Cannot boot on MINIX NEO U9-H

Hi there,
Just found CoreELEC, so first post here :grinning:

I have been using LiberaELEC on my MINIX NEO U9-H for couple of yrs. now and decided to upgrade to CoreELEC 9.0.1 this evening. Did a fresh installtion on a 4 gig card, copied and renamed gxm_q200_2g_minix_neo_u9 as dtb.img (as per the instruction) but cannot boot. The CoreELEC logo comes up and it stops, saying:

* Error in prepare_systemroot: mount_common: Cold not mount /dev/SYSTEM ***
| Starting debbuging shell for boot step: prepare _sysroot... type exit to quit ### 

If I type exit it goes to next error etc. What am I missing? Anyone can put me in the right direction for fixing this pls? Thaks in advance!!

-San

Did you copy the DTB from the device_trees folder in the root of the SD card or did you download it? If you didn’t use the DTB from the SD card, then you should do that first. But if you did, it probably means that something didn’t go well with the SD burning process.
I suggest to try and burn again, try it using Rufus. If that doesn’t work, then try a different SD card, this one may be bad.

Thanks for getting back, @TheCoolest!!
the DTB was copied from device_trees as per the installation guide. It’s a Windows-free household, hence couldn’t use Rufus but I used LibreELEC.USB-SD.Creator to burn it, with no visibile error at all. The SD card in question works just fine if I burn it with LibreELEC. I’m trying to get a Windows VM now to see if the Rufus is an intregal part of the process. I’ll report back here soon.

-S

I’m sure that there are better ways of creating a SD card on a *nix OS than setting up a Windows VM, just have to wait for someone who can suggest what to try next. Rufus is a recommended tool for Windows as it’s easy to use, and proven to work. It’s not part of Windows itself.
My suggestion would be to try a USB stick, if you have an unused one.

On linux here and I use etcher to flash my sdcards/emmc. Available on Windows and Mac too.

Do you mean actually mean USB stick? Not sure if Neo U9 can be boot off USB stick but will give it a try.

Thaks for that - trying out that now :slight_smile:

I use Etcher and also LE SD Creator - both work equally well.
I have also use the ‘dd’ command after extracting the .img.

Something other than the app used would seem to be the problem.

Did you check the download before burning it? … md5sum or sha?

I didn’t before but did now:

MD5 (CoreELEC-Amlogic.arm-9.0.1-Generic.img.gz) = 00ba14c183209ddc47facce14fab7399
MD5 (CoreELEC-Amlogic.arm-9.0.1-Generic.img)    = 4916db0eea726e302ce5a052bac22eb3

One of the issues with OS X (14.04.x) now is difficult to get a FAT32 formatted card but LE SD Creator did the job nicely. Do the download looks okay?

-San

I get the same md5sum numbers here, so all looks OK with the downloads.

it appeared to be the SD card issue - the 3rd one eventually booted into. Remote doesn’t work though out-of-the-box but that’s a diffrent issue altogether, I believe.
Thanks all for all help!!

Add this command via SSH:

echo “meson-ir * minix_neo” > /storage/.config/rc_maps.cfg
reboot or use remote.conf from Android.

yeah, thanks!
I use Harmony Elite and had the remote.conf from the LE, so managed to get it started. The Music and Video library all sync’d up from the mySQL server – things are running okay so far. Just one thing, on LE, I had to use this in my autostart.sh:

(
echo 1 > /sys/module/di/parameters/bypass_all

# Color settings
echo '444,10bit' > /sys/class/amhdmitx/amhdmitx0/attr

# GPU over clock
echo 2 > /sys/class/mpgpu/scale_mode
echo 'performance' > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu4/cpufreq/scaling_governor
)&

Is it still required for CE?

Any reason you’re forcing attr and bypass_all?
bypass_all shouldn’t be necessary for a S912 and attr is handled automatically, depending on content, resolution and refresh rate.

I think a version of LE required to do that to avoid jerky playback. Also, 10bit playback needs to be enforced, I think, on U9-H? I’ll remove those and see what happnes.

-S

444 10 bit is the main setting, if you want to change to 422 or 8 bit, just go to Settings/CoreELEC there is a few options like “force 422 or 8bit”, GPU overclock is there too. No need those settings in autostart.sh

:+1:
Found the 8-bit, GPU overclocking etc. in CoreELEC last night. My autostart.sh is now removed.