Failure with Fedora21 and Cubieboard (the A10 one)

[Daniel Veillard]

  I tried over and over following the instructions at
 
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM/F21/Installation#For_the...

after copying the Fedora-Minimal-armhfp-21-5-sda.raw.xz pointed by the
doc n the sdcard (tried 2 different).
And the board doesn't boot ! No disk activity, nothing on the display.
I'm suspicious that the instruction only suggest to dd the uboot at
seek=8 so 8k into the block while the old script from Hans for F19
was doing both writing the uboot at 8 but also the uEnv-img.bin at
544.
Starts to worries me a lot since F19 is EOL'ed soon, I won't
have updates on my devices.

  What am I missing ?

Daniel

-- 
Daniel Veillard      | Open Source and Standards, Red Hat
veillard(a)redhat.com  | libxml Gnome XML XSLT toolkit  http://xmlsoft.org/
http://veillard.com/ | virtualization library  http://libvirt.org/

[Till Maas]

On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 01:20:25AM +0800, Daniel Veillard wrote:
>    I tried over and over following the instructions at
>   
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM/F21/Installation#For_the...
The instructions worked for my CubieBoard without any problems in the
week after Christmas.

>  Starts to worries me a lot since F19 is EOL'ed soon, I won't
>  have updates on my devices. 
Fedora 19 is already EOL.

>    What am I missing ? 
Maybe we can spot the error if you write exactly which commands you ran.

Regards
Till

[Kashyap Chamarthy]

On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 01:20:25AM +0800, Daniel Veillard wrote:
>    I tried over and over following the instructions at
>   
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM/F21/Installation#For_the...
>  
>  after copying the Fedora-Minimal-armhfp-21-5-sda.raw.xz pointed by the
>  doc n the sdcard (tried 2 different).
>  And the board doesn't boot ! No disk activity, nothing on the display.
>  I'm suspicious that the instruction only suggest to dd the uboot at
>  seek=8 so 8k into the block while the old script from Hans for F19
>  was doing both writing the uboot at 8 but also the uEnv-img.bin at
>  544. 
Hmm, that's what (write seek=8 blocks) I did in my test when writing the
U-boot onto a micrSD card with this image
Fedora-Minimal-armhfp-21_Beta-4-sda.raw.xz[1]

    $ sudo dd if=/tmp/root/usr/share/uboot/Cubietruck/u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin
of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1024 seek=8 conv=fsync,notrunc
    317+1 records in
    317+1 records out
    325440 bytes (325 kB) copied, 0.455528 s, 714 kB/s

Wonder why you don't see disk activity. . .

Last month when I tried Cubietruck with F21, I was able to successfuly
boot F21 via micrSD card after some fiddling around. My notes here [2]
(based on the above URL you mention).


[1]
http://be.mirror.eurid.eu/fedora/linux/releases/test/21-Beta/Images/armhf...
[2]
https://kashyapc.fedorapeople.org/arm/installing-Fedora-21-on-microSD-car...
 

-- 
/kashyap

[Daniel Veillard]

On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 08:29:38PM +0100, Till Maas wrote:
>  On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 01:20:25AM +0800, Daniel Veillard wrote:
>  >   I tried over and over following the instructions at
>  >  
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM/F21/Installation#For_the...
>  
>  The instructions worked for my CubieBoard without any problems in the
>  week after Christmas. 
  Ah,

>  > Starts to worries me a lot since F19 is EOL'ed soon, I
> won't
>  > have updates on my devices.
>  
>  Fedora 19 is already EOL. 
  somehow missed that

>  >   What am I missing ?
>  
>  Maybe we can spot the error if you write exactly which commands you ran. 
  It's a CubieBoard(v1) with an A10 second batch with 1GB of RAM, I
remember that Hans script was providing different entries for 512M
and 1GB RAM versions

