Am i doing something wrong?
Yup, everything. Please read this first: https://wiki.libreelec.tv/hardware/amlogic
Am i doing something wrong?
Yup, everything. Please read this first: https://wiki.libreelec.tv/hardware/amlogic
What can I do to get CEC working?
Most x86_64 devices don't support CEC on their HDMI connections, and those that do typically only support Power ON/OFF. IIRC some NUCs support the Pulse8 adapter being added via an internal board header to extend featues. It's quite different to the ARM world where most box and board devices have native CEC capabilities.
LE will support them once the upstream kernels we are based upon support core essentials like HDMI, Ethernet, mesa for GPU, and all the hardware decoders which are almost the same as existing chips (but enough different to need some work). There is quite a lot of activity from some of the professional development shops and Rockchip community sources (including some of our own contributors). All the media folks poking code are people we know (and who know us) so once things start to progress I'm sure we'll start taking a closer interest.
NB: It's probably possible to frankenstein an image today using the downstream vendor kernel and mali blobs etc. That's fine for desktop and industrial focussed distros like Manjaro and Armbian but "all the media stuff needs to work" for LE support and this is always the weakness in downstream kernels. It will be a fairly simple to get the basics for an image, but a large effort to get right, and all that effort will be superseded once upstream support kicks in, and we already have plenty of things to work on with existing RK SoCs .. so best to be patient.
It is interesting that 10.95.1 is downloadable from the official server with a small link edit for a couple days now but it hasn't been announced nor it is added to the official download page.
There's this thing called "real life" .. it gets in the way sometimes
Yes, we have partitioning tools (parted) and text editors (nano) in the OS.
Latest public is 10.95.0 and I have no clue what device-tree file work on your random box. I suggest you read the article I linked.
Boot from an Ubuntu LiveUSB .. It has a GUI and all the tools you need to partition the drive (Gparted) and install Grub. The idea is to use that to set-up the iMac to run LE (only).
You will need to experiment with device-trees a little. Read: https://wiki.libreelec.tv/hardware/amlogic
You only need to update when you need to update. Otherwise "if it works, don't fit it" applies.
As the purpose of the configuration you've applied is clearly download of content from torrent and usenet sources, I'll remind you of the project stance towards piracy and our forum rules. You are welcome to do what you like, but we aren't going to encourage others to follow in your footsteps so I've removed the URL from your post.
I'm doubtful the underlying Android (or legacy LE) firmware can be an influence as (from thebence screenshots) the box is clearly booting into LE which means vendor u-boot is really only responsible for some low-level power functions at that point; the kernel has taken over. And if we reach far enough into userspace boot to see the Kodi boot splash (sometimes.. it's a timing thing) it's most unusual for a virgin Kodi instance to not then reach the home screen. The usual reason for 'hangs' at that point are truncated DB files (rare on first boot, but it happens from time to time) but that's a simple thing to remove (with SSH access). To comment more, I really need to see some logs from a box, not photo's of boot screens as the output there misses a lot of detail.
That said, if you're happy to reflash an original vendor firmware and repeat the install it will eliminate that from suspicion. I've put an updated image here https://chewitt.libreelec.tv/testing/LibreE…95.2-box.img.gz (ignore the version number)
The Apple EFI firmware on older models is woeful in places and finnicky about bootloaders; and what works from USB isn't necessarily what will work from SATA. I'd experiment with installing Ubuntu to the HDD. If that works (and boots from the HDD) then you can boot from the LiveUSB .. erase and partition the drive for LE (512MB for boot=/dev/device and the remainder for disk=/dev/device) then copy the KERNEL and SYSTEM files to the boot partition, install Grub to the drive and setup the bootloader config file.
Create space for the partition and format it as EXT4 (must be a Linux partition type for SSH to work). Note the /dev/sdX device details for it under Linux and then modify boot params in syslinux.cfg to use disk=/dev/sdX .. then reboot. Kodi will start out with a clean install.
I wanted to try if my box boots with an older LE (eg Libreelec 8.2.2.3 as Senior Citizen wrote) but the download link in the forum ([8.2.2.3] LibreELEC 8.2 for S912) is not working. Do you have maybe a link from where i can download it?
There are no archives of those unofficial releases, sorry.
chewitt : Any thoughts? For about the same as the RPi4 4GB I can get the OPI 3LTS and don't have to wait...how do the LE development futures compare?
I don't have one so cannot talk from personal experience, but overall H6 is now well supported as a SoC. RPi4 will always have the advantage of Kodi support being actively, attentively, and directly maintained by RPi Foundation vs. the community led efforts for Allwinner devices; but it's maybe a thin advantage as Allwinner has a strong and active community and one of its major contributors is jernej our maintainer.
On Feb 12 there is a new version released on http://ftp.vim.org/pub/mediaplayer/libreelec/ (10.95.1)
But I don't see it anounced at https://libreelec.tv/
Which changes does it have
I'm not aware that VIM are an official mirror so that's probably something self-built. Official releases are now published and being replicated to official mirrors so release should be in the next 24h.
Changes are here: https://github.com/LibreELEC/Libr….95.0...10.95.1
It's also worthwhile to see if you can use an Ubuntu LiveUSB to boot the box. If yes, the BIOS has no problem with Grub and you could always install Grub to a USB stick and then do a manual install. All our installer does to the target device is install the bootloader, create two GPT partitions; first is 512MB to hold KERNEL/SYSTEM and the bootloader config file, and second is remaining space on the drive. The config file just needs to set (in grub format) the boot= and disk= content (using /dev/device, label or GUID as you like).