Boot images from external medias like SD card and U-Disk

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1

There are many images running on SD card or U-Disk,for example, LibreELEC,Armbian images and Khadas SD images.This tutorial is about how to boot these images.

In order to boot images from exernal medias you must make sure:

  • Android running on EMMC
  • Activate the multi-boot

For different images you need different Android version.

  • LibreELEC, Ubuntu with linux 3.14 you need Android M or latest Android N(V180207 or later) running on EMMC.
  • Ubuntu with linux 4.9 need Android O running on EMMC.

1. Write image to SD card or U-Disk

  • Use dd on Ubuntu command line
$ sudo dd if=/path/to/image of=/dev/sdX bs=8M

2. Prepare dtb

You need to choose different dtb for VIM and VIM2.

  • VIM: Copy kvim.dtb or kvim_linux.dtb to /boot and rename it to dtb.img.
  • VIM2: Copy kvim2.dtb or kvim2_linux.dtb to /boot and rename it to dtb.img.

3. Activate the multi-boot

Two ways to activate the multi-boot:
1). Via Keys mode
2). Activate multi-boot via Android.

  • Enter Settings>About Device->System->updates
  • Click select and choose aml_autosript.zip
  • Click update, then the system will reboot and boot to external media image

NOTICE

  • For previous Android N has permission issue, you can’t use it to boot your external media image, or your booting card will be broken.

  • For Android O also has permission issue. If you want to boot Ubuntu with linux 4.9 please refer to this reply.

2

Links Keys mode is broken!

For VIM1/2:

Keys Mode(U-Boot is running)
Power on VIM1/2.
Long press Power key without release
Short press ‘Reset’ key and release
Count 10 seconds and release the ‘Power’ key to enter into upgrade mode

3

Fixed. Thanks for your feedback.

4

VIM2 дальше анимации не идет. Обновить ни через SD - карту или через кабель USB-C не получается, т.к. VIM2 не определяется через кабель USB-C а обновления через SD не идет никак.

5

Смотрите в документации инфу про m-registr и используйте его для запуска прошивки через кабель USB.