Not seeing Pogoplug V4 on my network (running Debian 12)

I've been running the Debian 11 image on my Pogoplug V4 for some time. I saw that there is a Debian 12 image (Nov 1, 2023), so decided to give that a try. I'm using the 2017 U-boot, which I assume should be fine. This device doesn't have any USB 3.0 ports, so not sure the 2023 U-boot would buy me much.

I partitioned a 16GB SD card, labeled as "rootfs", created ext3 file system and extracted Debian-5.6.7-kirkwood-tld-1-rootfs-bodhi.tar.bz2 to the mount point, unmounted, put it in my Pogoplug V4 and powered up. It appears to be booting - flashing green, then red/yellow, then solid green. But I never see it on my network. When I boot it with one of the Debian 11 images it comes up fine and I see it on the network.

dtb_file environment variable is set to /boot/dts/kirkwood-pogoplug_v4.dtb, and I even tried putting dtb_file=/boot/dts/kirkwood-pogoplug_v4.dtb in /boot/uEnv.txt, but still after it boots up, I never see it on my router.

Any ideas?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/18/2024 05:08PM by rsantag.

OK, according to note #2, it says /etc/rc.local generates new SSH keys on 1st boot. I mounted the SD on another box and I don't see any /etc/ssh/ssh_host_* files. So maybe it isn't actually coming up?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/18/2024 08:06PM by rsantag.

rsantag,

> OK, according to note #2, it says /etc/rc.local
> generates new SSH keys on 1st boot. I mounted the
> SD on another box and I don't see any
> /etc/ssh/ssh_host_* files. So maybe it isn't
> actually coming up?

Correct. The booting did not get to the point when new SSH keys are generated.

This seems to be a general problem for the new rootfs for Pogo V4 SD rootfs booting. It does not affect Pogo V4 USB rootfs booting. And it does not affect any other Kirkwood boxes.

I need to write up a simple and clear workaround procedure for this corner case in number 2 below (there are many approaches to get around this problem, below are 3 different ways to do it).

So in the mean time, do number 1:

1. Boot with Debian 12 rootfs on USB (this is a good way to solve this problem, because you also create backup rootfs tarball in the process)

After booted successfully into Debian,

a. Install kernel linux-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1-bodhi.tar.bz2.

b. And then bring the USB rootfs to another Linux box and clone it to the SD card using a backup/restore procedure.

https://forum.doozan.com/read.php?2,12096,24034#msg-24034

c. Boot the SD card rootfs.

The kernel 6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1 should boot Pogo V4 SD rootfs without problem.

2. Temporarily booting kernel 6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1 with rootfs Debian-6.5.7-kirkwood-tld-1-rootfs-bodhi.tar.bz2

This is a quickest an dsimple shortcut approach that I need to write here. I will be back to post this ( perhaps tomorrow).

3. Use a USB-SD adapter to boot the Debian-6.5.7-kirkwood-tld-1-rootfs-bodhi.tar.bz2 rootfs on SD card. And then update the kernel to linux-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1.

Remove this SD card from the adapter and boot with it. orbezo used this approach in this post.

-bodhi
===========================
Forum Wiki
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OK, thank you! That worked to get it to boot (I used a USB-SD adapter - option 3)

I'm now trying to install the 6.6.3 kernel. I'm assuming for the 1st mkImage I'm using linux-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1.patch instead of linux-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1. For the 2nd mkImage, I don't see initrd.img-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1. Doesn't appear to be contained in linux-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1-bodhi.tar.bz2. Where do I get that?

rsantag,

> I'm now trying to install the 6.6.3 kernel. I'm
> assuming for the 1st mkImage I'm using
> linux-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1.patch instead of
> linux-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1. For the 2nd mkImage,
> I don't see initrd.img-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1.
> Doesn't appear to be contained in
> linux-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1-bodhi.tar.bz2. Where
> do I get that?

No, that's not correct.

I guess you have not upgraded any kernel that I released here so you're unfamiliar. See the release thread:

https://forum.doozan.com/read.php?2,12096

Quote

Updated 01 Dec 2023:

Kernel linux-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1 package has been uploaded. The following features were added/updated:

- General kernel upgrade.
- Reconfigure MMC to built-in kernel module
- Update ds411jv10 DTS (binding and documentation only, no new functionality)
- See Important Note in Step 5 about uInitrd size.

