H7S MultiBoot "How To" - Discussion thread

There are 72 replies in this Thread which was already clicked 19,906 times. The last Post () by urie.

    Forget about the obsolete OpenPLi. Just continue installing...


    You already have

    ViX and

    PurE2?


    Then, try adding

    OpenATV and

    OpenSPA

    to the last 2 partitions you already have.


    I would, however, point out that our images are properly done in terms of partitioning, so maybe it would be best to start with ours in 1 and then 3 more...


    Good luck!

    "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another. The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding!"


    http://www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/CCREAD/etscc/kant.html

    Foxyboy, the Zgemma H7 box is ideal for anyone having enigma2 as a hobby rather than just for watching tv.

    I have been experimenting with and testing images since 2003 first in enigma and then progressing to enigma2.

    The four boot options are great in that you can have 2 or 3 semi-permanent images and have the 4th boot sector to test out other images as they come along without upsetting your permanent images.

    I have OpenATV, Pure2, OpenVIX and Pli running at present. All images are running very well. They are all running so well that I am having difficulty deciding which image to over-write if I want to test something new.

    PLi is ordinary, boring, old-fashioned, limited, regularly late to embrace new stuff and over-rated, plus not needed for stronger machines. That would be my choice.

    "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another. The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding!"


    http://www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/CCREAD/etscc/kant.html

    I've had that issue many times, so I decided to finally investigate a bit, and wrote (and keep updating) https://github.com/oottppxx/enigma2/tree/master/zgemmah7 on how to make sure we can recover from it without flashing everything else.


    @jeneverest might be on to something regarding flashing a single slot, but I've never seen it explained anywhere, although I'm planning some tests on the weekend as this seems to be possible from what I gleaned from the bootloader strings.


    Everything would be much simpler if they'd let you flash the emmcflash0.boot partition separately: I'll also test that this weekend, but I'm less sure it will work (again, from what I've gleaned from the strings).

    Just in case: https://github.com/zgemma-star/meta-zgemma


    If you succeed I am sending you my H9S... ;) stuck... no way to flash it...


    Good luck...

    "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another. The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding!"


    http://www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/CCREAD/etscc/kant.html

    Quote from gorski

    Just in case: https://github.com/zgemma-star/meta-zgemma


    If you succeed I am sending you my H9S... ;) stuck... no way to flash it...


    Good luck...

    If I succeed doing what? I can already drop into the bootloader console via telnet, so there's not much more to do with the H7, unless I misunderstood you. Of course I had to start with a working one - if the bootloader was toast, one would need to reprogram the internal 8Mb flash via JTAG or physically remove the chip and use an external programmer - I backed mine up for such a rainy day, hopefully that won't be needed ever.


    The H9S uses a completely different chipset, and, as far as I understand, it doesn't support native multiboot anyway - and even if it did, as it's already stuck, you need to a) look into getting a physical console attached; OR, b) if the bootloader is corrupted and the console is of no help, you need to go and check how to reflash using JTAG/physically extract the flash chip and reprogram it. Start with a), of course, because the bootloader might be good and it's just a different component that's broken (e.g., bad RAM) and causing it to get stuck.


    You probably already tried flashing the recovery stuff you can find at http://www.zgemma.org/download…gs-3798mv200-20190531.zip or http://www.zgemma.org/download…ot-3798mv200-20190531.zip (gleaned from your github repository), right? At least the bootargs_h9.txt file gives an idea of the flash map, devices, the presumed presence of a serial console, etc... And the fastboot_h9.bin gives an idea of the bootloader, although I didn't try to decompress it...


    P.S. - They seem to be using U-boot, see the repo README at https://github.com/hisilicon/b…/s40/compressed/startup.c

    Ermmm, no: H9S can't boot, can't be flashed...


    It shouldn't be stuck like this, since it flashes such bits from USB stick but... allegedly.... Alas.... Hence the frustration...

    "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another. The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding!"


    http://www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/CCREAD/etscc/kant.html

    Like 1
    Quote from gorski

    Ermmm, no: H9S can't boot, can't be flashed...


    It shouldn't be stuck like this, since it flashes such bits from USB stick but... allegedly.... Alas.... Hence the frustration...

    Ok, so basically you already knew everything I mentioned, from those posts, and there's even a nice HiTool interface. I see from one of the posts that you even got the serial/TTL cable, but had issues with the serial connection? Without that working, I think JTAG would be the only way (and even then, there might be something else really broken on the box, although it's unlikely if you only messed it up via software).


    What's the XML partition file that you're missing? Can you show a partition file for other models, so I can take a look? Again, might not do much good without serial communications working and you don't want to go the JTAG/physical chip removal way.


    Note: I wouldn't even go the HiTool way to start with, as if the bootloader (Das U-Boot) is still alive and kicking there are much better ways to recover the box. Just plug in the serial cable and try to get a prompt on a terminal program running on your desktop/lapop.

    Sorry, my bad, I forgot to update the thread with the latest...


    Have a look, please: H9S can't boot, can't be flashed...

    "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another. The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding!"


    http://www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/CCREAD/etscc/kant.html

    Yes buddy, I've been using h7s for sometimes and I'm doing the same thing that you did.. never fails at all.. love it!

    Hi Friend , i have an issue with h7 as i was using internal flash pation and had installed 4 different images on it and every thing was fine as i was using multiboot image selector to switch between images , now recently i installed open black hole image in one of the internal flash partion , no issue is i am unable to switch other images which r installed on flash , is there any plugin / solution available to switch to other images which r installed other than black hole , pls reply thx

    Quote from bhu

    Hi Friend , i have an issue with h7 as i was using internal flash pation and had installed 4 different images on it and every thing was fine as i was using multiboot image selector to switch between images , now recently i installed open black hole image in one of the internal flash partion , no issue is i am unable to switch other images which r installed on flash , is there any plugin / solution available to switch to other images which r installed other than black hole , pls reply thx

    If you're hand with the terminal, login to the box, check if /dev/mmcblk0p1 (the boot partition) is mounted (but probably not), then copy the relevant STARTUP_1 (or _2, _3, _4) over the STARTUP file there, unmount, then do a "sync && reboot" - fingers crossed.

    Quote from bhu

    Many thx for reply dear , kindly explain in simple terms file attached herewith , 55b4eb74d9c8ffd6.jpg

    How to unmount and mount

    You need to telnet and login to the box: the username is "root", without the quotes... not sure what the default password is for openblackhole, if any... Try and search for it.


    Once you're able to login to the box and get a prompt of "root#" (or very similar, ending in #), you can input commands.


    To start without making any damage it's probably better if you collect the output of the "mount" and "df -h" commands, then paste it here, and we can take it from there... (use "exit" or "logout" commands to terminate the session or close it from your telnet client side).

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