GoFlex Net + SATA + Debian (without UBIT or PlugApps!)

Hi all,

I'm quite new to this Pogo stuff and got my GoFlex Net on Monday. First, I tried to install Debian using the official method but there was a problem that all Debian squeeze packages were reported as corrupt. Luckily, I found shyd's post which allowed me to complete the installation without problems.

The second big problem was SATA. As you all know, the official method doesn't allow you to use the SATA ports. I googled on that issue today and found a lot of different "solutions" like replacing Jeff's uboot by UBIT, compiling a new kernel, installing PlugApps and so on. Finally, there was a particularly easy solution, mentioned here. This I would like to present. Right at the front the obligatory disclaimer:

I ACCEPT ABSOLUTELY NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY KIND OF DAMAGES THAT MAY OCCUR FROM FOLLOWING THIS GUIDE. YOU'RE DOING THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK

Known limitations:

• as pointed out by dpffan, you may use only one SATA port and that should be the one on the right hand side
• for some reason, on every second boot SSH fails to come up. Via netconsole I can see that Uboot finds the kernel and starts to boot it, but GoFlex Net doesn't appear in my network. I'm going to look into by analyzing the logs.

This was tested on a GoFlex Net (STAK200) running Debian Squeeze from Jeff's Official Installation Method


Step 1
Enable the netconsole, as described by Jeff here. Although it's not necessary for making eSATA work, a working netconsole may greatly help if something goes wrong and GoFlex fails to boot

Step 2
SSH to Debian and issue the following

wget http://jeff.doozan.com/debian/goflex/v0.6/v2.6.37/boot.tar.gz
wget http://jeff.doozan.com/debian/goflex/v0.6/v2.6.37/modules.tar.gz
mv /boot /old_boot
mkdir -p /boot
tar -C /boot -xvzf boot.tar.gz
tar -C / -xvzf modules.tar.gz
fw_setenv arcNumber 3089

This will download and install a newer kernel and make sure that the kernel recognizes your device as Goflex Net and not Dockstar. After that you should reboot:

reboot

Done!

After this procedure my GoFlex booted with the new kernel and via dmesg I could see that SATA controller was recognized properly. Not being sure, whether I can hotplug HDD's, I SSH'ed into GoFlex and issued

shutdown -h now

to turn it off. Then, I disconnected the device from the outlet, plugged my HDD into one of the SATA slots and connected it to the outlet again. Well, it booted just fine and the HDD was recognized as well. All I had to do was to mount it. :)

Hope that helps



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/09/2011 05:55AM by Vlad.

1. The SATA ports on the Goflex Net are really SATA ports and not eSATA. eSATA don't supply power but the goflex supply at least 5V. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/90/SATA2_und_eSATA-Stecker.jpg/220px-SATA2_und_eSATA-Stecker.jpg

2. On the goflex net, Jeff's uboot has a bug that 'mirrors' a single sata hard drive to both ports. This is remedied in the peaslayer's ubit variant of uboot. http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?2,3543,4986#msg-4986

3. I used peaslayer's kernel on the goflex for SATA support as well. But I used debootstrap with foreign to bootstrap the rootfs onto the sata drive instead. varkey has also compiled a goflex compatible kernel linked in the earlier post.

dpffan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> 1. The SATA ports on the Goflex Net are really
> SATA ports and not eSATA. eSATA don't supply power
> but the goflex supply at least 5V.
> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thum
> b/9/90/SATA2_und_eSATA-Stecker.jpg/220px-SATA2_und
> _eSATA-Stecker.jpg

My bad, of course these are SATA ports, not eSATA. I've already corrected that in my first post. Thanks.

> 2. On the goflex net, Jeff's uboot has a bug that
> 'mirrors' a single sata hard drive to both ports.
> This is remedied in the peaslayer's ubit variant
> of uboot.
> http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?2,3543,4986#msg-4
> 986

I didn't know that. For some reason, I plugged my single HDD to the right port and it worked fine. Thanks for pointing this out. Did you actually try installing UBIT over Jeff's uboot? I know that there's an official HowTo for that but there they always assume that you're running PlugBox or bare PogoPlug Linux, not Debian.

> 3. I used peaslayer's kernel on the goflex for
> SATA support as well. But I used debootstrap with
> foreign to bootstrap the rootfs onto the sata
> drive instead. varkey has also compiled a goflex
> compatible kernel linked in the earlier post.

Could you please tell the difference between those kernel's and Jeff's SATA kernel mentioned in my original posting?
Do these other kernels also require arcNumber to be set to 3089 (GoFlex Net)?

The information in this posting turned out to be mostly erroneous, so I decided to open a new thread concerning UBIT+ Debian. You'll find it here



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/12/2011 12:34PM by Vlad.

In my case, I didn't mess with network-manager and net console still worked. I'm on Ubuntu 10.10 for my desktop.

For uboot, I think I followed these steps:http://plugapps.com/index.php5/UBIT_U-Boot_images
Thereafter I followed this thread: http://plugapps.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=494 and tomcheng76/peaslayer's steps.

My goflex might still be on UBIT 0.5's uboot. I'll have to check.