Manjaro on T95U Pro S912 - no internet

ARM Technical Assistance
1

Hi All,
I followed the instructions in the thread below.
I made a post there, in the wiki section, as I thought it was the correct place for it based on other posts, but maybe it wasn’t/isn’t. If “double posting” is a faux pas, please let me know and I’ll delete one of these posts.

I have a Sunvell T95U Pro S912 Android box (2Gb RAM, 16Gb storage).

From the Manjaro download page I obtained these files.

I had to use the AM6 version along with the dtb for VIM2 in order for this box to boot Armbrian off of the SD card.

The big problem I’m facing now is no internet, not via Ethernet or wifi.

Am I out of luck or is there some way to get this working?

I tried using the Manjaro version recommended for S912 version but it would not even boot.

When I used the Manjaro version for AM6 and the dtb for S912, it would get stuck in an endless loop error.

The only way to get it to boot into Armbian was to use the Manjar version for AM6 and the dtb for VIM2.

I didn’t see a Manjaro version for GTKingpro.
If someone could kindly point me to this, then I could try that next.

This Android box isn’t of much use to me without internet access, I can’t use it as a htpc or for pihole.

This Android Box is stuck on Android 6.0, there isn’t any available upgrade to a newer version (there used to be a version of 7.0 available but that firmware is impossible to find these days). Android 6.0 is no longer supported by Google, so you cannot access the Play Store to download and install any Apps, you have to find the APK from an alternate, trusted source.

The one piece of potentially good news, is that it may be possible to run pi-hole on this box as is.

I would prefer to run Manjaro on it, but without internet I couldn’t really use it for anything. I am not a gamer, so turning it into a retro emulator doesn’t interest me.

Sorry for the long post, I thought some background info might make this a little more interesting.

Any help that you could provide will be greatly appreciated!

2

Hi,

NIce detailled post.

To build your own gtking-pro Manjaro ARM image follow this wiki

in your case for example

sudo buildarmimg -d gtking-pro -e kde-plasma -v 2023.09.29 -b stable n
3

You mentioined Armbian. Did you managed to boot with wifi on Armbian? You need to find a dtb that can boot your box and also have wifi. For example, if on Armbian you managed to boot with wifi available you can use that “dtb” on Manjaro.

A good place to hunt for “dtb” GitHub - ophub/amlogic-s9xxx-armbian: Support for Armbian in Amlogic, Rockchip and Allwinner boxes. Support a311d, s922x, s905x3, s905x2, s912, s905d, s905x, s905w, s905, s905l, rk3588, rk3568, rk3399, rk3328, h6, etc.

1 Like
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Thank you @nl.smart for this tip!

I followed the instructions and was able to boot up Manjaro KDE off of the SD card. No wifi but I was able to eventually get the Ethernet working.
However it was painfully slow to the point of being unusable.
Firefox wasn’t working properly in that it would not display properly, the menu at the top was missing and it would not display pages correctly or at all. Surfing the net was impossible.
The entire OS felt a little sluggish, I thought perhaps this was because a combination of KDE being too big for this little Android box and the fact that it was running off of an SD card.

So I followed the directions again, only this time I replaced “KDE-Plasma” with “XFCE”.

When I used the KDE version, I had to use the VIM2 dtb, however when I used the XFCE version, I had to use the s912 dtb.

The XFCE version was snappier, however the same issues persisted with the Ethernet (and still no wifi).

I had to clone the mac address of the android box because my router uses mac whitelists as an added layer of security.

Using pamac did not seem slow, however it was impossible to conduct a speed test in any of the web browsers, they would just hang and not even display the speed test.
The one exception was Fast.com, but it was showing me speeds faster than my actual connection, so I have my doubts about it’s accuracy.
By the way I did check my internet speed on other devices and it is plenty fast.
For some reason my Ethernet connection is beyond slow on this Android box when running Linux. On one speed test site it got as far as showing me a 248ms Ping time, when on my other devices it is 14ms.

When it’s running Android, good ol’ version 6.0, the internet speeds are just fine, so it’s not a hardware issue.

Any ideas how to overcome this slow internet speed, or how to bring back my wifi connection?

Hey @JFL I appreciate your help, but it seems like you skimmed the thread very quickly and did not realize that no internet was mentioned in several instances including the title:

Manjaro on T95U Pro S912 - no internet

I originally only found one dtb that would actually boot, but no internet.
Now there are two dtb’s that boot but only with very limited Ethernet to the point of being non functioning.
These are my original attempts with dtb, please see above for my current situation.

I will gladly welcome your help if you know a way to make the Ethernet work at proper speed and make the WiFi work.

1 Like
5

Hi @NeoVeo,

Not all wifi chip are supported. A good place to hunt for “dtb” for your device is at GitHub - ophub/amlogic-s9xxx-armbian: Support for Armbian in Amlogic, Rockchip and Allwinner boxes. Support a311d, s922x, s905x3, s905x2, s912, s905d, s905x, s905w, s905, s905l, rk3588, rk3568, rk3399, rk3328, h6, etc.. Ophub’s images might have more “dtb” for you to try. He might also know whether your wifi chip is supported. Ophub’s Armbian is NOT the same as the official Armbian images.

