Booting Debian on Pogoplug Pro

dinjo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Makes me think to move to Raspberry Pi , the
> kernel is older on Pogo Pro , several issues with
> systemd changes not available for OXNAS

You will miss the Gbit Ethernet, if using it to serve files. Also the Raspi needs the connecting USB HDD to provide its own separate power (or any device that draws more power than a USB thumb drive).

So if you stay with the PogoPro:

1. If you don't care about getting the latest bug fixes, then what ingmar_k did is an excellent choice. No more to worry about booting problem.
2. If you want to be able to update the system frequently, then SATA boot drive is the best approach. And you have 2 choices:
a. Put only the rootfs on the SATA drive and boot with it. It a simple thing to do. I've learned from oddballhero that you can route the SATA cable through the gap at the lower front side, and indeed it fits when I tried. So the outside look is clean w/o modding.
b. Use WarheadsSE NAND-bypass-SATA booting as shv mentioned above. It's the same as far as running the cable. But the advantage is WarheadsSE is still supporting it, so there is good chance that the kernel will be upgraded to 3.x.x

@bodhi:
I thought that in any case the CPU tries to boot from SATA if a drive is connected even it is not prepared for NAND-bypass. In this case booting from NAND isn't possible if SATA drive is connected. Maybe I am wrong. Can you please give me some more details if booting from NAND with just the rootfs on SATA drive is possible?

ingmar_k Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> There are newer kernel sources and with Debian I
> don't think there are the same problems as with
> Arch.
> I am running my Pogos with Kernel 3.1. and
> Emdebian Stable. I can't say anything about
> longterm stabilty of Kernel 3.1., though.. So far
> I didn't run into any problems, however.


Actually, I haven't tried ingmar_k's newer kernel yet, but I am not quite sure I will, since I am running the pogo as my TV-server with three USB receivers connected to it and mediatomb serving the live TV to any DLNA client (like, e.g., my upscaling BluRay player). Couldn't really ask for a lot more ...

Actually, this is not quite true, it is just a B04 I am talking about. Most probably, the Pro, which is still in the cupboard, will get ingmar's treatment ...

---
Standart ist der Standardfehler

@shv:
As long as the kernel has SATA-support compiled into it, booting the kernel from NAND, with rootfs on SATA should work, like with any other SCSI storage device.
But, I didn't try it yet personally. So, just a theory of mine, before anyone asks.

ingmar_k Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> @shv:
> As long as the kernel has SATA-support compiled
> into it, booting the kernel from NAND, with rootfs
> on SATA should work, like with any other SCSI
> storage device.
> But, I didn't try it yet personally. So, just a
> theory of mine, before anyone asks.

@shv,

I meant what ingmar_k said above. So 2 different ways to boot SATA.

1. The kernel uImage is in NAND already. So the rootfs on SATA is all we need.
2. The NAND-bypass ignores the kernel in NAND, and uses the kernel on the 1st partition on the SATA drive. The 2nd partition on the SATA drive has the rootfs. This is possible because in this method WarheadsSE has implemented the necessary trigger.

IIRC, people on Arch site have tried both approaches, both work fine.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/15/2013 06:15PM by bodhi.

@shv
Can you upload the file on a freehost like mediafire I'm unable to download from any of those hosts

Just confirming with this debian i would able to boot 2 USB drives together and would be on new kernel ?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/15/2013 10:14PM by dinjo.

The kernel version is 2.6.31.6. So it is the same kernel version as you have with ALARM. You can boot even if you have more than the boot stick connected to the pogoplug. In this case the boot stick must be plugged in the USB connector next to the Enternet connector.

Can you please try to download the file again with Firefox or some other download manager? I have no account at Mediafire.

Just prepared my Pogo V3 PRO for a little experiment. Ordered a PM362 (Jmicron JMB362 based mini PCIe half height SATA Controller with 2 ports) online and will try some Port Multiplier, Raid5, LVM2 action when it's here. :-D
Just finished a little reconfiguration of my 3.1 kernel build (thanks again to the Arch Linux Team). I'm now at Version 1.6, with full raid and SATA support.
Added an external eSATA port to my Pogo and a 3-Pin serial header, too.

Once the PM362 is here I'll interchange it with the wireless module and will let you know how it all works out.

The plan is to use 4x 2TB in Raid5, in 2x Sil5744 based eSATA enclosures that both take up 2 disks. So, theoretically, I should be able to run the enclosures in JBOD mode, while running all disks in software raid5, through mdadm. Then I should be able to use LVM2 to create 2x 3TB partitions/volumes in order to be able to backup my 2 Seagate 3TB drives.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/21/2013 04:09PM by ingmar_k.

Hi,
where can i download the 3.1 Kernel?

You can find the kernel source here:
https://github.com/WarheadsSE/OX820-3.1-Linux

I already compiled some kernels for testing. If you want to give them a try, they are available here:
http://www.hs-augsburg.de/~ingmar_k/Pogoplug_V3/kernels/

If you should try my kernels, please give some feedback as to whether they run stable on your system, or not.

Warning: high disk & memory load can cause cache coherency lockups.

I tested high memory and CPU load recently, with the help of stress. It ran without any problems for hours on full CPU+Memory load. So I guess the real problems could start with high disk IO load. Didn't test that yet! That's why I said that I'd like to hear some feedback.

