I boot up and run Manjaro-ARM-minimal-vim2-21.02.img.xz on SD card with meson-gxbb-p201.dtb on a S905M TV box without any issue . (RTL8189ETV wifi not working )
Since everything is up and running , I’m looking forward to do a system update:
sudo pacman -Syu
It seems that pacman is trying to update kernel from 5.11 to 5.13. After update completed ,I reboot the box and now it fails to load system and stucks on this screen:
0.5138421] phy phy-c000000.phy.0:phy poweron failed --> -22
Starting version ……
Is there a way to fix this or freeze kernel update ?
I tested Manjaro-ARM-minimal-vim2-21.06.img.xz and Manjaro-ARM-minimal-vim2-21.04.img.xz and 21.04 seems to be the latest major release that works for me . As for prevent kernel from updating , just add ‘linux’ to IgnorePkg in /etc/pacman.conf. As Manjaro-ARM-minimal-vim2-21.04.img.xz ships with 5.11.10-1-MANJARO-ARM , I’m not sure if 5.12.X could run on my box, which remains for further testing.
I switched from linux to linux-aml and problem solved ! Now linux-aml 5.13 happily runs on my S905M Tv box
Quick summary
Flash Manjaro-ARM-minimal-vim2-21.04.img.xz into SD card , select proper u-boot.ext ,change extlinux.conf to reflect proper dtb file . (Same as what you do with Armbian) Mainline kernel 5.11 should boot your box without trouble .
After first time configuration and booting into manjaro , open /etc/pacman.conf and make IgnorePkg line looks like this : (remove the # at beginning)
IgnorePkg = linux
This prevents kernel from updating . It seems that mainline kernel 5.13 does not boot my box (The reason I did not flash later releases).
Run sudo pacman -Syu ,this updates everything except kernel.
Run sudo pacman -S linux-aml ,this will remove mainline kernel and install amlogic variant kernel.
Reboot , everything are supposed to be fine now and you could check kernel info with uname -a
Change IgnorePkg = linux in /etc/pacman.conf to IgnorePkg = linux-aml . You do not want to accidently update to a kernel that could not boot. Only update when necessary and backup Image and initramfs-linux.img in case you need to revert back.