Armbian + KODI (Ubuntu\Debian) for SD & USB & eMMC

balbes150 · January 10, 2019, 11:47am

The new version 5.68 20190110.
Updated kernel to 4.19.13.

balbes150 · January 10, 2019, 2:38pm

New image Armbian 5.68 20190110 5.0.0 (NEXT)
The version with kernel 5 works only when launched from USB media.

balbes150 · January 14, 2019, 1:39pm

Update the NEXT 5.71 kernel 5.0.0 20190114 image . Fixed working with SD card.

balbes150 · January 18, 2019, 1:56pm

The new version 5.71 20190118.
Updated kernel to 4.20.2.

balbes150 · January 18, 2019, 7:17pm

Good news

Update version NEXT kernel 5.0.0-rc2 20190118.

Khadas VIM1 Pro has WiFi And BT without any patches.

balbes150 · February 12, 2019, 4:38pm

Update image 5.75

How to start the system from HW to VIM1 S905X.
Run the latest Armbian image from external media.
Download of media the script.

Unpack and run.
Select the components you want to install.
Wait for the installation to finish.

Copy the contents of the “/boot” directory to a new location (for example, to the "/root"user directory).

Fix references to the libMali library in the “/usr/lib/aarch64-linux-gnu” directory (in the process of the script, these references can not be created, because in their place are other files\links). I do it through MC, copy right from DEB package the necessary links with forced replacement.

Reboot the system.

Copy from the previously saved directory “/boot” to the current directory “/boot” (with replacement) - uInitrd , and the uImage file.
Copy with replacement all files from the directory “/usr/lib/linux-image-next-meson64/amlogic” in the directory “/boot/dtb”.

Download and replace media script s905_autoscript this.

Reboot the system.

Run the command “depmod -a” as user ROOT and reboot the system again (or load the mali module manually).

After these steps, I have earned HW in MPV for full screen video and in the browser began to work without brakes video in full screen from YouTube in resolution 1080.

Tommy21 · February 12, 2019, 4:57pm

@balbes150, i’ve been trying to run this script, but i get errors, you can see the log on the forum topic.

I’ve been trying to manually install deb packages in this script, mali and kernel, it finishes installing it, but the system stays the same, it does not revert to 4.19.20.

Yes, finally, i’ve tried it with Midnight commander, it is now installing without any errors, thank you!

Tommy21 · February 12, 2019, 6:48pm

@balbes150, I’ve been following your instructions, i obviously did something wrong, but i can’t figure out what.

Mpv works in fullscreen, chromium is giving me errors when trying to play youtube, i have lost sound, glmark2-es2 says gl renderer is mali 450, overall experience looks very smooth.

About Chromium, which one plays fullscreen yt videos, i should probably pick streaming option, is that the main difference between regular and streaming?

Maybe you can make a small tutorial video on your yandex page?

kkkkk · February 12, 2019, 10:29pm

Yesterday after several months of not touching my systems I’ve decided to update and found out there was no 5.75 for S912. And today you’ve uploaded it! Thank you! I have 2 questions:

I need to repartition eMMC to several partitions, part of them read-only. Is it possible to achieve this by simply using ddbr and recover from Armbian_5.75_Aml-s912_Ubuntu_bionic_default_4.20.5_20190211.img and then as normal - fdisk it and resize?
Is Armbian_5.73_Aml-s912_Ubuntu_bionic_next_5.0.0-rc4-next-20190130-g02495e76d-dirty.img worth trying instead of 4.x? Because I have some kernel-based troubles with 4.x and usb. I don’t need graphics, only network usb and wifi.

balbes150 · February 13, 2019, 6:47am

I don’t install Chrome from the media-the script (I am using standard version of Chrome 64 bit)

Replace the dtb files in the “/boot/dtb” directory with the new ones (there should be no “/boot/dtb/amlogic” directory).

After restoring the archive from DDBR you will get exactly the system that was at the time of the copy creation. If you already have Armbian installed and configured on the eMMC, you only need to install the new kernel and other components using DEB packages. To update shared packages from online repositories, use the regular system update command (apt upgrade).
Start any system from external media and check what works and how.

Tommy21 · February 13, 2019, 1:50pm

@balbes150, i have (tried) to do everything as you said, but clearly i made some mistake, because i can’t get the sound to work, but i don’t know what.

balbes150 · February 13, 2019, 2:24pm

Build together a new image specifically designed to work with MALI.

https://yadi.sk/d/EMIimofTEEWWVQ

Order of use. To perform the initial startup Armbian as usual. After checking the system.

Download a specially created version of the media script.

https://yadi.sk/d/aauaSZro-zNVgQ

Unpack.
Log in to the resulting directory and run the media script as ROOT.
After the script is finished.
Be sure to reboot the system with the new kernel.
Check and fix references to libMali libraries as described in the previous post.
Run commands as ROOT.

depmod
modprobe mali

To check the operation of the MPV with the regime of HW.
If the sound doesn’t work. Run the command as ROOT

update-initramfs -v -c -k uname -r

and reboot the system.

Tommy21 · February 13, 2019, 3:28pm

@balbes150 illegal option -r when running command update-initramfs -v -c -k uname -r

balbes150 · February 13, 2019, 4:05pm

See the description of this command on the Internet. Special characters are not displayed here.

kkkkk · February 13, 2019, 5:23pm

ok so I copied Armbian_5.73_Aml-s912_Ubuntu_bionic_next_5.0.0-rc4-next-20190130-g02495e76d-dirty.img file to SD card and renamed it to Khadas-emmc.img
Booted to VIM2 from another armbian on SD

mount /dev/sda1 /ddbr

and ran ddbr restore as I said before.
And no magic happened - system doesn’t boot anymore.

Can you please tell me - how to get fdisk partitioned system on eMMC?

balbes150 · February 13, 2019, 7:01pm

Why would you do that ? You violated every instruction. You recorded the image from Sd card to eMMC. Where did you see such a recommendation ? Utility DDBR is intended solely for the backup with the eMMC and then restoring from the backup.

Recovery via M-register. If you are going to create your own partitions, then from the beginning correctly install the system in eMMC with the transition to u-boot-2018 (Strictly according to the instructions in this topic). You check that the system normally started from eMMC. After that, start the system from the SD card and carefully (using GPARTED) redistribute the partitions created during the installation (reduce the last partition and create your new additional ones).

numbqq · February 14, 2019, 6:53am

Hello @balbes150,

Why you need to revet the kernel to 4.19 ? Does 4.20 have some issues with mali?

balbes150 · February 14, 2019, 7:13am

This version of Mali only works with kernel 4.19 (and with certain patches for this kernel).

balbes150 · February 14, 2019, 8:25am

New version

numbqq · February 14, 2019, 8:56am

Hello Oleg,

Could you please send me the 4.19.21 kernel deb packages for testing ?

Thanks.