Latest Linux kernel 6.x general release information can be found at:
LinuxChanges log

Download at Dropbox:

linux-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1-bodhi.tar.bz2

md5:
2491894e135e3f07089be277de7b5257
sha256:
71ea3b3d6464c36eb74237709eac1762075cf8eadf9e59bdb4a87242e8f97026
And as always, please verify the hash of what you've downloaded!

This tarball contains 6 files:
linux-image-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1_1_armel.deb
linux-headers-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1_1_armel.deb
config-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1
zImage-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1
linux-dtb-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1.tar
linux-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1.patch

Installation:

.....

So you'd download the tarball linux-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1-bodhi.tar.bz2. And then follow the installation instruction to install it inside the Pogo V4 (SSH in while the system is running).

-bodhi
===========================
Forum Wiki
bodhi's corner (buy bodhi a beer)

I did "dpkg -V linux-image-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1_1_armel.deb" to verify it was installed and it said "not installed". I was sure I did the install (shows up in my bash history), but I went ahead and ran it again. Install failed. Didn't notice the errors last time. Assuming that's where initrd.img-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1 comes from.

Got "cannot copy extracted data for ./lib/modules/blah-blah-blah ... Unexpected end of file or stream". Let me try extracting it again...

> Got "cannot copy extracted data for
> ./lib/modules/blah-blah-blah ... Unexpected end of
> file or stream". Let me try extracting it
> again...

You have to install the kernel on the Pogo V4 itself while it is running. Sounds like you are trying to install it on another Linux host.

-bodhi
===========================
Forum Wiki
bodhi's corner (buy bodhi a beer)

Nope, that didn't help. I did check the md5sum of linux-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1-bodhi.tar.bz2 and it is good. The end of stream is apparently because decompress is failing

Quote

root@debian:~# dpkg -i linux-image-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1_1_armel.deb
(Reading database ... 16869 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack linux-image-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1_1_armel.deb ...
Unpacking linux-image-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1 (1) ...
dpkg-deb: error: <decompress> subprocess was killed by signal (Killed)
dpkg: error processing archive linux-image-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1_1_armel.deb (--install):
cannot copy extracted data for './lib/modules/6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1/kernel/net/bluetooth/bluetooth.ko' to '/lib/modules/6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1/kernel/net/bluetooth/bluetooth.ko.dpkg-new': unexpected end of file or stream
Errors were encountered while processing:
linux-image-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1_1_armel.deb

Have you seen this before?

bodhi Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You have to install the kernel on the Pogo V4
> itself while it is running. Sounds like you are
> trying to install it on another Linux host.

Right, I'm doing all this on the Pogo V4 that's running Debian 12 from the USB-SD adapter. Downloaded linux-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1-bodhi.tar.bz2, extracted it with tar -xjf, extracted the dtb tar file, etc. The "dpkg -i linux-image-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1_1_armel.deb" is failing. Is that what creates initrd.img-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1, because I'm definitely not seeing that file to be able to create uInitrd.

> Is that what creates
> initrd.img-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1, because I'm
> definitely not seeing that file to be able to
> create uInitrd.

Yes. dpkg creates the kernel files.

https://forum.doozan.com/read.php?2,12096

Quote

4a. Boot with DTB file (standard way to boot FDT kernel). Recommended.

Generate the uImage and uInitrd (the kernel files vmlinuz-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1 and initrd.img-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1 were generated by dpkg in Step 3):
cd /boot
mkimage -A arm -O linux -T kernel -C none -a 0x00008000 -e 0x00008000 -n Linux-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1 -d vmlinuz-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1 uImage
mkimage -A arm -O linux -T ramdisk -C gzip -a 0x00000000 -e 0x00000000 -n initramfs-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1 -d initrd.img-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1 uInitrd

=====

Do you have swap on? i.e. create swap file before doing any upgrade. See Note 1 in the rootfs installation.

https://forum.doozan.com/read.php?2,12096

Quote

Note 1 (Strongly Recommended):

To keep the rootfs extremely basic and small, there is no swap space set up for it. The first thing you should do after the 1st boot is to set up a swap file to make the system run better. In fact, system upgrades oftently fail to run without swap. Please see here for instruction how to do that.

-bodhi
===========================
Forum Wiki
bodhi's corner (buy bodhi a beer)

Ah - that was it! created a swapfile and dpkg ran this time & created my initrd.img-6.6.3-kirkwood-tld-1. Will run mkImage again and see if it will come up off the SD directly.

uInitrd was less than 6MB, so good there. I powered down, moved the SD card to the SD card slot, powered back up and all is good!

Thank you VERY much for all your help!

Ralph

Cool!

-bodhi
===========================
Forum Wiki
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