Hello all and I apologise for the rather long subject title there. A bit of a mouthful :-)

 

I can understand how to create a .dts/.dtb file from an already running existing linux system on an arm based device. But what about if there is no linux image to run on it? Is it possible to take the device tree from an android device and then turn that into a .dts/.dtb file? Also am I correct in saying that pretty much the first thing that would be needed to boot any sort of linux on an arm device like this (R69 box) is a working .dts/.dtb file so it can boot?

Case in point is my old R69 TV box. It always was and remains problematic in booting old thread but was picky with micro sd cards. Unfortunatly some of those micro sd cards in that old thread no longer work and I've not been able to boot using (as I tried in the old thread) the beelink x2 armbian image either.

 

I did manage to copy off the files from /sys/firmware/devicetree under android from the R69 box. The problem is that the command to create .dts/.dtb files (dtc) uses 1 file not lots of files to work. I also could not find any .dtb/.dts files on that R69 box. 

 

I can attach the files I copied here is anyone wants them.

 

ljones

If it's a TV box, you might get better results in the TV box forum.

 

But some systems have the DTB embedded in the kernel image. If you can get to a shell, you can dump it from a running system sorta like:

 

dtc -I fs -o devicetree.dts /sys/firmware/devicetree/base

 

Keep in mind that there are periodic changes to the DT format over time, and some vendors put in nonstandard hacks. Keeping these DTB files current is a major issue for Armbian devs. If it's for an unsupported box, it'll almost certainly require changes for everything to work properly.