SheevaPlug – Farlock.org

SheevaPlug Debian booting from internal Flash

admin — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 16:18:51 +0000

If you previosuly installed Debian on your internal flash and for some reasons your u-boot environment f**k you can simply restore it with this:

setenv mtdpartitions mtdparts=nand_mtd:0xa0000@0x0(u-boot),0x400000@0x100000(uImage),0x1fb00000@0x500000(rootfs)

setenv bootargs_root ubi.mtd=2 root=ubi0:rootfs rootfstype=ubifs

setenv bootargs_console console=ttyS0,115200

setenv bootcmd_nand ‘nand read.e 0x00800000 0x00100000 0x00400000’

setenv bootcmd ‘setenv bootargs $(bootargs_console) $(mtdpartitions) $(bootargs_root); run bootcmd_nand; bootm 0x00800000’

saveenv

This saved me, hope that can help you

Debian Wheezy install on SheevaPlug MMC/SD

admin — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 09:07:40 +0000

In this howto I’m going to explain how to install debian wheezy on a sheevaplug SD (i want to maintain my old squeeze on NAND flash). We need at least Marvell U-boot 3.4.19.

We assume that our server is 192.168.1.2 and sheeva ip is 192.168.1.7.

Setup TFTP server and download these file on tftp root directory (usually /var/lib/tftpboot):

cd /var/lib/tftpboot

wget ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/wheezy/main/installer-armel/current/images/kirkwood/netboot/marvell/sheevaplug/uImage

wget ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/wheezy/main/installer-armel/current/images/kirkwood/netboot/marvell/sheevaplug/uInitrd

Connect the sheeva through USB to our pc and connect to it with putty or minicom or similar. Power it on and press enter to stop the boot process, and copy these commands:

setenv serverip 192.168.1.2

setenv ipaddr 192.168.1.7

setenv netmask 255.255.255.0

tftpboot 0x00800000 uImage

tftpboot 0x01100000 uInitrd

setenv bootargs console=ttyS0,115200n8 base-installer/initramfs-tools/driver-policy=most priority=low

bootm 0x00800000 0x01100000

If you don’t want an “expert” setup process remove “priority=low”.

Now install your debian in a normal way, keep in mind to load mmc module.

When you need to partition your MMC/SD device my suggestion is to createat least one different partition for /boot (100MB is enough) with ext2 format. Create this as the FIRST partition. If you don’t do this you could have trouble on booting your new system.

Remember to execute “Make the system bootable” voice menù.

When your sheeva reboot stop again the boot process and execute these:

setenv bootargs_console console=ttyS0,115200

setenv bootcmd_mmc ‘mmcinit; ext2load mmc 0:1 0x00800000 /uImage; ext2load mmc 0:1 0x01100000 /uInitrd’

setenv bootcmd ‘setenv bootargs $(bootargs_console); run bootcmd_mmc; bootm 0x00800000 0x01100000’

run bootcmd

Now it should start with your debian wheezy fresh install!

If all went ok reboot again, stop the boot process and we set-up sheevaplug to boot default from MMC/SD:

setenv bootargs_console console=ttyS0,115200

setenv bootcmd_mmc ‘mmcinit; ext2load mmc 0:1 0x00800000 /uImage; ext2load mmc 0:1 0x01100000 /uInitrd’

setenv bootcmd ‘setenv bootargs $(bootargs_console); run bootcmd_mmc; bootm 0x00800000 0x01100000’

saveenv

Finish!

Execute “run bootcmd” again, and your sheeva is ready to go!

SheevaPlug non-standard module compiling

admin — Fri, 28 May 2010 09:04:47 +0000

Howto compile a module for sheeva without standard kernel headers

I’ve bought an EasyCap DC60 and i’ve found this fantastic driver for it:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/easycapdc60/

Obviously they aren’t available for our sheevaplug so i’m looking through the web on how to compile it,finally I was able to do it, this is the howto.

We suppose that sheevaplug is already runnning with a http://sheeva.with-linux.com/sheeva kernel (in this example 2.6.33.2).
All the operations described here are executed on a standard i686 linux pc (debian).

