Re: Instructions for upgrading U-boot on Marvell OpenRD Base computer?
* Vagrant Cascadian vagr...@debian.org [2015-06-02 13:37]: There isn't much traction in upstream u-boot on this, and I suspect u-boot is basically broken on sheevaplug, guruplug and openrd_ultimate in jessie, stretch and sid... With no activity upstream, I'm hesitant to I booted u-boot from jessie on the SheevaPlug yesterday and it seemed to work fine. -- Martin Michlmayr http://www.cyrius.com/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150603151049.gf27...@jirafa.cyrius.com
Re: Instructions for upgrading U-boot on Marvell OpenRD Base computer?
On 2015-06-02, Rick Thomas wrote: On Jun 2, 2015, at 9:15 AM, Martin Michlmayr t...@cyrius.com wrote: * Rick Thomas rbtho...@pobox.com [2015-05-31 19:11]: No, the Ultimate and Base are different. I just checked and I was going to say that there's support for the Base in DENX. However, I noticed that even the Ultimate target was removed in Debian's u-boot recently: http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/collab-maint/u-boot.git/commit/debian/targets?id=ea2f6ce84b7788cda2cb7deb29690cb368451e8c So if you want to work out why it doesn't build and whether it boots, I'm sure Vagrant Cascadian would be interested in hearing from you; but it's probably easier to stay with the original u-boot unless that has problems. Thanks for the reply, however discouraging! Currently, I’m running Wheezy on the Base and its sister Ultimate. I haven’t tried Jessie since the formal release, but I will do that and report back soon. I gather from what you say about DTB that that transition does not depend on U-Boot? So I should be able to upgrade to and beyond Jessie without problems? The problem I’m having with Wheezy that makes me think it would be interesting to try a later U-Boot is that the original Marvell U-Boot (from 2009) is balky when booting from USB hard disks and doesn’t support booting from SD at all. If I could boot from SD, I would put /boot there and everything else on the USB disk. As it is, whenever I need to reboot the machine (I’m using it for experimentation, so that happens fairly often.) I need to log in to the serial console so I can watch and restart if booting from the hard drive fails. (Sometimes it fails in a way that requires actual physically re-setting the Base or even power-cycling it, but that’s a different story.) Can you tell me what the most recent U-Boot version is that actually does support the OpenRD Base? I'm able to get both openrd_base and openrd_ultimate to build (no idea if it boots) by disabling MMC support with u-boot 2015.04. But then, it sounds like you're actively looking for MMC support... Another option might be to move where the stored u-boot environment is to allow for a larger u-boot binary, but this breaks backwards compatibility; this may also be an issue for the SheevaPlug and other marvell platforms: https://lists.debian.org/debian-arm/2015/04/msg00023.html https://bugs.debian.org/781874 https://bugs.debian.org/781873 There isn't much traction in upstream u-boot on this, and I suspect u-boot is basically broken on sheevaplug, guruplug and openrd_ultimate in jessie, stretch and sid... With no activity upstream, I'm hesitant to just break backwards compatibility by moving the environment; it might be better to drop support. The choices seem to be between not including features, or breaking backwards compatibility with the environment location, and I'd like to move in whichever direction gets into upstream u-boot on this, which currently is neither... live well, vagrant signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Instructions for upgrading U-boot on Marvell OpenRD Base computer?
