CoreELEC 19 Matrix Discussion (Kodi RC)

Thanks @Shoog
Shall I then, to make it compatible, first reinstall official CE 9.2.5 to eMMC with ceemmc when booted from uSD? Or, maybe, just put CoreELEC-Amlogic-ng.arm-9.2.5.tar and vim3l dtb.img in ~/.update/ and reboot?

You need to restore complete Android before install CE new. A update by tar alone is not enough.

There are some krescue images out there what maybe support it. But in general it’s not supported and your test showed it’s not compatible.

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FYI:

The service addon OpenVFD is now available again in the CoreELEC nightly repo!

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Hi, i use dual boot version of stable CE 9.2.5 and Android on Ugoos X2 Cube. Both on eMMC. I know its recommended to do fresh install on external media. But i would like to try and risk installing CE Matrix. How technically make fresh install of CE having two partitions on eMMC?

With ceemmc you can remove CE from emmc, boot from uSD card with CE Matrix and reuse ceemmc.
Or you can just directly update to Matrix with your current installation. It’s not the supported way but i can tell you that I did it 2 days ago on one of my devices and everything went well.

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You need to restore complete Android before install CE new

Thanks once more @Portisch for kind and patient help.

Let me first mention: I am rather familiar with AML, CE and VIM, and
I could always recover from Krescue and Kodi backup. So I feel
confident experimenting. I tried the following today, and, somewhat
unfortunately, I did not reach goal. The trajectory may interest Khadas
VIM3L (HTPC kit) owners.

I have two questions:

(a) why would ceemmc have failed in step 3. below ?
(b) can someone provide or suggest an Android image to flash ?

I will also ask on Khadas VIM3L forum

start:
from ‘incompatible’ day-1 CoreELEC 9.2.5 (official) in eMMC on Khadas
VIM3L (sold as “HTPC kit”)

goal:
end up with compatible CoreELEC 9.2.5 (official) in eMMC on that
Khadas VIM3L (such being required for trying out CoreELEC 19 Matrix
Beta 2 (Development Release), which is the next goal)

  1. flash VIM3L-Android-Pie_V201113.fixed.raw.img.xz with Krescue

this Android installed and booted just fine!

  1. make SD from CoreELEC-Amlogic-ng.arm-9.2.5-Generic.img and boot
    CoreELEC 9.2.5 (official) that SD

it succeeded and it has the /flash/dtb.img (on SD where I had put
it)!

  1. run ‘ceemmc’ (without and with -x), unfortunately: it failed

CoreELEC:~ # ceemmc

Starting CoreELEC eMMC installation tool…

eMMC size: 0x0003a3e00000 [16GB]

No CoreELEC installation found on eMMC

Install in dual boot mode, CoreELEC and Android on eMMC
Use CoreELEC data from
[1] current used SD or USB device
[2] existing backup on current used SD or USB device

Install in single boot mode, only CoreELEC on eMMC
Use CoreELEC data from
[3] current used SD or USB device
[4] existing backup on current used SD or USB device

Please choose one option? [1/2/3/4]: 3

Free space of ‘partition CE_FLASH’: 512MB
Warning: Could not find ‘dto’ partition!
Free space of ‘partition CE_STORAGE’: 14298MB

Used space of ‘/flash’: 222MB
Used space of ‘/storage’: 3MB

There is enough free space on eMMC for installation!

Install CoreELEC on eMMC.
Continue? [y]: y
Error dtb magic: !
Could not remove node ‘/partitions’ from dtb0!
Failed to write the new partition table to eMMC!

hmmm, then maybe try another, alternative, method

next attempt:

flash latest VIM3L_Pie_V201113.7z either from ‘Burning Card’ or using
‘USB Burning Tool’ on Linux

  1. creating a VIM3L Burning Card, I could not readily do because no
    SD u-boot file present in
    dl.khadas.com - Index of /firmware/vim3l/uboot/
    I could have considered building VIM3L u-boot, but

  2. one can use USB Burning Tool instead
    This was a bit scary since:

aml-burn-tool -b VIM3L -i update.img
ERROR: Unsupported board: [VIM3L]

so, nevertheless, I tried (it proposed (VIM1|VIM2|VIM3))
aml-burn-tool -b VIM3 -i update.img
which succeeded!

this Android installed and booted just fine!

