Need a help with upgrading nsa 325 v2 kernel

Hi
I've just started following the instructions to upgrade my box kernel to 6.13,,but I. Can't seem to shrink initrd to a reasonable size: it always stands at 13 Mb: am I missing something?

And if I make the uenv.Txt file, somehow the HD I use as storage has raid partitions (so my disk is full of /dev/mtdblock4 etc) shoulf I mention those partitions together with ide USB etc? And how?

Carlo,

> I've just started following the instructions to
> upgrade my box kernel to 6.13,,but I. Can't seem
> to shrink initrd to a reasonable size: it always
> stands at 13 Mb: am I missing something?

Make sure you run update-initramfs -u

Quote
https://forum.doozan.com/read.php?2,135322

1. Change the default modules loading to dep.

Edit the file /etc/initramfs-tools/initramfs.conf

# MODULES: [ most | netboot | dep | list ]
# dep - Try and guess which modules to load.
MODULES=dep

2. Update initramfs

I'm using the kernel 6.3.5-kirkwood-tld-1 as an example here. Adjust this to the appropriate version number to the running kernel in your system (run uname -a to display current kernel version).
cd /boot
ls -lh initrd.img-6.3.5-kirkwood-tld-1
update-initramfs -u

And then list the /boot directory to see the last file on this list

ls -larth /boot

If the new initrd corresponding to the currently running kernel is not created, then you might have a newer and different kernel version that you've installed but not used.

>
> And if I make the uenv.Txt file, somehow the HD I
> use as storage has raid partitions (so my disk is
> full of /dev/mtdblock4 etc) shoulf I mention
> those partitions together with ide USB etc? And
> how?

mtdblock or RAID is not relevant for booting. So keep the devices env in uEnv.txt file to the order of the disk type that migth contain a rootfs.

devices=usb ide

-bodhi
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Can I safely reboot without the uenv file and if the initrd is too big?

i've changed a bit the /etc/initramfs-tools/initramfs.conf
i've set dep, and i've used gzip, compress level 5 as compression, cause update initram tells me it's using gzip since it can't find zstd to compress things

however the outcome is always the same:

➜  /boot nano  /etc/initramfs-tools/initramfs.conf
➜  /boot update-initramfs -u
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-6.13.8-kirkwood-tld-1
➜  /boot ls -lh /boot/uInitrd
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 13M Mar 26 15:02 /boot/uInitrd
➜  /boot ls -larth /boot 
total 158M
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root 4.8M Aug 18  2019 zImage-5.2.9-kirkwood-tld-1
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 162K Aug 18  2019 config-5.2.9-kirkwood-tld-1
-rw-------  1 root root 4.8M Aug 18  2019 vmlinuz-5.2.9-kirkwood-tld-1
-rw-------  1 root root 3.0M Aug 18  2019 System.map-5.2.9-kirkwood-tld-1
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 9.3M Aug 18  2019 linux-headers-5.2.9-kirkwood-tld-1_1.0_armel.deb
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  12M Mar 17 10:26 initrd.img-5.2.9-kirkwood-tld-1
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root 5.8M Mar 24 20:59 vmlinuz-6.13.8-kirkwood-tld-1
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 194K Mar 24 20:59 config-6.13.8-kirkwood-tld-1
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 4.2M Mar 24 20:59 System.map-6.13.8-kirkwood-tld-1
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root 5.8M Mar 24 22:34 zImage-6.13.8-kirkwood-tld-1
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 8.2M Mar 24 22:43 linux-headers-6.13.8-kirkwood-tld-1_1_armel.deb
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  31M Mar 24 22:43 linux-image-6.13.8-kirkwood-tld-1_1_armel.deb
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 4.0K Mar 24 22:53 dts
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 1.5M Mar 24 22:54 linux-dtb-6.13.8-kirkwood-tld-1.tar
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 176K Mar 25 04:57 linux-6.13.8-kirkwood-tld-1.patch
drwxr-xr-x 20 root root 4.0K Mar 26 14:46 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  45M Mar 26 14:48 linux-6.13.8-kirkwood-tld-1-bodhi.tar.bz2
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 5.8M Mar 26 15:00 uImage
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  13M Mar 26 15:02 uInitrd
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  105 Mar 26 15:15 uEnv.txt
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 6.4M Mar 26 20:26 initrd.img-6.13.8-kirkwood-tld-1
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root 4.0K Mar 26 20:26 .

