SteeMan

Providing logs with armbianmonitor -u helps with troubleshooting and significantly raises chances that issue gets addressed.

Providing logs with armbianmonitor -u helps with troubleshooting and significantly raises chances that issue gets addressed.

GPT is something the Armbian build framwork supports, not currently the default, but here is a list of boards that use it: grep -i gpt * armsom-sige7.csc:IMAGE_PARTITION_TABLE="gpt" armsom-w3.csc:IMAGE_PARTITION_TABLE="gpt" bananapir2pro.csc:IMAGE_PARTITION_TABLE="gpt" fxblox-rk1.wip:IMAGE_PARTITION_TABLE="gpt" hinlink-h28k.csc:IMAGE_PARTITION_TABLE="gpt" hinlink-h88k.csc:IMAGE_PARTITION_TABLE="gpt" hinlink-ht2.csc:IMAGE_PARTITION_TABLE="gpt" indiedroid-nova.csc:declare -g IMAGE_PARTITION_TABLE="gpt" jp-tvbox-3566.tvb:IMAGE_PARTITION_TABLE="gpt" khadas-edge2.conf:declare -g IMAGE_PARTITION_TABLE="gpt" mangopi-m28k.csc:IMAGE_PARTITION_TABLE="gpt" mixtile-blade3.wip:declare -g IMAGE_PARTITION_TABLE="gpt" nanopct6.wip:IMAGE_PARTITION_TABLE="gpt" nanopi-r5c.csc:IMAGE_PARTITION_TABLE="gpt" nanopi-r5s.wip:IMAGE_PARTITION_TABLE="gpt" nanopi-r6s.conf:IMAGE_PARTITION_TABLE="gpt" odroidm1.conf:IMAGE_PARTITION_TABLE="gpt" orangepi3b.csc:IMAGE_PARTITION_TABLE="gpt" orangepi5.conf:IMAGE_PARTITION_TABLE="gpt" orangepi5-plus.conf:IMAGE_PARTITION_TABLE="gpt" panther-x2.csc:IMAGE_PARTITION_TABLE="gpt" quartz64a.csc:IMAGE_PARTITION_TABLE="gpt" quartz64b.csc:IMAGE_PARTITION_TABLE="gpt" radxa-e25.wip:IMAGE_PARTITION_TABLE="gpt" rock-3a.conf:IMAGE_PARTITION_TABLE="gpt" rock-5a.wip:IMAGE_PARTITION_TABLE="gpt" rock-5b.conf:IMAGE_PARTITION_TABLE="gpt" rock-5-cmio.csc:IMAGE_PARTITION_TABLE="gpt" station-m2.csc:IMAGE_PARTITION_TABLE="gpt" station-m3.csc:IMAGE_PARTITION_TABLE="gpt" station-p2.csc:IMAGE_PARTITION_TABLE="gpt" xiaomi-elish.conf:IMAGE_PARTITION_TABLE="gpt"

@MrK My question would be, are you planning on submitting your changes upstream to mainline? So any patches you end up with don't become a long term Armbian maintenance burden.

There are images on the download page, but the OrangePi One is in the Community Maintained status there. I think @Stephen Graf question them becomes why is is listed as Community Maintained when it is a .conf, not a .csc?

That was my thought as well, odd. @Jedge Can you reproduce the problem? As Werner stated, on first boot the filesystem on the SD card is supposed to be expanded to take up the entire card. Do you have smaller SD cards you could try, curious if the card size is triggering an issue.

Moved to Community Maintained Allwinner. @krrmbn Note that this is not an Armbian supported board. It is community maintained.

Moved out of TV Boxes to Standard Support forum. The vim2 I believe is standard support as it is .conf but there is no subsection for vim2 so I moved it to the vim3 section.

I just want to add a few comments to this whole dtb overlay discussion. First I want to thank all of you involved in this discussion. You all have different view points and I think are tackling a very difficult problem to which there is no perfect solution. What comes out of this discussion should be applied to the other soc families as well, as they all suffer from some form of this issue as there is no standard in place that works for all use cases well. From what I have seen, good minds are thinking this through and I expect a good result to follow. The reason I am commenting at all, is because in my role as forum moderator, the basic question: "How do I enable feature x on my board" is one of, if not the most commonly asked question by end users of the forum. And when the answer is 'just write a dtb overlay', you have lost 95% of those users as they do not have the skills/knowledge to do that. The status of the dtb overlay's across Armbian supported and community maintained boards is poor. There is no standardization from family to family or board to board. And no testing of what does exist to ensure that it works. Now I'm not saying that all of this needs to be solved in what comes out of this design discussion. I'm just saying from my perspective as a moderator that this is an area that can use some attention, and in doing so, please try to make the end result usable by the typical end user of an sbc, trying to do common things. I realize also that I'm saying this when I only use these boards as servers and don't personally need any of the functionality the overlays provide. But as a forum moderator, I see the mismatch between what is being done and some common use cases that end users are looking for.

Moved to a new post, instead of reopening a thread that is over a year old.

The other thread got locked because your post was inappropriate. Unless you intend to develop and maintain the Armbian support for this board, there isn't any reason to post this information here. Igor in your other post pointed you to the following link: https://docs.armbian.com/Process_Contribute/ If you intend to develop Armbian support for this new board, and wish to use this thread as a place to document your work, then this is an appropriate use of the forums. If not this post will eventually get locked as well, as you aren't asking any question to be addressed by users of the forum.