On Jun 2, 2015, at 9:15 AM, Martin Michlmayr t...@cyrius.com wrote: * Rick Thomas rbtho...@pobox.com [2015-05-31 19:11]: I’ve got an old Marvell OpenRD Base computer that I’d like to install Debian Jessie on. I believe that I’ll need to up-grade the u-boot on it to handle new features in the Jessie kernel. I haven't had an OpenRD in years but back then I always used the original u-boot without any problems. Why do you think a new u-boot is required for jessie? Have you tried it and things are not working? (After jessie, the kernel has been converted to DTB, but flash-kernel already appends the correct DTB.) 1) Where to get a suitable u-boot image? (Will the one at https://people.debian.org/~tbm/u-boot/2014.10+dfsg1-4/openrd_ultimate/ work? No, the Ultimate and Base are different. I just checked and I was going to say that there's support for the Base in DENX. However, I noticed that even the Ultimate target was removed in Debian's u-boot recently: http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/collab-maint/u-boot.git/commit/debian/targets?id=ea2f6ce84b7788cda2cb7deb29690cb368451e8c So if you want to work out why it doesn't build and whether it boots, I'm sure Vagrant Cascadian would be interested in hearing from you; but it's probably easier to stay with the original u-boot unless that has problems. Thanks for the reply, however discouraging! Currently, I’m running Wheezy on the Base and its sister Ultimate. I haven’t tried Jessie since the formal release, but I will do that and report back soon. I gather from what you say about DTB that that transition does not depend on U-Boot? So I should be able to upgrade to and beyond Jessie without problems? The problem I’m having with Wheezy that makes me think it would be interesting to try a later U-Boot is that the original Marvell U-Boot (from 2009) is balky when booting from USB hard disks and doesn’t support booting from SD at all. If I could boot from SD, I would put /boot there and everything else on the USB disk. As it is, whenever I need to reboot the machine (I’m using it for experimentation, so that happens fairly often.) I need to log in to the serial console so I can watch and restart if booting from the hard drive fails. (Sometimes it fails in a way that requires actual physically re-setting the Base or even power-cycling it, but that’s a different story.) Can you tell me what the most recent U-Boot version is that actually does support the OpenRD Base? If there is such a thing, do you have a suggested procedure for doing the upgrade? Unfortunately, it seems there aren’t many OpenRD users left. Yes, I noticed. The web site “openrd.org” now belongs to the Open Road Motorcycle Club. Maybe it’s time to move on… The Cubox devices look interesting! -- Martin Michlmayr Enjoy! Rick -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/e3101918-296f-496d-884f-c66f886ca...@pobox.com
Re: Instructions for upgrading U-boot on Marvell OpenRD Base computer?
* Rick Thomas rbtho...@pobox.com [2015-06-02 13:05]: I gather from what you say about DTB that that transition does not depend on U-Boot? So I should be able to upgrade to and beyond Jessie without problems? That's correct. The ideal scenario would be for the boot loader (u-boot in this case) to pass the device tree information to the kernel. However, since you cannot upgrade the boot loader on every device, it's possible to simply append a Debice Tree Blob (DTB) to the kernel image. In Debian, the flash-kernel tool has been updated to append the DTB when needed. (For Debian stretch, we also need to add the DTB in Debian installer so the installer will boot, but I'll make that change this week.) Can you tell me what the most recent U-Boot version is that actually does support the OpenRD Base? If there is such a thing, do you have a suggested procedure for doing the upgrade? Get u-boot from unstable, add the target (see the patch I quoted in my previous email which removed the ultimate target) and build. Make sure you have a backup of u-boot and know how to use OpenOCD. -- Martin Michlmayr http://www.cyrius.com/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150602204114.gb4...@jirafa.cyrius.com
Re: Instructions for upgrading U-boot on Marvell OpenRD Base computer?
On 06/02/15 13:41, Martin Michlmayr wrote: Can you tell me what the most recent U-Boot version is that actually does support the OpenRD Base? If there is such a thing, do you have a suggested procedure for doing the upgrade? Get u-boot from unstable, add the target (see the patch I quoted in my previous email which removed the ultimate target) and build. Make sure you have a backup of u-boot and know how to use OpenOCD. Thanks! I'll do that. Building U-boot (and other Debian packages) from source is something I have always wanted to learn about. Up to now, I've been a parametric user of Debian: I know where all the knobs and dials and switches are and what they all do, but I've never had occasion to build it myself. You've given me a good excuse to learn! (-: I've found a couple of web pages that describe using OpenOCD. So, while that will also be a learning experience, that part should not be a problem. The thing that has been keeping me from doing this is that nowhere can I find the exact U-Boot commands to use to burn the new U-boot image to ROM on the Base. As I understand it, the OpenOCD magic leaves you with a running new U-Boot copy in RAM. You then have to use it to burn a copy of the new U-Boot (from a USB stick or via tftp, or whatever) into ROM. That part is what I haven't been able to find specifically for the OpenRD Base. I've found instructions for burning on SheevaPlugs and other Plug devices, and for the CuBox devices, but not for the Base. Can you help there? For the short term, I'd like to experiment with something that doesn't have the potential problem that it was built by a novice builder (me). Is there one of the 2011 or 2012 pre-built U-boot images I can use for testing? And finally, you suggest it's a good idea to have a backup of the current U-Boot. How do I do that? Thank you very much for being so understanding and helpful! Enjoy! Rick -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/556e5ce1.9020...@pobox.com
Re: Instructions for upgrading U-boot on Marvell OpenRD Base computer?
