via multitool, then it should boot armbian/libreelec from both sdcard or USB stick/drive

[EmilB]

 

I retested USB boot with jumpstart thing via multitool without any succes.

 

SD CARD is booting all the time only with U-boot from LibreELEC

USB is not booting at all. 

I think that u-boot that is written on NAND with jumpstart thing via multitool is not compatible with my board.

Edited June 18, 2023 by EmilB

[jock]

3 hours ago, EmilB said:

I think that u-boot that is written on NAND with jumpstart thing via multitool is not compatible with my board.

Most probably for some reason jumpstart is not getting written on the nand.

 

Clean the NAND and then armbian should boot from sdcard.

As said, I updated the instructions to be used with rkflashtool, you can perhaps try with that.

[EmilB]

@jock

Thank you for the support.

After I followed your new guide with rkflashtool, the behavior of the board changed. The board started to boot USB if a SD card was inserted in the same time with u-boot on it ( unmodified or LibreELEC). So I flashed  the unmodified multitool on USB ( the unmodified SD multitool still did not boot), and I activated the jumpstart.

 

So, my board now with jumstart enabled:

           - booting from USB original images like armbian or multiboot

            -only booting modified images from SD card

 

With NAND clean - unmodified armbian is bootting

 

So clearly something was wrong with the original loader.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 19, 2023 by EmilB

[jock]

@EmilB I'm getting quite confused among the "unmodified" and "original" attributes.

Still I don't understand if you have had success in installa jumpstart on nand or not.

One thing is sure: the bootloader of multitool and armbian is well able to boot from USB, so if you keep the sdcard in the slot, it will also try to boot from USB.

 

As you see, there are several stages in the boot process that can lead to a multitude of situations, it's not easy to explain and understand the "tree" of options that will come out.

 

One thing that is often sure is that if you completely erase the internal NAND/eMMC, the board will indeed boot from sdcard, but with NANDs if could be not so easy to completely erase the flash due to differences among the already installed bootloaders (ie: it may work from multitool, or may require rkdeveloptool, ...)

[EmilB]

@jock

 

So when I write modified images I mean: for armbian image  "libreelec boot and armbian rootfs combined" and for "minitool" manual edited in hex editor and replace the 4MB u-boot with the u-boot extracted from LibreELEC11. This modified  images will always boot from SD card regardless of the status of the NAND ; "Unmodified" and "original" attributes are for the images downloaded from this site that I did not touch ( modified).

 

Yes I was successful installing jumpstart on NAND.

 

I did some extra tests and I was  incorrect in my post above:

1. When I flash the jumstart enabled with minitool or minitool2 unmodified images USB boot is working with unmodified  armbian, but from SD card will not boot

2. When I flash the jumstart enabled with minitool or minitool2  modified images with u-boot from LibreELEC image USB boot is not working with unmodified  armbian, but now SD card boot is working

3. When I clean NAND ( from MULTITOOL) neither USB or SD CARD is working with unmodified armbian; I did a back-up from multitool and apparently the NAND is clean ( verified in Hex editor). I did not tried with rkdeveloptool.

 

The strangest thing, to boot minitool or minitool2 original ( unmodified) images from situation 2 or 3 above I need to flash the same image on USB and SD card, and start the board with both of them inserted.  If one is missing the board will not boot.

 

So from my point of view, the operation of the board is ok now for my goals and I can finally boot  unmodified  armbian images from SD or USB and I can update the kernel in the future without worrying that whole thing  (my "libreelec boot and armbian rootfs combination")  will break and the system won't boot anymore.

 

Thank you for the support. 

 

Edited June 20, 2023 by EmilB

[Luis]

Amigos saludos qué buen avance me gustaría saber si alguien puede compartir una imagen modificada la cual funcione como libreelec ya que tengo una caja que que no funciona muy bien el multitools por eso quisiera saber si pueden compartir la imagen modificada armbian ya que libreelec sí funciona al 100%

[fabiobassa]

@Luis

mientras el espanol es un languaje muy agradable, ese forum es in ingles

So please re-formulate your request in english and you will see that you'll achieve your goal

Thank you

[ArkhanLK]

On 10/16/2021 at 1:44 AM, tommy said:

Your cutting edge armbian can achieve PSX full 60fps speed in retroarch

Hello Tommy!

 

Did you achieve this through retroarch on linux, or through a lakka-self-compited-img...?
It's been almost 2 years, lol, so I don't know if you made any progress but in any case, would you be willing to share whatever image you have working best? 

I am working with the k5.15 and it's been great for many things. Retroarch doesn't seem to be one of them, tho. Maybe I need to tweak it a lot and should not expect it to work great at install, tho...

 

Thanks!