Posts by chewitt

  • My Old Minix Neo U9-H Can Be Updated?

    There is no driver code in-common between the Legacy image and AMLGX image so there is no value in making comparisons. It's like pointing at a Nissan car and a Ford car and saying .. "they're different" .. because they are.

    I'll add the investigation to my list, but these days Amlogic support is largely a one-man team (and I don't write driver code) so these things take time.

  • Installing on old S905 TV box

    The "reboot update" triggers recovery boot mode causing the SoC to search for boot scripts in the first partition on the SD card. The LE boot scripts are then found, which sets params in the vendor u-boot environment to use LE boot files and if you reach Kodi then everything has worked. To revert to CE you will need to trigger recovery boot mode again. In most cases that's done with the toothpick method, which (with SD card removed) will find their boot scripts and set boot params to use CE boot files. On most boxes (but it depends on what customisation was done in vendor u-boot) both OS are tweaking the same boot params to suit themselves which prevents a simple swap between OS(es) by removing the SD card.

    The ethmactool-config service creates a unique MAC address based on the CPU serial to avoid issues where vendor code sets the same MAC for all boxes (and users have more than one of the same box causing conflicts) or where the MAC was not set in the factory and changes on each boot. As long as you have a static MAC address "systemctl mask ethmactool-config" will disable the service on future boots and stop the message from showing up.

    Not sure about the blue tint, but as long as it doesn't happen on the TV it's not something I'll be interested in chasing. Vendor u-boot does a few weird things.

    NB: If the S805 image is AMLMX .. it is pre-Alpha state and is not even remotely supported.

  • LE10 stuck in bootloop

    Code
    2023-02-05 01:29:18.397 T:1533    ERROR <general>: failed to initialize egl
2023-02-05 01:29:18.397 T:1533  WARNING <general>: Visual 0x21 of the window is not suitable, looking for another one...
2023-02-05 01:29:18.403 T:1533    ERROR <general>: GLX Error: vInfo is NULL!

    No idea what the cause of the problem is, but basically it fails to find an OpenGL surface to render the GUI onto and fails. As LE10 will receive no further fixes/changes now I'd start with a bump to LE11 beta 1 and see if that resolves things?

  • Minix U9-H freeze on kodi loading page / black screen

    The box is clearly booting and SSH is running if the connection is reset (if it wasn't, it would time out). If you remove "quiet" from boot params it will dump text onto the screen. It will scroll fast so the trick is to record a slow-motion vidio on a phone and as long as you have a steady hand you can watch it back slowly to see if you can spot something. Another option is to add "textmode" and it will boot to a local console session (Kodi is not started) and with a USB keyboard connected you can poke around (run "journalctl | paste" and share the URL).

    For kicks, create a new SD card from https://chewitt.libreelec.tv/testing/LibreE…95.1-box.img.gz as there are some minor fixes for things and a newer kernel.

  • How install libreElec in this tvbox?

    You can try booting the Tanix or Beelink 'box' devices on the Allwinner/H6 download page.

    LibreELEC is an appliance-like Linux. There are add-ons for most media-related things that users might want (other than piracy tools) but there is no package manager so you cannot just install things.

    You can experiement with Pulse audio to send audio over the network, but this generally sucks. There is no default/native option in the OS or Kodi to route audio to a UPnP target. Kodi can play from UPnP sources, but not 'cast' media to a UPnP target.

  • FLAC files not showing up?

    There is no "Everything" mode in Picard, and I would caution against trying to stuff lots of files into the "to be scanned" pane. Your files will not always exactly match; requiring you to drag and drop things, which is easiest when there's only the files for a single album there. It will take time to go through and match/cleanup/correct all your albums. However, this is only a task you'll ever need to do once. You can train your children to do it ($free slave labour) although they often lack the obtuse knowledge of your music collection to tag everything right :D

  • Can I Install Libreelec Without Usb And How

    Two comments:

    a) If you can't boot from a USB stick, you might need to pull the drive and connect it to another PC and run the install from USB there; or write the installer image directly to the HDD and then (in the old PC again) interrupt boot and type "run" (direct from install media, which is now the HDD) instead of following the normal "install to target" flow.

    b) LE is small and lightweight which is appealing for older hardware, but we target current and recent HTPC hardware so are often missing the drivers and such needed for old hardware. If you have something so old that it won't boot from a USB stick, a more conventional distro that supports a wider range of hardware might be more appropriate.