Amlogic S905X -- Cannot install Armbian to internal eMMC

[pochopsp]

Hello everyone, I own this android box 

and I followed this tutorial https://ragone.dev/post/install-linux-on-android-tv-box which is based on tutorials on armbian website, I tried to install Armbian 25.8 server with Debian.
Everything went fine until the step "5. Flash Armbian to the internal eMMC", despite me running the install-aml.sh script and getting a complete message in the end (see following images for script execution output),

 

when I reboot it just always starts from the sd (see the following screenshot showing that the mounted storage is 16 GB, but my box internal storage is 8 GB).

fdisk -l output to also show the internal mmc (in the screen /dev/mmcblk1)

 

If I remove the sd and then turn it on, it is just stuck in a loop, having the following errors:

 

 

Can you please help me in solving this problem?

I already tried looking on the web and found these two topics:

https://github.com/ophub/amlogic-s9xxx-armbian/issues/3032
 

But they didn't help me.


Kind regards

[SteeMan]

The issue is that your u-boot can't read the emmc.  The linux kernel can since when it was run from your sd card you can access the emmc.  But after you have copied the install to emmc and then boot, the uboot is reporting it can't read the emmc.

 

There are instruction in /boot/build-u-boot for building the various uboots.  I would suggest you try building with a newer version of uboot.  What is currently shipped (the u-boot-s905x-s912 was built from uboot 2020-07 sources) so trying with newer uboot 2025-xx might provide better support for your specific emmc.

[Werner]

moved

[pochopsp]

Hi @SteeMan thanks for your reply. I'm not sure I understand your suggestion, however, I tried going in /boot/build-u-boot and the instructions (file readme.txt in the very same folder) suggest that the latest available u-boot for my device (s905x) is indeed the one that I already have (2020.07 from march 2023).
The newer u-boot are for s905x2 or s905x3

[SteeMan]

@pochopsp You would need to use the information in that readme and patch and apply it to a newer u-boot (i.e port the patch to a newer u-boot) and build then a newer u-boot than the 2020.07 currently shipped.

[pochopsp]

Could you please be more explicit or point me to some tutorial? In the readme the only info I can see are how to build U-Boot for s905x in the version I already have, or newer but for different chips s905x2 and s905x3.

Thanks again for your help