GoFlexHome, flashed u-Boot, but envs flash failed - now what?

Hello,

first of all thanks for all the great input and learnings I got from this forum. It's fun playing around with these Kirkwood devices.

Now to my question: I got a GoFlexHome for cheap and started to make it useful by installing a more recent u-Boot version as described bodhi's instructions here:
https://forum.doozan.com/read.php?3,12381

I had finished step 7 and had flashed mtd0 without trouble. But for some reason, the GoFlexHome lost power before I could do step 8 and flash the u-Boot envs. Now the device is in a boot loop.

Without the envs in place, is it possible to make the device boot a system which will let me access it via ssh? Can I prepare a USB stick or a SATA drive?
Or do I have to do it the hard, i.e. the serial connection way?

Thanks for any help,
Christoph

Christoph,

This problem can be easily fixed with a couple different ways. One with serial console, the other with uEnv.txt.

Since you don't have serial console. You can do it with the uEnv.txt

Refer back to when you download the envs image in u-boot installation thread:

Quote
https://forum.doozan.com/read.php?3,12381

8. Flashing default u-boot envs image (if you are upgrading from 2016.05-tld-1 u-boot, you can skip this step 8).
.....
.....
a. Download the default u-boot envs at Dropbox:

uboot.2016.05-tld-1.environment.bodhi.tar
md5:
3823eef10011b864859d31a76470e0e3
sha256:
c8db95a4225e8d78bdaaaa372bd5a87e4b98f3448dd9c62fc96c72b2df1a997c

This tarball includes 3 files:

uboot.2016.05-tld-1.environment.img (the default envs image to be flashed)
uboot.2016.05-tld-1.environment (the content of the default envs in text format)
uboot.2016.05-tld-1.environment.64K.img (small envs image to be flashed on HP T5325 only).

The file uboot.2016.05-tld-1.environment is the envs listing that I used in creating the uboot.2016.05-tld-1.environment.img. This can be used as uEnv.txt.

Moun your rootfs on another Linux box. Copy the uboot.2016.05-tld-1.environment to the rootfs. Assuming it is mounted at /media/sdb1.

cd /media/sdb1/boot
cp -a uboot.2016.05-tld-1.environment uEnv.txt

And then adjust one env in this file.

Look for the env

dtb_file=/boot/dts/kirkwood-pogo_e02.dtb

Replace that with

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

That's it. Save the file and sync

sync

And unmount.

Take it to the GF Home and boot.

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

Wow, bodhi,

that was a very fast and very detailed answer. Thank you so much! And besides, the counter says this was your 15000th post here. Fifteen thousand! If there is a medal or something for supporting a community like this one, you should get it!

So this means u-Boot will check for and mount a rootfs on an USB attached storage, see if it finds a file named uEnv.txt and evaluate that? Which file system should the stick be formatted with? Ext3? And which system/distro would you recommend for this temporary situation?

Greetings from snowy Germany,
Christoph

christoph,

> So this means u-Boot will check for and mount a
> rootfs on an USB attached storage, see if it finds
> a file named uEnv.txt and evaluate that?

Yes, it is internally defined the same way as the deafult envs image. And there is a hook to look for uEnv.txt in each storage devices u-boot can find (USB, SATA, MMC).

> Which
> file system should the stick be formatted with?
> Ext3? And which system/distro would you recommend
> for this temporary situation?

Ah. I see that you have not created the rootfs. My latest released rootfs is Debian-5.2.9-kirkwood-tld-1-rootfs-bodhi.tar.bz2:

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

Scroll down to

Quote

Updated 25 Aug 2019:

Basic Debian buster Kirkwood rootfs for most Kirwood plugs:

- tarball size: 209M
- install size: 536M
- The init system used in this rootfs is sysvinit . To boot with systemd, see note 2 below.
- Installed packages: nano, avahi, ntp, busybox-syslogd (log to RAM), htop, isc-dhcp-client, dialog, bzip2, nfs server/client, iperf, ethtool, sysvinit-core, sysvinit, sysvinit-utils, u-boot-tools, and mtd-utils.
- see LED controls in /etc/rc.local, and /etc/init.d/halt
- see some useful aliases in /root/.profile
- root password: root

Download at Dropbox:

Debian-5.2.9-kirkwood-tld-1-rootfs-bodhi.tar.bz2

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

Thanks again, bodhi,

it worked like you said. The GoFlexHome appears to be booting from the USB stick now, as I get a steady LED now after a few seconds. I currently cannot see it on my network, though, but that might be the router's fault.
It's late, and I will continue some other time.

Christoph