Messages

1

Zaurus - Hardware discussion / Re: C1000, C3000, C3200: memory layout

« on: January 28, 2021, 03:36:21 pm »

I thought it was lost forever but I still had a copy

 

2

Zaurus - Arch Linux ARM support / Re: Update: C1000 / Akita support

« on: January 26, 2021, 05:03:01 pm »

Hello and welcome back,

about the differences,  as mentioned the only one between spitz and akita in kernel is that akita needs this:
 CONFIG_GPIO_PCA953X=y
which iirc selects as well
 CONFIG_GPIO_PCA953X_IRQ=y

Apart this the kernels are identical.

Now, about power management...bad notes.
So refined as with 2.x is still a dream :/

At lest som e4.x kexecboot can 'suspend' from within kexecboot (in menu is shutdown).

cheers
A.A.

3

Zaurus - Other distros support / Zaurus Updater 2017.05 released

« on: May 19, 2017, 07:14:35 pm »

I asked because when I visited the LinuxPDA page I seen stuff for the collie. Was more curious about LinuxPDA. Not a lot of info on it that I could find

Hi,

LinuxPDA is a project started by Dmitry, one of the few Zaurus kernel developers.
It was meant like a database for the handheld/palmtop/pocket/wearable devices supported under Linux.

See:
https://github.com/LinuxPDA/linuxpda.github.io

Nowadays I put there images self-built with OpenEmbedded.
These are test images for new kernels, not complete distros.

Cheers
Ant

4

Zaurus - Other distros support / Zaurus Updater 2017.05 released

« on: May 18, 2017, 05:10:33 pm »

I have tested the script on my Akita, I'm posting here my list of issues/suggestions so that it is easier to track them:

1) When trying to change the partition size to anything above the 64MB limit, a warning should be printed in case the required mainte_fix.bin file is missing from the SD/CF card and the table of the new requested partition sizes should not be printed, in order to avoid confusion. If the file is present, a message should be shown that it has been found and it is being used.

There is exactly a check and a warning added at the start of updater.sh.
It is possible to detect if the mainte_fix.bin was flashed indirectly, because ( at least on my C860 fresh restored) it screws and defaults to 7M SMF + 30M root +27M home, total 64M...  
Strange that you did not trigger it...
Remember the new sizes ARE flashed and recent kexecboot kernel does detect correctly 100M root.
It is just that kernel2/updater.sh has a wrong idea about the partitions so it is wise to signale it immediately.

2) Add in the Readme file on LinuxPDA's page that, if one or more valid files are present, the updater will automatically flash them, if no other file is present, the Partition Manager will start instead. Before flashing the files, maybe a 5s countdown timer could be added, to ask to press R + OK to access the partition manager (which should already work, haven't tested it yet)?

My initial idea was to put an empty file called 'repartition' but we decided to detect the 'no files' path.
The countdown could be not easy to manage it in few lines.

About R + OK I meant that for entering the maintenance mode: you usually remove battery an press PowerON + OK.
Actually it just needs a reset, so when you are in kexecboot and press R to reboot it detects the OK keypress and starts updater.sh if present.

3) When viewing the partitions, the mtd1/2/3 partition names could be added above the smf, root, home labels?

Actually these are the standard mainte kernel names: these are not the filesystem labels.

4) When finished viewing the partitions (1) or erasing them (3), it would be nice to have a "press a key to return to the menu" option. If not possible, a "press a key to reboot" message could be printed and a reboot triggered, otherwise the only way to exit is to unplug the power charger and to take off the battery.

Ehm..you DO return to the main menu.
Try entering 1.
To exit/reboot you just press 0, no need to take out the battery.

5) When asked for "Resize partition?", if n is pressed, print a "Resizing aborted, press a key to reboot..." message and reboot, instead of remaining stuck with no option

Why no option? You are back in the menu, as above, try entering 1 to view partitions.

6) When resizing the partitions, it would be handy to print the existing partition sizes before asking for the new partition sizes

Well, ok, there is menu 1 View for this...I have mimicked fdisk and similar 'nix tools

7) Might be useful to add a note that the smf partition can't be resized, and that the home partition size will be automatically calculated to fill the remaining space on NAND

If you think, yes.
This is like that by design.