@Blaize The link you posted is not an Armbian image. You should move this conversation to a forum that supports the software you intend to install. We can't help you here for non-armbian related questions.

These instructions are for Amlogic CPUs for TV Boxes. Note: If you have previously run other distributions on the box such as coreelec the below installation will not work. You will need to restore the original android firmware before attempting the install. coreelec changes the boot environment in ways that are incompatible with these Armbian builds. Download links: Weekly Community Rolling Builds: https://www.armbian.com/amlogic-s9xx-tv-box/ or build your own image using the Armbian build framework Once you download your chosen build, you need to burn the image to an SD card. Generally balenaEtcher is recommended as it does a verification of the burn. Also be sure to use high quality SD cards. Once you have the SD card with your chosen build, then you need to edit the boot configuration file on the SD card. In the BOOT partition of the SD card there will be a file /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf, that you need to edit. There will also be a extlinux.conf.template file to use as a reference. You will need to add a line into the extlinux.conf file for the Device Tree (dtb) file you will be using for your box. Place this line before the APPEND line as shown in the .template file. Basically you need to have the correct dtb for your box. You may need to attempt to use different dtb files until you find the one that works the best for your box's hardware (there are a bunch of dtb files in /boot/dtb/amlogic/... to try depending on your cpu architecture and hardware). It is unlikely that there will be a matching dtb file for your TV box. The idea is to find the one that works best for your box. This may mean that you try booting with different dtb files until you fine one that works good enough for your needs. By searching the forums you will find information about what dtbs other users have found work best for different boxes. Because you are booting from an SD card, you can easily try different dtb files. The dtd files are named by cpu family. So for example dtb files for the s905x2 cpu are named meson-g12a-*. Below there is a table that shows the identifiers for each familiy (g12a for s905x2 in this case). Next you need to copy the correct uboot for your box. This is needed for how these builds boot on amlogic boxes. There are four different u-boot files located in the /boot directory: u-boot-s905, u-boot-s905x-s912, u-boot-s905x2-s922, u-boot-s905x3 You need to copy (note copy not move) the u-boot file that matches your cpu to a new file named u-boot.ext in the /boot directory So for example with a TX3 mini box that has an s905w cpu you would copy u-boot-s905x-s912 to u-boot.ext: cp u-boot-s905x-s912 u-boot.ext (See table below for more details on which u-boot to use for which cpu) Once you have your SD card prepared you need to enable multiboot on the box. There are different ways documented to do this, but the most common is the "toothpick" method. The "toothpick" method means to hold the reset button while applying power to the box. The reset button is often hidden and located at the back of the audio/video jack connector. By pressing that button with a toothpick or other such pointed device you can enable multiboot. What you need to do is have the box unplugged, have your prepared sd card inserted, then press and hold the button while inserting the power connector. Then after a bit of time you can release the button. (I don't know exactly how long you need to hold the button after power is applied, but if it doesn't work the first time try again holding for longer or shorter times). You should now be booting into armbian/linux. Note that the first boot takes longer as it is enlarging the root filesystem to utilize the entire SD card. After you are satisfied that your box is working correctly for your needs you can optionally copy the installation from the SD card to internal emmc storage (assuming your box has emmc). (Note: Installing to emmc has some risks of bricking your box. Don't do this unless you feel you understand how to reinstall your box's android firmware) You install armbian to emmc by running the shell script in the /root directory: install-aml.sh. Note: It is not possible to install into emmc on boxes with the s905 cpu (s905x, s905w, s905x2, etc however should all be supported). It is recommended that you make a backup of emmc first. Also be prepared if anything goes horribly wrong with your emmc install to reinstall the android firmware using the Amlogic USB Burning Tool to unbrick your device. If you have or can find an original android firmware on the internet and you can generally (but not always) recover a bricked box using the Amlogic tool and the original firmware file. Mapping from CPU to uboot and dtb: u-boot-s905 s905 - gxbb u-boot-s905x2-s912 S905X - gxl S905W - gxl S905D - gxl S905L - gxl S805X - gxl S912 - gxm A311D - gxm u-boot-s905x2-s922 S905X2 - g12a S922 - g12b u-boot-s905x3 S905X3 - sm1 Not supported or not tested S805 - S905W2 - S905X4 - S805X2 - s4 A113D - axg A113X - axg Note: Followup posts in this thread should be limited to comments to improve or better understand these instructions. Other issues should be posted as new questions in the Amlogic CPU Boxes sub-forum.

Armbian now has a community supported build target for amlogic TV Boxes (aml-s9xx-box). You can now build your own builds directly with the Armbian build system. This is now an opportunity for members of the community to move the support for amlogic TV boxes forward within the Armbian framework. If you are not familiar with the Armbian build system check out the Armbian developer documentation. If you have idea on how you would like to see things evolve/change please use this forum to share your thoughts and ideas and submit PRs for any code changes you would like to see. I am currently testing this code against the four different amlogic based boxes I own, but would appreciate others testing as well. Once I have completed my testing, I will be updating the FAQ amlogic install instructions with this information.