  1. But now. unlike with previous Android image, I could no longer
    boot CoreELEC 9.2.5 from SD card, in fact: VIM3L upgrade method
    booted into Android recovery instead.

  2. Luckily, upgrade method with Krescue SD card still succeeded and I
    could restore original ‘incompatible’ day-1 CoreELEC 9.2.5
    (official) backup to eMMC.

  3. restore Kodi

done: back where I started :slight_smile:

last question:

I can now again boot CoreELEC 9.2.5 from SD card, but, I guess I
should not attempt to run ‘ceemmc’ having the Khadas CE in eMMC,
right?

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Please go to Khadas forum and request support how to flash a Android image to the eMMC.

When this is done you can request support again how to install CE, thank you.

The image “official” does not mean official support by Team CoreELEC. We do not support krescue images and we do not have control over what Khadas flash on eMMC to sell the device as HTPC kit.

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Thank You! :slight_smile:

P.S.
In settings is possibility to add unofficial channel for updating. Which adress i could use to do manual update to Matrix?

Please go to Khadas forum and request support how to flash a Android image to the eMMC.

Done.
Thanks once more for kind and patient and expert help.
FYI here is thread in case someone is interested

You can just download the .tar image of latest CE19 nightly, put it in .update folder and reboot.

OK. Thank You.

I updated. For now all working fine. As i didnt use any fancy addons i dont see problems. But i noticed a few default addons (i suppose) are deactivated. Should i remove them or just wait for updates?

You can just let them be for the moment and decide in a case by case while detecting some problem while normal using CE. There are some add-ons, like Netflix or Prime that need the new Matrix repos.

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12 posts were split to a new topic: Ce-19 Matrix torrent

Could I flag up that the Busy Box Keyboard selection in the CoreELEC options needs to display the “long names” for the keyboard types i.e. country, region etc, rather than the short codes its displaying at the moment

No, it uses the original names from the keymap structure:

If you want to change it you might try your luck at LibreELEC: https://github.com/LibreELEC/service.libreelec.settings

So far so good.
My box its S905X2: Ugoos X2 Cube. Installed dual boot Android and CE Matrix on eMMC.
80% of time working as transport for LAN music/movie sources in CE.
20% of time working with HBO GO/Prime/Tidal on Android.

In plus:
Music scrapers working much much much better. Now its usable. I dont know its bauce of new Generic scraper or because of pythion 3.

In minus:
I use my TV remote with CEC which is working well.
As i choose shut down command in menu power box hibarnates/suspends. So i cannot shut it down. Of course i cannot wake box up. In ANY of versions of CE (from 9.2.1 stable and nightlies) i couldnt wake up box in CE. Cannot connect ssh or trying WOL.

I cannot turn on BL301. Shows me Error 251. Below inject and update logs.

inject_bl301.zip (2.1 KB)

So after update to eMMC all working very well. With these exceptions. Good job! :slight_smile:

Did not find Amlogic image header magic! Error - exit!
Your bootloader is encrypted, no way to inject bl301, no way to solve your wake up issue by CE.
Contact your vendor to provide a fix, thank you.

Thank You for answer! :slight_smile: I feedback to vendor. :slight_smile:

EDIT.
@Portisch
But what about that unabling to turn off using Shutdown command in Power section?

Why you think your device do suspend instead power off? When you have it correctly adjusted at the CEC settings it works as it should.

Kodi Matrix works great with Mecool KI Pro. Everything but WiFi was tested and Matrix works as good or better than Kodi Leia.

I was wondering, is there anywhere I can check out the source code for CoreELEC Matrix versions? It looks like GitHub doesn’t contain any matrix branches? I am trying to debug some of my own code and I’d like to see what has changed from Amlogic to Amlogic-ng update (also Leia to Matrix changes).

Thank you for great work!