The string "sl_time nand_read_time" is printed during the boot... debug text possibly?

I don't see that one, but another message about module devinfo missing.
This is the mainte kernel2, we cannot do anything.

9) "Partition Manager?" is asked, IMHO "Run the Partition Manager?" sounds better. Same for "Finished!" at the end of flashing instead of "Finish!".

Please remember the screen of poodle is only 30 chars. I have designed it to fit one line.

About "Finish", this is the parent script exiting, the one launching updater.sh. We cannot change that.

Varti

Thanks for testing
Ant

5

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / Zaurus Kexecboot-enabled Kernels

« on: February 18, 2013, 11:48:46 am »

Update 2013:

note there is a decently updated set of kexecboot-kernels for Zaurus at kexecboot.org.

Cheers

Ant

6

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / Zaurus Kexecboot-enabled Kernels

« on: November 02, 2010, 08:59:24 pm »

Please download an image for your Zaurus at http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/narcissus
Those images contain in /boot a kernel, an icon and a boot.cfg which you can adapt.

Regards

Ant

7

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / Zaurus Kexecboot-enabled Kernels

« on: November 02, 2010, 07:20:42 am »

Ok, I hope the person who made this kernel is reading this thread. Regarding the new gui - EWW! It displays in a huge splash "Angstrom" while hiding the kernel messages. I thought this was a kexec boot kernel, not an angstrom one. I don't even have Angstrom on my zaurus and as far as I can tell Angstrom has never been stable on the zaurus anyway.

Second issue, it still takes F.O.R.E.V.E.R to scan the internal flash. Please disable it or fix it.

Third issue, this new gui, once it has finally scanned and found the bootable kernels, does not show the name (label) of the selection like the old one did. Before I had a list that showed "Debian Eabi" and "Sharp JP rom". Now it just tells me on which partition it found the kernel. If I didn't already know which partition booted which OS from the previous kernel I would be guessing here. Not good for any new users of this kernel.

I'm going back to the previous, better kernel. Thanks for the continued work though, but I would like it to improve things instead of degrading.

Purposedly, we try to hide everything to the user.
There is a kernel bootlogo and printk loglevel is set to 3.
Which information do you need from kexecboot micro-kernel? ATM it has wrong idea about resized mtdparts, those are re-read by the kexecboot binary in the initramfs.
FWIW we are working to add some logging but just the debug output you would see on serial once compiled with --enable-debug, no kernel output.

About label, check your /boot/boot.cfg.

Finally, about the logo, it all depends on the distro you're compiling but is purely cosmetic thing. Most distros are using standard OpenEmbedded logo (the OE one) but Angstrom has own.
Ideally we would use the original white/red SHARP logo but it seems there could be some copyright issue.

Regards

Ant

8

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / Zaurus Kexecboot-enabled Kernels

« on: November 02, 2010, 07:12:41 am »

Hello,

I've uploaded the 2.6.36 versions.
Kexecboot has not changed, is the latest version with new gui.
Please test and report (here or on Zaurus PDA developers list <zaurus-devel@lists.linuxtogo.org>)

Regards

Ant

P.S.
About slow nand scan, it takes almost 30 seconds for scanning *two* jffs2 in nand, so it is not that slow...
BUT, if you still have old 2.4 jffs2 images, this could take much longer.
Please be sure to properly erase the nand (flash_erase_all -j /dev/mtd[2:3]) and optionally flash *recent* jffs2 images.

P.P.S.
Boot options (and label) are read from /boot/boot.cfg. Create it if your distro is lacking it
(see ex http://cgit.openembedded.org/cgit.cgi/open...oot-cfg_0.1.bb)

9

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / Zaurus Kexecboot-enabled Kernels

« on: October 26, 2010, 05:26:27 am »

Hi,

new roundup of linux-kexecboot 2.6.2x kernels with new GUI.

http://projects.linuxtogo.org/projects/zaurus/

Soon 2.6.36 will follow (still with old ATA deprecated driver, giving /dev/hd* to the microdrive and CF cards).

Regards

Ant

P.S. rootfs images can be downloaded at http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/narcissus

10

Ubuntu / Zubuntu From Flash Attempt 2

« on: June 18, 2010, 06:55:32 am »

Thanks for the info ant. Do those kernels scan the nand any faster? Whatever kexec kernel I am currently using will sit there for like 2 minutes trying to read the nand.