On 06/02/15 13:37, Vagrant Cascadian wrote: I'm able to get both openrd_base and openrd_ultimate to build (no idea if it boots) by disabling MMC support with u-boot 2015.04. But then, it sounds like you're actively looking for MMC support... Another option might be to move where the stored u-boot environment is to allow for a larger u-boot binary, but this breaks backwards compatibility; this may also be an issue for the SheevaPlug and other marvell platforms: https://lists.debian.org/debian-arm/2015/04/msg00023.html https://bugs.debian.org/781874 https://bugs.debian.org/781873 There isn't much traction in upstream u-boot on this, and I suspect u-boot is basically broken on sheevaplug, guruplug and openrd_ultimate in jessie, stretch and sid... With no activity upstream, I'm hesitant to just break backwards compatibility by moving the environment; it might be better to drop support. The choices seem to be between not including features, or breaking backwards compatibility with the environment location, and I'd like to move in whichever direction gets into upstream u-boot on this, which currently is neither... live well, vagrant Is there a pre-built (however old) U-Boot I can use that supports MMC? I'd really like to be able to use all three sources for booting: MMC (SD card), USB (USB stick or USB hard drive) and eSATA (hard drive). I'm using the box for experimenting, so as much flexibility as possible is highly desirable... Here's an interesting thought... I don't know how much effort it would require, or even if it would work at all, but: Maybe a chain-loader approach; A totally minimal stripped down U-boot lives in the usual place in ROM. It loads a much more robust U-Boot from the SD card (which can be as big as 32GB!) Then the big U-boot is finally used to boot the Linux system from whatever system residency device you chose -- eSATA, USB-stick, USB hard drive, or even a different partition on the SD card... All the minimal U-boot in ROM needs to do is load from MMC, so, once installed, it can be considered static -- part of the hardware. The real U-boot lives on the SD card, so (as if by magic) the box becomes un-brickable. I can keep an SD card with a working U-boot on it in reserve if I mess up using an experimental version for testing. What do you think? Enjoy! Rick -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/556e62cd.6060...@pobox.com
Re: Instructions for upgrading U-boot on Marvell OpenRD Base computer?
* Rick Thomas rbtho...@pobox.com [2015-05-31 19:11]: I’ve got an old Marvell OpenRD Base computer that I’d like to install Debian Jessie on. I believe that I’ll need to up-grade the u-boot on it to handle new features in the Jessie kernel. I haven't had an OpenRD in years but back then I always used the original u-boot without any problems. Why do you think a new u-boot is required for jessie? Have you tried it and things are not working? (After jessie, the kernel has been converted to DTB, but flash-kernel already appends the correct DTB.) 1) Where to get a suitable u-boot image? (Will the one at https://people.debian.org/~tbm/u-boot/2014.10+dfsg1-4/openrd_ultimate/ work? No, the Ultimate and Base are different. I just checked and I was going to say that there's support for the Base in DENX. However, I noticed that even the Ultimate target was removed in Debian's u-boot recently: http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/collab-maint/u-boot.git/commit/debian/targets?id=ea2f6ce84b7788cda2cb7deb29690cb368451e8c So if you want to work out why it doesn't build and whether it boots, I'm sure Vagrant Cascadian would be interested in hearing from you; but it's probably easier to stay with the original u-boot unless that has problems. Unfortunately, it seems there aren't many OpenRD users left. -- Martin Michlmayr http://www.cyrius.com/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150602161536.gi26...@jirafa.cyrius.com
Instructions for upgrading U-boot on Marvell OpenRD Base computer?
I’ve got an old Marvell OpenRD Base computer that I’d like to install Debian Jessie on. I believe that I’ll need to up-grade the u-boot on it to handle new features in the Jessie kernel. I need the following information… 1) Where to get a suitable u-boot image? (Will the one at https://people.debian.org/~tbm/u-boot/2014.10+dfsg1-4/openrd_ultimate/ work? 2) Instructions for upgrading u-boot (via USB stick would be more convenient for me than via tftp) assuming I have a working — but very old — u-boot on the machine at the start? 3) If I upgrade u-boot, will it still work with Wheezy? Thanks! Rick -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/b5cce3c3-d0e1-4690-85df-03cefa1e8...@pobox.com
