Gentoo for Amlogic S9xx (TV box S905\S905X\S912)

balbes150 · n00b Joined: 03 Dec 2016 Posts: 10

For those who want to use a TV set-top box platform Amlogic S905 S905X (aarch64 ARMv8), there is a working system image. This way, you can run from external media (the regular system in the internal memory remains unchanged and can be used without restrictions). To use, unpack the archive, burn it to a carrier to activate the multi-boot (using toothpicks or via the regular application Update&Backup). The user "user" password "1". The root password is "1234". Image assembled based on the instructions.

http://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=138&t=21675

http://freaktab.com/forum/tv-player-support/amlogic-based-tv-players/s905/tronsmart-ac/firmware-roms-tools-at/565449-running-linux-from-sd-card-or-usb-flash-drive-using-balbes150-method-and-files?p=611203#post611203

Details activate the multi-boot can be found in this thread.

http://freaktab.com/forum/tv-player-support/amlogic-based-tv-players/s905/tronsmart-ac/firmware-roms-tools-at/565449-running-linux-from-sd-card-or-usb-flash-drive-using-balbes150-method-and-files

add 2017.01.31

New and more correct version of the Gentoo image. This version was originally collected with the support of the features of Gentoo.
The author of the Assembly mDup

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8024022.html#8024022

mDup · Apprentice Joined: 14 Apr 2006 Posts: 212

The_Pope · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 03 Jul 2016 Posts: 111

Is there an uboot update for the M8S Pro box? Can I use one of the existing ones?
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balbes150 · n00b Joined: 03 Dec 2016 Posts: 10

The_Pope · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 03 Jul 2016 Posts: 111

Apparently it's an Amlogic S812, which I understand is Cortex A9, therefore ARM v7, thus 32-bit. This topic is about the S9xx, which I understand are Cortex A53, which is 64-bit. I don't want to confiscate the topic, but I would be nice to understand how in the world to create a U-boot for any of these boxes once you know what chip is inside.

EDIT: Amazon link.
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balbes150 · n00b Joined: 03 Dec 2016 Posts: 10

The_Pope · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 03 Jul 2016 Posts: 111

The_Pope · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 03 Jul 2016 Posts: 111

balbes150 · n00b Joined: 03 Dec 2016 Posts: 10

Yes, multiboot is already up and running with LE. In this topic, you can learn more.

https://forum.libreelec.tv/thread-1506.html

By the way, LE can be used for some experiments with the kernel. There are no package managers, but you can LE add binary files (git, make etc) and to use this system to reassemble the desired items.

The_Pope · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 03 Jul 2016 Posts: 111

Yeah, I'm not interested in LibreElec. I want to try and build a full Gentoo desktop. I need to play media files with mplayer sporting the aa renderer, or the caca renderer. I need to display Windows screensavers, I remember reading that there is a way, with qemu. And so on. Just running Kodi with some distro behind isn't enough.

If this fails, I think I can get an S905 to try it on.
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erm67 · l33t Joined: 01 Nov 2005 Posts: 653 Location: EU

I am running gentoo on a S905 box, I used a slightly different (and hackerish) method:
I had libreelec installed on nand (with installtointernal), and the bootloader patched with balbes150 scrit (thanks) the internal eMMC is partitioned in the dtb and libreelec uses 1GB for the sysem + some space for the kernel and the rest for data. After boot the partitions are available as /dev/boot /dev/system /dev/data, I decided this partitioning scheme was good for me, and I was too lazy to build a new dtp wih a different partitioning scheme.
There is support for the board (without graphics) in the 4.9 kernel but I decided that the libreelec kernel was also good for me so I used abootimg to extract the kernel image from libreelec's kernel.img, modified the init scrit in the initrd so that it mounted the /dev/data partition and switched_root starting /etc/init, rebuilt the kernel.img (Android) boot image and installed a stage 3 gentoo on the /dev/data partition using chroot. I am using the /dev/system partition for swap.
It is working great so far, apart the oldish kernel ... I'd like to try the nel mainline kernel from linux-meson but I had no time to try, I use it mostly as a mail and web server, maybe some recent FS drivers would be good but I am not using btrfs so it can wait.
There aren't many risks (I think) since balbes150 bootloader boots from the sd card first and than from the internal eMMC,it makes a great home server for 25$, emerge is incredibly fast, 4 CPU@1.6Ghz

