[8.90.6] LibreELEC 9.0 Alpha for S905/S912 devices

  • I have been working quite a bit on the problem of Le Potato crashing on huge file copy/write operations (see my earlier posts). What I did:

    • I worked my way into compiling LibreELEC - used the official LebreELEC repo and
      PROJECT=Amlogic DEVICE=LePotato ARCH=arm make image
    • I identified the code parts that correspond to the Armbian patches that the Armbian team claims solved the stability issues (all network driver code)
    • I managed to adopt the code to go into the LibreELEC kernel (which wasn't too difficult after all)

    To no avail :( The crashes still happen. I tried a bit around with a few variations of the code, but I'm afraid my understanding of the depth of network drivers is not sufficient to do more but fumble around. So I've to give up here - my time budget does not allow to learn the intricacies of linux network drivers.

    I also did a DEBUG compile, and read out crash information from the debug UART, but this information is totally inconclusive, the crash practically never happening at the same place - it looks like randomly parts of the OS go down - very confusing and not helpful.

    I'm even no longer sure that it is the amlogic network driver after all: I remebered that in some drawer I had lying around an USB2 Gigabit network adapter (smsc75xx based), which was immediatly recognised and works. But also with this dongle the crash happens, even when I disable the eth0 interface by ifconfig eth0 down. However, my shell script did not involve network directly also, so the picture is inconclusive. And Armbian team confirms that the mentioned two patches (and only these, no other) did the trick for them, and I can confirm that with Armbian the bug is gone.

    Long story short: Can someone tell me how I completely disable the network interface, beyond ifconfig eth0 down? It seems it is not a module, so just blacklisting it does not work. When I really "blocked" the driver, I'll again test with the USB dongle.

    Thanks!

    P.S.: Problem persists in 8.90.5 - but that's expected...

    P.P.S.: If someone wants to follow up: The patches of Armbian go into stmmac_main.c and phy_device.c

    P.P.P.S.: The patches of Armbian address issues with EEE and Autonegotiation functions. Disabling EEE and Auto neg. on the switchport did not solve the issue either, but showed at least one bug in the network driver: The interface went to half duplex, while the switch offered only full duplex. ethtool was needed to change to full duplex. Still, crash happens.

    Edited 2 times, last by Hauke (March 16, 2018 at 8:20 PM).

  • There's a known issue in the used kodi nightly where this occurs.

    It has been identified ans worked on, havent checked status but i am sure it will be fixed in a next build

  • Is this new devel release already based on the new kernel which wrxtasy used in his latest builds? I am asking because the new kernel solves slight noise (even if the movie is beeing paused) which can be mostly seen in bright picture areas.

  • Is this new devel release already based on the new kernel which wrxtasy used in his latest builds? I am asking because the new kernel solves slight noise (even if the movie is beeing paused) which can be mostly seen in bright picture areas.

    I'm not sure which kernel he is using, the latest test release is using the LE kernel as I plan to abandon the legacy kszaq kernel, the release has the same community options as the one by wrxtasy which will allow you turn off noise reduction and deinterlacing from the Kodi settings menu.

  • GDPR-2 you will be interested in these two patches if you are still running the old Linux Kernel:

    this ONE cleans up HDR picture artifacts that some users have with OLED TV's and S905X's (GXL)

    There was an in depth Vero 4K discussion about the S905X AML OLED combo flickering issue....

    HDR Slight flickering (Workaround available) - Vero 4K - OSMC Forums

    That above code is already in the new AML Linux Kernel which I'm using.

    and this ONE is trying to reduce color banding, again for S905X's, and the interesting discussion for that is....

    HDR Banding issue - Vero 4K - OSMC Forums

    You can see the S912's (GXM) have a greater number of bit depth dithering and rounding options.

  • I updated to this latest devel build from the previous one on one of my testrigs. Will give feedback if i find something.

    Wondering what the toggleswitch does in community build extras _under_ 'set colour space' ?

  • can i upgrade from 8.90.5 on internal nand to this devel version? or is it like previous devel wher i need to re-install from sd?

    That depends if your device is using eMMC or NAND, if it is the latter then it is okay. there is no NAND driver in the LE kernel.

    Thanks for this, I have decided to drop the older nougat kernel by kszaq and use this one.

    I updated to this latest devel build from the previous one on one of my testrigs. Will give feedback if i find something.

    Wondering what the toggleswitch does in community build extras _under_ 'set colour space' ?

    This is an advanced option I added so users would no longer need to add commands to autostart.sh to change the colour space.

    GDPR-2, with new devel build (updated to prevous devel) on wetek play2. Wifi works on all drivers, there is connection with tvh but no dvb adapters available.

    It should work as this build is using the latest module by codesnake and the matching LE kernel.

  • That depends if your device is using eMMC or NAND, if it is the latter then it is okay. there is no NAND driver in the LE kernel.

    mine is emmc (i use gxl_p212_1g.dtb) but on reboot it is stuck on logo.. the previous devel version needed to be installed to sd and then install to internal to nand (differnet partition layouts i beleive) installed on SD and works fine.. however i cannot find installtointernal command now!

  • and this ONE is trying to reduce color banding, again for S905X's, and the interesting discussion for that is....

    HDR Banding issue - Vero 4K - OSMC Forums

    You can see the S912's (GXM) have a greater number of bit depth dithering and rounding options.

    Be aware that this change did not yet fix the banding issues on S905. Sam implemented a debug option to set the round parameter manually. Until now this debug option has to bet set everytime after you started playback to avoid banding. Sam is just looking into finding a final solution.

  • mine is emmc (i use gxl_p212_1g.dtb) but on reboot it is stuck on logo.. the previous devel version needed to be installed to sd and then install to internal to nand (differnet partition layouts i beleive) installed on SD and works fine.. however i cannot find installtointernal command now!

    Ah yes I forgot this, the LE kernel has a different partition layout. I removed this command because of the issues it causes, you can add the script manually but this is something that I will no longer provide support for.