Is there a newer u-boot for Netgear Stora (RD-88F6281A LE)

Been there; done that. I've stopped and restarted kwboot *many* times while the stora was stuck in this frozen state. I originally broke into the NSA320 using kwboot to load another uboot. It only took a few tries. I spent three hours yesterday. I really don't think uart boot is possible on this platform given its got the older boortom like the dockstar. I even tried that crazy post from davygravy's kwboot thread using the hacked picocom and using a true uart uboot. The handshake never happens.

The dockstar at least has an easy jtag interface. The stora requires soldering wires to various solder pads on the board and I'm not about to do that yet.

And for giggles, I tried booting the 3.14-tld-2 kernel from the stock uboot but I couldn't get it to boot up. I always get a panic where it can't find the root partition. I rebuilt the initrd twice as that's burnt me in the past but I never see the disks being recognized and enumerated. (3.14-tld-1 is running fine on my NSA320. I held off updating the dockstar and pogo-v4 as I was hoping for a consistent rootfs between all four.)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/18/2014 09:57AM by kraqh3d.

kraqh3d ,

Bummer! I wonder what is the difference between your Stora and heychrist's Stora, could it be the boot ROM version?. And have you tried booting with stock U-Boot, and the basic 3.14.0-tld-1 rootfs, with 3.14.0-tld-2 kernel installed on top, on a USB thumb?

And I had seen similar initrd problem on my plug in the past. I think it's a bug in the process of creating the Debian package. Sometime it did not clean up all the /etc/kernel/... scripts so the root got hardcoded to a default value. What I did was purging all previous kernel packages in that plug, leaving only the current version, and the problem with mounting root was gone.

-bodhi
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This stinks. I really want to safely test out your 2014.01 u-boot. I hope heychris pokes in soon and can respond. I'm very curious what he did. It could be a difference in the bootRom version.

It seem like your kernel should boot with the stock u-boot. I was going to attempt to boot my Stora's boot stick on the NSA as a test to determine if the issue is with the initrd or not. I suspect its the initrd as I've had similar issues in the past where the deb package installation produced a bad initrd. However manually generating a new one with update-initramfs -c -k VERSION has worked in the past so I'm not sure. ((HMMM... I might've forgotten to make a new uImage from new initrd file! Let me check that first.))

*edit* Nope. I even made a new initrd and a new uImage for a test. It still panics. Let me think about your idea. The problem is going to be installing the new kernel and removing the old one when I cant boot the tld-1 kernel on the Stora. I tried. I get the error about the incorrect arcNumber. Though I guess I could boot it on the NSA and then update it there. And even validate it boots with tld-2 (Assuming it supports all the previous arcNumbers plus Stora, right?)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/19/2014 10:21AM by kraqh3d.

kraqh3d,

Yes, the Stora is in addition to all other Kirkwood plugs. Aggree, I would boot the NSA320 with a pristine rootfs 3.14.0-tld-1 on USB, upgrade it to tld-2 kernel, and take the USB to the Stora. Boot the Stora and interrupt serial console, set arcNumber to the Stora's, and set bootargs to appropriate settings, and boot it without saving envs.

-bodhi
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Bodhi,,

Thanks again for all your hard work.. Similarly to what I mentioned earlier... I have 3 boxes.. They all run your rootfs and uboot:
U-Boot 2013.10 (Feb 22 2014 - 15:26:05)-tld-2

Unfortunately your kernel still gives the machID 0x00000ab7 unknown error

I'm running the kernel I mentioned earlier that I compiled from https://github.com/kirov/stora-debian-kernel

I tried your newer u-boot http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?3,12381
It boots right up.. no problems. I'm looking forward to trying EFI. Any pointers there?

Hi Chris,

> I tried your newer u-boot http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?3,12381. It boots right up.. no problems. I'm looking forward to trying EFI. Any pointers there?

Just to confirm, so you no longer have unknow machid error with the new U-Boot? this error usually can be fixed with fw_setenv machid 0x00000ab7.

For EFI, really there is no need to do anything in U-Boot. Other than make sure you format it with parted/gparted in Linux. If you use a different file system then remember to adjust your U-Boot env for rootfstype.

-bodhi
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For clarity..

I interrupt boot

setenv serverip 192.168.0.100
setenv ipaddr 192.168.0.200
tftp 0x800000 uboot.2014.07-tld-1.netgear_ms2110.mtd0.kwb
nand erase 0x0 0x80000
nand write.e 0x800000 0x0 0x80000

I then take a fresh drive format it /dev/sda1 to ext4, /dev/sda2 swap.

I then extract Debian-3.14.0-kirkwood-tld-1-rootfs-bodhi.tar.bz2 to /dev/sda1

and extract linux-3.15.3-kirkwood-tld-1-bodhi.tar.bz2 To /boot

on reboot,

I get the the machID 0x00000ab7 unknown error

if I extract the kernel I built to /boot/ I can boot up without any issue.


If the kernel should work. I'll try it again.. Hopefully I didn't mess it up.

Ah! when you see that error again, pls capture and post the log for reference.

This error can be fixed by setting the machid in u-boot:

> setenv machid ab7

-bodhi
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My apologies. I must have made a mistake somewhere on the last attempt.

From scratch, I built a hard drive with your latest rootfs. My understanding is that it doesn't have a stora compatible kernel. I then moved over your latest kernel with the latest rootfs and latest u-boot and they are all working without issue.

As the u-boot is built with machid = ab7, I didn't have to specifiy that in the u-boot variables.

Cool! thanks for testing Chris.

-bodhi
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Also I noticed this message..

Using machid 0x691 from environment

I wonder why that's different...


Bodhi,

Do you think this setup could work with grub-uboot or grub-efi-arm


Kernel requirements for grub on ARM

The only real requirement on the kernel is that:
It is built as a simple zImage (none of that uImage wizardry!),
it is built with Flattened Device Tree (FDT) support and
that it does not simply append that device tree to the kernel image.

A compliant U-Boot must be configured with
CONFIG_API

Hey Christ,

I believe 0x691 was the original machid for the reference board (1681), not the correct one to use with new kernel (0xab7, i.e. 2743). It would boot OK, but machid should match the kernel to take advantage of all the specific features of the Stora kernel.

Regarding Grub, all requirements except U-Boot CONFIG_API, can be met already (I will need to add zImage in the released tarball). However, what is the purpose of using Grub? is that so we can boot with different rootfs using a menu (we are running headless NAS...)?

-bodhi
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