My make.conf:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2017 5:07 pm Post subject:

erm67,

erm67 · l33t Joined: 01 Nov 2005 Posts: 653 Location: EU

balbes150 · n00b Joined: 03 Dec 2016 Posts: 10

erm67 · l33t Joined: 01 Nov 2005 Posts: 653 Location: EU

Unfortunately gentoo arm64 is not really usable since it is not really a supported architecture, other non x86(_64)? boards are having the same problems, just read other posts this forum. To be honest gentoo never really worked on anything but x86 and amd64, now thing improved a bit with the autounmask feature of portage but it is not perfect ... since it is not intended to deal with the fundamental problem of arm64, lack of keywording. In other words nobody adds the ~arm64 or arm64 keyword to the ebuilds and portage doesn't know what to build. autounmask will usually unmask the highest development ebuild, often a -9999 (git/svn) and that is often not the best choice since it is really unstable in all senses

. beside that there are still unsolved issues with autounmask, perl for example still requires manual unmasking.
In fact autounmask is intended to be used by users of amd64 or x86 that wants to unmask only some ~amd64 or ~x86 ebuilds and not to deal with unmaintained keywords.
The only solution to have a decent system comparable to ~amd64 is to manually edit the ebuild that has a amd64 or ~amd64 keyword and add a ~arm64 or arm64 keyword (I did for ffmpeg, mariadb, php), most packages that compiles and work on amd64 builds and works on arm64 without any special treatment using a recent compiler like gcc-6 (apart opcache), the problem is that keywording ebuilds is a tedious work that nobody does, and honestly given that almost everything just compiles and works, beside being tediuos is also useless and stupid, it would be a lot better blacklist ebuild that doesn't work on an arch than whitelist thousands of ebuild manually to catch the few that doesn't.
I think I will try a script that walks through portage and replaces amd64 with arm64 later today, just to see what happens. Automaically turn a amd64 ebuild into a arm64 ebuild has very likely the same chance of sucess of compiling a arm ebuild on a arm5t or on a arm7h CPU and both architecture share the same arm keyword for portage .....

That said my little S905 box is incredibly fast using the internal eMMC, I succesfully emerge -e world my system with apache php tvheadend mariadb ffmpeg transmission overnight, if I have to manually edit the ebuils that I intend to emerge it will take onsiderably more, probably too long. The problem is that it took just a few minutes to install archlinuxarm, and it works almost perfectly with balbes150 kernel. also archlinux's aur has the same lack of keywording problem but it can be automatically solved with customizepkg (add#arch#aarch64) .....
There should be a similar tool for portage that automatically adds keywords based on othe keywords, i.e. if (keyword(amd64)==true) add_keyword (arm64);
tvheadend on this board is able to convert to mpeg4 and stream full size SD DVB broadcasts... and the CpU usage isn't even 100%
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mDup · Apprentice Joined: 14 Apr 2006 Posts: 212

Starting from balbes150's system, with some keyword hacking ("* ~*") and adjusting arch/arm64/use.mask one can natively build and run kernel + gentoo arm64 for amlogic s905x just fine. I now have a bleeding edge lightweight desktop running LxQt + some Qt5 and Gtk+3 applications. Xorg is fb based. I did not yet successfully build bigger packages such as firefox and libreoffice. But most other software I need, I could build (vlc, mplayer, imagemagick, wireshark, ... and more). I also hacked gcc and glibc ebuilds to be 6.3.0 and 2.24 respectively. I can provide some n00b images for now without much support...

erm67 · l33t Joined: 01 Nov 2005 Posts: 653 Location: EU

I forgot to post it but did some tests with gcc-6 and
"-march=native -mcpu=native"
produces exactly the same binaries as:
"-march=armv8-a+crc+fp+simd -mabi=lp64 -mcpu=cortex-a53+crc+fp+simd"

binaries produced using only -march=native or -mcpu=native differs, I have not done any speed test.

@mDup did you manage to unmask the neon use flag? The CPU supports it (+simd), I think it might be useful

@balbes150 the kernel sources from your git repo are probably patched to be cross-compiled, it would be nice to have a kernel tree able to compile natively ...

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2017 1:36 pm Post subject:

erm67,

As you say, arm64 is a bit like the wild west. There as a stable @system, then you are on your own.

Very little is even keyworded ~arm64 and raw autounmask is not your friend either, you need to fix all the version numbers to be <9999.
A few need more careful masking. Xfrc4, libreoffice, firefox and icedtea all work. Thunderbird builds but segfaults on launch.

arm64 is a long way from stable but if you want to learn in the Gentoo wild west, adding ~arm64 keywords is a way to do just that.
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Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

mDup · Apprentice Joined: 14 Apr 2006 Posts: 212

mDup · Apprentice Joined: 14 Apr 2006 Posts: 212

erm67 · l33t Joined: 01 Nov 2005 Posts: 653 Location: EU

mDup · Apprentice Joined: 14 Apr 2006 Posts: 212

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2017 3:20 pm Post subject:

erm67,

How does neon fit into arm64, neon being a 32 bit FPU extension?
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Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

erm67 · l33t Joined: 01 Nov 2005 Posts: 653 Location: EU

mDup · Apprentice Joined: 14 Apr 2006 Posts: 212