Bounty offered: Earn a Pogoplug E02 for mainline U-Boot SATA fix on Pogoplug V4...

Bounty offered: Earn a Pogoplug E02 for fixing SATA on Mainline U-Boot for Pogoplug Series 4...

STATUS AND BOUNTY OFFER:
Can you solve this U-Boot<->SATA problem? If you can fix it, you could win a Pogoplug E02.

I picked up a Pogoplug Series 4 on the cheap, and very much want to use it in a special project. It took me just a few days succeed in the following:
- board initialization, normal ethernet & netconsole functions
- correct UART-based booting, so that JTAG is unneeded
- USB access and booting from USB
- SD/MMC Card access and booting (not included in current patch, since it has is not part of mainline)
Here is the current/basic patch. It should apply cleanly on top of current U-Boot git or the 2012.04 release.

The catch is that I've not been able to get SATA port to function correctly. I can turn it on, control the SATA LED indicators (w/ MPP stuff already in u-boot:kirkwood), but disc access isn't working). There are several possibilities as to what the problem is:

A. Something more needs to be done in initializing the board, so that the SATA bridge (built-in to the SoC) powers the initializes the port and recognizes the drive correctly

B. A setting with the MPP's or GPIO needs to be tweaked

C. Some subtle change to either common/cmd_ide.c or drivers/block/mv_sata.c needs to be made.

D. CloudEngines left a few lines to key pins unconnected, or other unknown problem(s)...


I am aware that the original source from CloudEngines was patched to enable SATA access/booting, and so deservedly so, many thanks to the good folks over at ArchLinuxArm for doing that. Unfortunately, this is from old proprietary source, and it also does not support w/ MMC/SD Card read access from within U-Boot. While this solution allows booting from SATA, it really doesn't do anything for moving this 6192 device to mainline, and it uses this older Marvell-ish code. It is not a solution for me.




References and links:
CloudEngines' pogomv-u-boot.tar.bz2 source code for the OEM u-boot

Official Marvell Docs for this SoC:
88F619x Hardware Specifications - HW_88F619x_OpenSource.pdf
Functional Specifications : 88F6180_9x_6281_OpenSource.pdf

Denx U-Boot official git repository http://www.denx.de/wiki/DULG/UBootVersions

current basic patch for Pogoplug V4-A3-01 : minimal, w/ functional USB, no MMC, no SATA

U-Boot w/ MMC/SD Card BOoting for Pogoplug Series 4 at Doozan Forum

U-Boot Mailing List:
thread started by me RE:
Problem w/ SATA on Kirkwood 88F6192 Board
6192 vs 6281 : misidentification by U-Boot





CONDITIONS/REQUIREMENTS: (rules; nitty gritty, legalese-oid details; fine print):
0. The winning patch must overlay on top of this current patch, which provides board (CPU, SDRAM, USB, gigabit ethernet) initialization, and USB booting. This current patch also allows for a further patch that enables MMC/SD Card access/booting.

1. The patch must correctly initialize the SATA port on any POGO-V4-A3-01 (Pogoplug Series 4), support all ide-related commands in U-Boot (ide reset, ext2ls ide 0:1, etc), using a standard SATA drive directly attached to the top-side SATA port. After booting from SATA, the SATA port must be functional in Linux, and support normal read/write access to a rootfs or data share partition(s). [Accessing or booting from a SATA drive connected to a USB-SATA bridge is excluded.]

2. The successful entry will consist of a patch file (applied by usual 'patch -p1 < patchname.patch' command, and must compile using the usual codesourcery-2009.q3 toolchain that most of us use for compiling U-Boot.

3. The patch must apply directly to U-Boot current stable release (2012.04) or current git http://git.denx.de/u-boot.git . [This excludes any older sources from Marvell, CloudEngines or other sources.] You certainly may examine the CloudEngines U-Boot source code to get information about the board and such, but a winning patch must applied to the two sources listed in this requirement, above.

4. The bounty consists of a Pogoplug E02, power cord, and ethernet cable. Shipping to any destination within the United States (up to $12.50 USD cost) will be included. Shipping overseas will be subsidized up to $12.50 USD cost, but anything beyond that will be the responsibility of the winner. Shipping will be tracked/signature-confirmation, where available/possible.

5. Offer valid until either a winner is declared, or until contest is suspended. I can't see any reason why I would have to void the offer, but I reserve the right to do so.

6. Decision of the judge (me ;) ) is final. I will check in every few days to assess any developments. You can send me PM's through Jeff's site here, if you want to submit something to me, and you don't feel secure just attaching the patch to your post, you can PM me and we'll work out something w/ a Pogoplug Cloud dropbox.

7. You you submit the patch to U-Boot mainline (via U-Boot Mailing List), or if you'd rather, we could co-submit it. The point is to increase support for 88F6192 devices in mainline.

8. Void where prohibited. YMMV. Travel at your own risk. You brick it, you bought it. Offer may end at any time.

=====================================================

• davy's Github Repo's rescue-dg

Edited 8 time(s). Last edit at 04/15/2012 08:24PM by davygravy.

but SATA works ok with archlinuxarm u-boot, you can boot even from SD/MMC card if you'll write the kernel in nand-space. In my opinion there is no need to "mainline" this u-boot as far as it works well enough to:

- boot from nand
- boot from usb 2.0
- boot from sata
- boot from sd/mmc & usb 3.0*

* - booting a kernel in nand that points to a filesystem in the external device

Let's not dissuade problem solving and improved solutions. Why discourage that sort of thing? Especially if you are not the person setting up the bounty/offer/challenge...

Well, I suppose everyone is entitled to their own opinion. While I respect you and your opinion (and your expertise), I disagree with any notion that requiring a kernel to be flashed to NAND in order to use a SD/MMC card is just as open and flexible as being able to load both kernel and rootfs from any source:

• NAND
• USB
• MMC/SD card, or
• SATA

A good example of this would be either the Guruplug eSATA or the DreamPlug. I don't think you'll find a user of either of those devices who seriously felt that being able to load both kernel and rootfs from any/all of NAND, USB, MMC/SD or SATA is, well, not really something they want, and instead choose to go to a bootloader that has less capability and less flexibility.

A complete bootloader that can boot (load both kernel and rootfs) from all devices, built-in, or attached, is the better solution.

I'm not saying that the U-Boot from ArchLinuxArm is not good. It _is_ good, and users appreciate it, I'm sure. Would the solution I'm encouraging be better? I can't see how anyone could say no to that.

=====================================================

• davy's Github Repo's rescue-dg

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/15/2012 04:53PM by davygravy.

Davygravy: "Would the solution I'm encouraging be better?"

For me it is a resounding YES! I wish I had the technical skills in UBoot area to lend you a hand or take up the challenge :-)

Like you said, the U-Boot from ArchLinuxArm is very good and it serves its purpose. But I wish I can use Debian 3.x.x kernel with it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/15/2012 05:43PM by bodhi.

I know this thread is old :-) But since I have successfully booted Debian on either a USB 2.0 or SATA drive with ArchLinuxArm UBoot, I just want to report this in case somebody needs to do this.

@bodhi:
I would like to use Debianwith on my Pogoplug Series 4. Can you please explain how to do it?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/17/2013 02:27AM by shv.

Since we are a little off topic in this thread, I will create a new thread for it.