Yeah, detection of jffs2 images is painfully slow...I hope someone will rewrite the code but the real speedup will come when UBI/UBIFS will be used instead of JFFS2.

BTW I had better results on my very-old SD card (around 25-30 secs):

http://fr.pastebin.ca/1877331 (no images on nand)
http://fr.pastebin.ca/1877332 (2 images on nand)


Regards

Andrea

11

Ubuntu / Zubuntu From Flash Attempt 2

« on: June 18, 2010, 06:06:15 am »

MTD partitions can be hardcoded into the kernel or defined through the kernel command line. kexecboot kernels provided by openembedded default to partitions hardcoded into the kernel. the partitions are defined in "/drivers/mtd/nand/sharpsl.c". Now, i presume you want one partition of maximum size (121Mib i believe). This is a problem since the zubuntu flash installer assumes two partitions as defined by the sharp rom and it's derivatives (or maybe early 2.4 kernel based pdaxrom builds, i can't remember) while the kexecboot kernel also assumes two (or three?)  partitions but of different sizes. I think that's your problem.
...

This is no longer true: since december 2009 kexecboot is able to read the mtdparts from nand so you can resize the partitions.

Most kexeboot kernels out in the web are outdated.
Some don't boot from CF, others have an old kexecboot in the initramfs.

Please use the latest versions here: http://projects.linuxtogo.org/frs/?group_id=55

The 2.6.2x just work. The 2.6.34-rc have been tested only on clamshells.
We are working on the kernel 2.6.34 for Zaurus: this will be available very soon.

Regards

Ant

P.S. the updater.sh provides a simple way to flash 2 bootable jffs2 distros in nand: rename the first initrd.bin and the second home.bin

12

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / Zaurus Kexecboot-enabled Kernels

« on: February 17, 2010, 10:35:13 am »

>I still can't boot Cacko from NAND with my C860. I've used the 2.6.26 image.

I don't think this can be done with unpatched cacko kernel.
There is unfortunately a fundamental issue: the 2.4 kernels look for the bootparams in an old deprecated way/location.
The old sharp/cacko kernel has own hacks for reading the params passed by the bootloader and just ignores the cmdline passed by kexec...so mtdparts (for nand partitioning) are wrong.

Pity, because kexecboot-kernel can now read the partitioning from nand so you can repartition the device as you like.
All 2.6.2x/2.6.3x kernels will get the mtdparts from kexecboot appended commandline.

FYI, this was my test of cacko lite 1.23 on SL-C860.

1) install cacko and repartition e.g. mtd2 to 19mb as suggested
2) flash kexecboot kernel
3) create a small (few mb) partition on SD/CF and copy Cacko kernel on it as /boot/zImage
4) create on that partition on SD/CF a /boot/boot.cfg like this:

LABEL=Cacko
KERNEL=/boot/zImage
APPEND=console=ttyS0,115200n8 console=tty1 noinitrd
root=/dev/mtdblock2 rootfstype=jffs2 debug

Result: Cacko flashed on nand recognizes the params (passed from bootloader), booted from SD wrongly defaults to 30mb...(on SL-C860)

Regards
Ant

13

Angstrom & OpenZaurus / Zaurus Kexecboot-enabled Kernels

« on: February 12, 2010, 01:26:47 pm »

Latest 2.6.26 and beta 2.6.33-rc6 images here:  http://projects.linuxtogo.org/projects/zaurus/

Ant

14

Ubuntu / Can Boot Zubuntu From Sd But Not From Cf Card

« on: February 12, 2010, 01:24:24 pm »

>Has anybody had any luck using kexecboot on a C760 with the rootfs on a CF card. Mine in 16MB, maybe that's a problem.

Try this 2.6.26 kernel   http://projects.linuxtogo.org/projects/zaurus/
(The 2.6.33-rc6 have still some minor issues)

Ant

15

6000 - Tosa / Angstrom Status On Tosa

« on: June 03, 2009, 07:46:16 am »

>I replaced my copies of:
...
>the only notable difference appears to be not checking out the stable/2009 branch.

Yes...the fixes are only in .dev branch at the moment.

A patch for .stable branch is expected very soon.

Regards

Ant