Bricked Wetek Hub ... now what

    chewitt

    Question: Is there any valid reason why the stock bootloader must be replaced for the LE11+ image?

    I'm only asking this because it seems that the box image can run from an SD card under the factory bootloader without any problems, so I see this as an unnecessarily dangerous thing.

    This is exactly why I don't dare to use emmctool, because at the moment it doesn't seem like any kind of "disaster recovery" would work for WP2 and the Hub. One thing is certain, that the number of problematic cases is much more than zero. Knowing this, I consider it a bit risky to release not sufficiently tested images that overwrite the factory bootloader.

    Quote from dtech

    thegooddoctor

    https://libreelec.dtech.hu/misc/wetek-unb…Hub_Restore.zip

    ^ Download this file, unpack its contents and follow the instructions in README.TXT.

    Thank you for this my fellow Hungarian :)

    Unfortunately I can't boot from SD card on my "half-bricked" Wetek HUB, for whatever reason its not detecting/seeing the SD card whether I keep pressing the reset button on the bottom during power on or not.

    I have UART connected so I see the boot process and if I enter "boot" it will boot from emmc.

    My question would be is there any way (like a command in uboot or in LE) to make the box boot from SD next time? Or to write this "recovery" image of yours from emmc?

    Thank you in advance! :)

    You cannot write (dd) anything from the u-boot console. Even if you could, you would fail writing to emmc since that's what the device has booted u-boot from (at some point you overwrite the code you're running). The board should boot from USB in addition to SD though; although you might need to manually start USB from the usb console before manually running bootscript commands.

    Quote from AiRLAC

    Thank you for this my fellow Hungarian :)

    Halihó! ;)

    The essence of the factory recovery method would be that after pressing the reset button, although the internal uboot starts, if it is not damaged. After that, instead of the kernel it calls the recovery.img from the SD card and then from the USB, finally from the eMMC. (Obviously, it boots what it finds first from the previous sequence.)

    It seems that this is either not implemented in upstream uboot for some reason, or maybe some condition is not met, IDK... :/

    There might be a workaround, please rename the recovery.img file on the "unbrick" SD card to KERNEL and try booting it again.

    Quote from chewitt
    Code
    GXBB:BL1:08dafd:0a8993;FEAT:EDFD718C;POC:3;RCY:0;EMMC:0;READ:0;CHK:F3;SD:800;USB:8;LOOP:1

    ^ This is good, it means eMMC is fully erased (and the board is not bricked, it's simply missing software). You can now boot the board from an SD card .. as long as the SD card has a working u-boot in the correct places. The LE "hub" board image has everything needed although the catch22 will be that you're likely to hit the same problem with serial UART noise. Perhaps try writing the factory image backup written to SD and see if that's found (it might not be since it's an eMMC backup and S905 puts magic boot headers in different offsets for eMMC and SD) but even if it fails at booting into Android it might get you to a recovery console or perhaps the vendor u-boot console.

    I made a mistake and tried to upload Armbian to the internal memory. I don't see anything on TV at the moment. The uart connection reports a similar header as in this post.

    I have prepared a recovery card but the box can't read it.

    Edited 2 times, last by krisux (May 21, 2024 at 1:51 PM).

    • Best Answer
    Quote from krisux

    I made a mistake and tried to upload Armbian to the internal memory. I don't see anything on TV at the moment. The uart connection reports a similar header as in this post.

    You have erased (overwritten) u-boot on the internal storage. Android recovery files won't work as there is no u-boot to provide the recovery app, and imaging recovery.img to an SD card won't work as it contains u-boot for emmc, not u-boot for SD/USB.

    Create a USB or SD from https://test.libreelec.tv/12.0/Amlogic/w…etek-hub.img.gz and see if the device boots to LE?

    If yes, download this backup-file and transfer it to /storage over SSH, then run "emmctool w /storage/backup-hub.tar.gz" and it will expand and restore a raw emmc (dd) backup of the original Android OS to the box. You should then be able to boot the LE12 "box" image .. or have another go at ruining things with Armbian, as you like.

    If the device boots but gets stuck at u-boot, you found the issue that resulted in "wetek-hub" (booting upstream u-boot) images being discontinued. The box sees noise on the UART and boots to console. If you have the UART connected you should be able to access the console and run the commands in here: https://github.com/LibreELEC/Libr…_autoscript.src (or one of the other bootscripts in that folder) to boot into LE. If using a USB stick you might need to run "usb start" first.

    It worked. My terminal was set incorrectly and it did not respond to the boot command.

    I copied the image via smb and uploaded it via emmctool.

    Thank u!

    Edited once, last by krisux (May 22, 2024 at 8:27 AM).