We need a cross-compiler, so go to this page and download the latest arm-XXXXXX-arm-none-eabi-i686-pc-linux-gnu.tar.bz2:
http://www.codesourcery.com/downloads/public/public/gnu_toolchain/arm-none-eabi
(in this example we use 2009q3-68)

First of all we need packages for cross-compile it

cd /usr/src
wget http://www.codesourcery.com/downloads/public/public/gnu_toolchain/arm-none-eabi/arm-2009q3-68-arm-none-eabi-i686-pc-linux-gnu.tar.bz2
tar xzvf arm-2009q3-68-arm-none-eabi-i686-pc-linux-gnu.tar.bz2
apt-get install build-essential

Then download the standard kernel from kernel.org (nowadays marvell patch is included in the mainline kernel tree), and apply the config from http://sheeva.with-linux.com

cd /usr/src
wget http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/linux-2.6.33.2.tar.bz2
tar xvf linux-2.6.33.2.tar.bz2
cd linux-2.6.33.2
wget http://sheeva.with-linux.com/sheeva/2.6.33.2/sheeva-2.6.33.2.config
cp sheeva-2.6.33.2.config .config
make ARCH=arm oldconfig

Now we can compile it, if you wouldn’t waste time you can stop it after the first “CC …” lines, when it has already done “HOSTCC/scripts …“, at this time it has already generated header needed by us. If you want you can also compile it all (better).

make -j4 ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=../arm-2009q3/bin/arm-none-eabi-

In this example we try to compile easycap driver, but you can adapt it to any external modules:

cd /usr/src
wget “http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/easycapdc60/easycap_dc60.0.7.1.tar.gz?use_mirror=netcologne”
cd easycap_dc60.0.7.1
make clean

Edit src/MakeFile (vi src/Makefile) and replace KERNELDIR line with this:

KERNELDIR ?= /usr/src/linux-2.6.33.2

and now compile it:

make -j4 ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=/usr/src/arm-2009q3/bin/arm-none-eabi-

All done!

scp 192.168.1.220:/usr/src/easycap_dc60.0.7.1/src/easycap.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/media/video
depmod -a

try to insmod it and enjoy

Recompile Kernel for SheevaPlug

admin — Fri, 28 May 2010 08:10:56 +0000

Howto recompile a custom kernel for our SheevaPlug:

In this example we suppose that our pc has ip 192.168.1.220, and the network has dhcp.
First of all install packages needed:

apt-get install git-core build-essential

Then download the latest kernel from Marvell:

cd /usr/src
git clone git://git.marvell.com/orion.git

Then set default config for SheevaPlug:

cd orion
make ARCH=arm kirkwood_defconfig

And then run menuconfig for set our personalized features:

make ARCH=arm menuconfig

When done, save the config and compile it:

make -j4 ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=../arm-2009q3/bin/arm-none-eabi- uImage

make -j4 ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=../arm-2009q3/bin/arm-none-eabi- modules

make -j4 ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=../arm-2009q3/bin/arm-none-eabi- INSTALL_MOD_PATH=.. modules_install

The last command copy our modules in ../lib, we make a tar of them and copy into sheevaplug:

cd ..
tar cvf lib_snapshot.tar lib

The new kernel is built in orion/arch/arm/boot/, we copy it in our tftp directory

cp orion/arch/arm/boot/uImage /var/lib/tftpboot

scp 192.168.1.220:/usr/src/sheeva/compile/lib_snapshot.tar .
tar xvf lib_snapshot.tar
mv lib/modules/2.6.KERNEL_VERSION /lib/modules

now we need to connect the sheeva’s console cable to our pc and connect with a terminal emulator like minicom (for information on how to do this look at plugcomputer.org), stop the boot process and go to bootloader prompt. On our machine we need to setup a tftp server (information at http://plugcomputer.org), in this example 192.168.1.220 is the tftpserver ip.

Write this on bootloader prompt:

bootp
setenv serverip 192.168.1.220
tftpboot 0x2000000 uImage
setenv bootargs $(bootargs_console) $(mtdpartitions) $(bootargs_root)
bootm 0x2000000

Now our sheevaplug is booting with new kernel….
If it start run uname -a and look the kernel version!
Enjoy

Test your sheevaplug with your new kernel, it is running well we can write the new kernel in flash, copy the uImage in any directory of sheevplug and flash it!

scp 192.168.1.220:/var/lib/tftpboot/uImage /tmp
flash_eraseall /dev/mtd0
nandwrite -p /dev/mtd0 /tmp/uImage

reboot and sheevaplug automatically start with new kernel