uInitrd is 13 MB
before anything bad happens i'm going to edit the uEnv.txt this ways:

dtb_file=/boot/dts/kirkwood-nsa325.dtb
devices= usb ide
disks=0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
load_dtb_addr=0x2c00000

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/26/2025 02:32PM by Carlo.

Carlo,

> Can I safely reboot without the uenv file and if
> the initrd is too big?

It's depending on what version of u-boot you are running (2017.07 or newer)? and what your u-boot envs are.

Do you have serial console? if you do, then you can boot and interrupt count down, and

printenv

Post the serial console log here. Don't boot until I can take a look.

And if you don't have serial console, then while in Debian,

fw_printenv
cat /boot/uEnv.txt
ls -larth /boot

And post the log of the above commands here. Don't reboot until I can take a look.

-bodhi
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Carlo,

Hold on. Disregard my post above.

You've missed a step:

Quote

3. Recreate the boot file uInitrd

So now we have a new initrd.img-6.3.5-kirkwood-tld-1 file, we need to recreate uInitrd.

mkimage -A arm -O linux -T ramdisk -C gzip -a 0x00000000 -e 0x00000000 -n initramfs-6.3.5-kirkwood-tld-1 -d initrd.img-6.3.5-kirkwood-tld-1 uInitrd
sync

-bodhi
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/26/2025 02:36PM by bodhi.

my bad.. i thought i'd had followed each and every step... but i was from mobile.. on a bus....


let's see again:

➜  /boot dpkg -i linux-image-6.13.8-kirkwood-tld-1_1_armel.deb
(Reading database ... 43407 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack linux-image-6.13.8-kirkwood-tld-1_1_armel.deb ...
Unpacking linux-image-6.13.8-kirkwood-tld-1 (1) over (1) ...
Setting up linux-image-6.13.8-kirkwood-tld-1 (1) ...
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-6.13.8-kirkwood-tld-1
➜  /boot mkimage -A arm -O linux -T ramdisk -C gzip -a 0x00000000 -e 0x00000000 -n initramfs-6.13.8-kirkwood-tld-1 -d initrd.img-6.13.8-kirkwood-tld-1 uInitrd

Image Name:   initramfs-6.13.8-kirkwood-tld-1
Created:      Wed Mar 26 20:40:22 2025
Image Type:   ARM Linux RAMDisk Image (gzip compressed)
Data Size:    6614977 Bytes = 6459.94 KiB = 6.31 MiB
Load Address: 00000000
Entry Point:  00000000
➜  /boot sync
➜  /boot ls -lh /boot/uInitrd
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6.4M Mar 26 20:40 /boot/uInitrd

seems like it's not going to brick, is it?

> ➜ /boot ls -lh /boot/uInitrd
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6.4M Mar 26 20:40

> seems like it's not going to brick, is it?

Looks good! no fear.

-bodhi
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One more question: you tell to keep note of the kirkwood tds model, say kirkwood-nsa325, but I haven't used it anywhere: do I miss something else?

> One more question: you tell to keep note of the
> kirkwood tds model, say kirkwood-nsa325, but I
> haven't used it anywhere: do I miss something
> else?

When you installed the u-boot 2017.07, you have defined the u-boot env dtb_file. It looks like this

dtb_file=/boot/dts/kirkwood-nsa325.dtb

You can do

fw_printenv

and it will list all u-boot envs, including that model name.

-bodhi
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Thank you very much
Somehow fw_pribt env wasn't installed so I had to follow some guide here on the forum
I'm. No expert but I see this line:

dtb_file=/boot/dts/kirkwood-nsa325.dtb

So I guess I'm done