If one of the “dtb” from Ophub’s image provide “wifi” on your device. You can use that working “dtb” on Manjaro.

1 Like
6

OK, thanks for your feedback

Take care with the sd card, you need a good one, please don’t use cheap product or no name one !

Did you try with a wifi usb adapter ?

Try to build an image on the testing branch, the ARM team updated the testing branch this week, new kernel and so on

The ARM team posted a new testing package list today, up date this Saturday morning, thanks a lot to the team.

Forget nothing on the command line, as far as I know Manjaro ARM is the only ARM distro to offer the possibility to build your own ARM image, Enjoy !

sudo buildarmimg -d gtking-pro -e kde-plasma -v 2023.09.30 -b testing n

You can customize your package, edit the kde-plama file in this forder
/usr/share/manjaro-arm-tools/profiles/arm-profiles/editions/

see beelow

Maintained by Strit

Sound, Video and bluetooth

alsa-utils
mpv
wireplumber
pipewire-alsa
pipewire-jack
pipewire-pulse
pipewire-zeroconf
gst-plugin-pipewire
phonon-qt5-gstreamer
libmm-glib

Display Manager

sddm
sddm-kcm

Plasma packages

bluedevil
breeze
drkonqi
kde-gtk-config
kinfocenter
kcalc
kscreen
kscreenlocker
kwallet-pam
kwayland-integration
plasma-wayland-session
plasma-wayland-protocols
kwin
ksysguard
plasma-desktop
plasma-nm
plasma-pa
plasma-systemmonitor
plasma-workspace
powerdevil
systemsettings
plasma-vault
plasma-firewall
oxygen
oxygen-icons

KDE applications

dolphin
dolphin-plugins
kate
konsole
ark
okular
gwenview
spectacle
krfb
krdc
keditbookmarks
kolourpaint
kdeconnect

Optional dependencies for kdeconnect

sshfs # remote filesystem browser

Themes

plasma5-themes-breath
sddm-breath-theme
manjaro-arm-wallpapers
breeze-gtk
manjaro-icons

Optional dependencies for ark

p7zip # 7Z format support
unarchiver # RAR format support
unrar

Office suite

#libreoffice-fresh
#libreoffice-fresh-fr

extra libreoffice-still
extra libreoffice-still-fr

Browser

firefox
firefox-i18n-fr

Package Manager

pamac-gtk
pamac-tray-icon-plasma

Fonts

ttf-bitstream-vera
noto-fonts
wqy-microhei chinese

Manjaro tools

manjaro-settings-manager
manjaro-hotfixes
manjaro-arm-flasher
manjaro-arm-installer
matray

Other packages

openresolv
wget
power-profiles-daemon
xdg-user-dirs
networkmanager-openvpn
firewalld
xorg-server
xorg-xinit
xdg-desktop-portal-kde
vlc
samba
manjaro-settings-samba
smbclient
android-file-transfer
android-tools
android-udev
filezilla
gparted
partitionmanager
#exfat-utils
exfatprogs
screenfetch
neofetch
geoip
geoip-database
geoip-database-extra
base-devel
htop

extra thunderbird
extra thunderbird-i18n-fr
hdparm

home web server

apache
mariadb
mariadb-clients
mariadb-libs
php
php-apache
php-gd
phpmyadmin
#certbot
#certbot-apache
wireshark-qt
#bind
micro
fail2ban

extra httrack
#postfix
composer
lsof
traceroute
obs-studio
bmon

2 Likes
7

Well there is some good news and some bad news.

I have tried both the KDE and XFCE versions of testing.

First the good, they both seem to have working Ethernet.
Now the bad, neither seems to have working WiFi.

Now the really bad, in the KDE version, whenever I try to install a program from pamac, it asks me for an Authentication password. Note that this is not the password that I created when I first set up this OS from the SD card.

I don’t know what the password and have left a post on the Arm Testing thread.

8

OK.

During the ARM OS installation set the password with 1234, this is not a joke, after the first reboot and your complete packages install with pamac or pacman change the password 1234 with a serious one :slight_smile:
Why ? Because a French keyboard, Spanish keyboard, British keyboard or Chinese keyboard have the same numeric keypad.

9

Nope, that ain’t it either.
I reflashed KDE onto the SD card to be sure it wasn’t a bad flash.
I set up the OS again and once again it is asking me for a password and not accepting mine.

An update for you, I used XFCE and tried every single dtb for the s912 (I read somewhere to use only the gxm dtb’s).
There were twelve and four didn’t work at all, the remaining eight all had working Ethernet but not WiFi.

I might give Minimal a try next, I want to get this down to the bare minimum and hope that I can have a very low power pihole.

When I had pihole set up on Android 6.0 on this box, it was only using 2 Watts!

1 Like
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