And thanks again to WarheadsSE and the ARCH team for their work!

BTW, I just needed the 3.1 kernel for the NAND install with compressed UBIfs. Somehow couldn't get that to work with the older kernels.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/30/2013 05:32AM by ingmar_k.

I tried your kernel 2.6.31.14. In comparision to WarheadsSEs kernel 2.6.31.6 your kernel supports more FTDI USB2SERIAL interfaces. The wireless module rt3390sta doesn't work with the integrated wireless module in Pogoplug Pro.

I want to compile the driver of the wireless moduel as I did for WarheadsSEs kernel. Where can I find the sources and patches of your 2.6.31.14 kernel for OX820?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/01/2013 01:22PM by shv.

You can get the normal, vanilla kernel sources from kernel.org and the patchset from telzey, here:
http://archlinuxarm.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=2472&start=10

I don't remember which patches I did apply. It's a bit of tinkering, but it should work.

Thanks. In the meantime I was able to compile the WLAN driver. My feedback for your kernel 2.6.31.14 is that USB devices are working well. I tested a FTDI interface and a PCSC cardreader which were not working before. A little badnews is that the troughput for reading and writing of SATA and USB harddrives is 10-20% worse than with WarheadsSEs 2.6.31.6 kernel.

Hints to improve the USB and SATA throughput by changing kernel configuration options are welcome.

I'm not using any of the older kernels anymore, because of the NAND limitations. And quite frankly I lack the time to do much at all with my Pogos, at the moment..
So I can't give you any feedback concerning kernel 2.6.31.14.
My tip for kernel testing:
Setup a tftp and nfs server and have your kernel loaded via tftp and the filesystem via nfs. This way, experimenting with newly compiled kernel images and/or rootfs versions is much easier and quicker to handle.

Testing of kernels is not a problem because I am using a SATA drive connected to the SATA port. So I don't need to flash any testing kernels.

@shv: I tested your archive debian-squeeze-pogoplugpro-shv-test.2.1.tar.gz on my Pogoplug V3 after I installed ArchARM today. Thank you for your work! I ran into a problem:

The /etc/resolv.conf contained a wrong nameserver entry and I couldn't ping any external hostnames. I'm checking the config of the dhcpclient now to see what went wrong.

Cheers,
hepi

Could the problem be caused by the following entry in resolv.conf: search fritz.box? But I think this entry should also be overwritten by the dhcpclient.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/09/2013 01:59PM by shv.

Have just setup my pogo with shv's rootfs, also bumped into the resolv.conf problem.
It seems installing the resolvconf package fixed this!

the two commands solved the issue that bothers me several days
what a huge help for me

/sbin/depmod -a 
/sbin/modprobe gmac

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/04/2013 08:21AM by berli.

berli,

So did you resolve your network problem described in the other thread with these commands?

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

@ALL

Can anyone upload the debian tarball to another host just cannot get it downloaded at all

Can you upload the debian tarball on a another host i cannot get the download started from any of the hosts.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/07/2013 10:33PM by dinjo.

I was able to get the debian version ., but due to some reason i cannot get automount working for my external drive i have added in fstab too but then too automount not works though manually mounting works,

I could provide an udev automount skript next days.

I'll wait for it.

Please find attached an udev automount script.

Hi folks

I have had arch linux arm on pogo for quite some time but recently that project came to end of line. I still have a rootfs that I can bring the plug to life with but can't install any packages since the software versions in pacman repos obviously changed. That got me looking to install debian. I tried the root tarball from SHV and pogo does not seem to get a network. It blinks and then the LED goes dark. Nothing on the router. I tried the methods on blogs including rescue_install.sh and it complained of me needing to update the uboot. I tried the uboot_update script and it told me that the signature did not match. I searched around and saw that forcing it [even if I knew how :-) ] was not a good idea.

Is there a way for the plugs that had arch linux till now to be able to use the same kernel on NVRAM and use deb rootfs as the system? If so is there a rootfs?

At present my current arch linux root image has following uImage.pci/nopci with version number 2.6.31.6_SMP_820

Any help ?
Thanks a lot

Thanks shiv the file should go to /etc/udev/rules.d right ? Also i see there is no mention of ext3 ?

sxk Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hi folks
>
> I have had arch linux arm on pogo for quite some
> time but recently that project came to end of
> line. I still have a rootfs that I can bring the
> plug to life with but can't install any packages
> since the software versions in pacman repos
> obviously changed. That got me looking to install
> debian. I tried the root tarball from SHV and pogo
> does not seem to get a network. It blinks and then
> the LED goes dark. Nothing on the router. I tried
> the methods on blogs including rescue_install.sh
> and it complained of me needing to update the
> uboot. I tried the uboot_update script and it told
> me that the signature did not match. I searched
> around and saw that forcing it [even if I knew how
> :-) ] was not a good idea.
>
> Is there a way for the plugs that had arch linux
> till now to be able to use the same kernel on
> NVRAM and use deb rootfs as the system? If so is
> there a rootfs?
>
> At present my current arch linux root image has
> following uImage.pci/nopci with version number
> 2.6.31.6_SMP_820
>
> Any help ?
> Thanks a lot

If your ALARM kernel on NAND is older (I think before July 2012). Try Varkey's Debian rootfs:
http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?3,6336,6371#msg-6371

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



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/13/2013 10:18PM by bodhi.