On a thinkpad T510 with Fedora 21

  xzcat ~veillard/Fedora-Minimal-armhfp-21-5-sda.raw.xz > /dev/mmcblk0
(I tried with dd of=/dev/mmcblk0 too) the operation takes a little while ...
as usual.
sync

eject/reinsert card/umount the automatically mounted partitions

[root@thinkpad ~]# mount /dev/mmcblk0p3 /tmp/root
[root@thinkpad ~]# mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /tmp/boot
[root@thinkpad ~]# vi /tmp/root/etc/redhat-release 
check it's actually an F21, okidoc
[root@thinkpad ~]# dd
if=/tmp/root/usr/share/uboot/Cubieboard/u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1024
seek=8 conv=fsync,notrunc
307+1 records in
307+1 records out
315056 bytes (315 kB) copied, 0.029053 s, 10.8 MB/s
[root@thinkpad ~]# sync
[root@thinkpad ~]# umount /tmp/root
[root@thinkpad ~]# umount /tmp/boot

  Put the card in the Cubieboard, hook the display, power it on ...
red light for power and nothing.
  That same card was running F19 today but the SDcard it used with F19
exhibited problem and booting stops with FS failures, so the Cubie and
its SD reader is working.

Daniel

-- 
Daniel Veillard      | Open Source and Standards, Red Hat
veillard(a)redhat.com  | libxml Gnome XML XSLT toolkit  http://xmlsoft.org/
http://veillard.com/ | virtualization library  http://libvirt.org/

[Daniel Veillard]

On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 09:29:57PM +0100, Kashyap Chamarthy wrote:
>  On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 01:20:25AM +0800, Daniel Veillard wrote:
>  >   I tried over and over following the instructions at
>  >  
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM/F21/Installation#For_the...
>  > 
>  > after copying the Fedora-Minimal-armhfp-21-5-sda.raw.xz pointed by the
>  > doc n the sdcard (tried 2 different).
>  > And the board doesn't boot ! No disk activity, nothing on the display.
>  > I'm suspicious that the instruction only suggest to dd the uboot at
>  > seek=8 so 8k into the block while the old script from Hans for F19
>  > was doing both writing the uboot at 8 but also the uEnv-img.bin at
>  > 544.
>  
>  Hmm, that's what (write seek=8 blocks) I did in my test when writing the
>  U-boot onto a micrSD card with this image
>  Fedora-Minimal-armhfp-21_Beta-4-sda.raw.xz[1]
>  
>      $ sudo dd if=/tmp/root/usr/share/uboot/Cubietruck/u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin
> of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1024 seek=8 conv=fsync,notrunc
>      317+1 records in
>      317+1 records out
>      325440 bytes (325 kB) copied, 0.455528 s, 714 kB/s
>  
>  Wonder why you don't see disk activity. . .
>  
>  Last month when I tried Cubietruck with F21, I was able to successfuly
>  boot F21 via micrSD card after some fiddling around. My notes here [2]
>  (based on the above URL you mention). 
  Went through this, not sure first step is useful as you're writing
over the partition table in step2. Also a typo /dev/mmcblkp1 should
be /dev/mmcblk0p1 same for /dev/mmcblkp3 I think
Still no luck, on power with the new SIM as given only the red power LED
light up. If I put the old F19 SDcard in, Power led goes up, then Green LED2
then kernel boot on the video output, up to FS corruption errors and
reboot.

if I copy the first 2000 blocks of the F19 SIM onto the new one and
fix back the partition table to the original I get the second LED, the
green one to light, but it still doesn't give any boot sign ... weird.

BTW old SDcard and new one are the same brand and size

Daniel

>  
>  [1]
> http://be.mirror.eurid.eu/fedora/linux/releases/test/21-Beta/Images/armhf...
>  [2]
> https://kashyapc.fedorapeople.org/arm/installing-Fedora-21-on-microSD-car...
>   
>  
>  -- 
>  /kashyap 
-- 
Daniel Veillard      | Open Source and Standards, Red Hat
veillard(a)redhat.com  | libxml Gnome XML XSLT toolkit  http://xmlsoft.org/
http://veillard.com/ | virtualization library  http://libvirt.org/

[Hans de Goede]

Hi Daniel,

On 25-01-15 18:20, Daniel Veillard wrote:
>     I tried over and over following the instructions at
>    
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM/F21/Installation#For_the...
>
>  after copying the Fedora-Minimal-armhfp-21-5-sda.raw.xz pointed by the
>  doc n the sdcard (tried 2 different).
>  And the board doesn't boot ! No disk activity, nothing on the display.
>  I'm suspicious that the instruction only suggest to dd the uboot at
>  seek=8 so 8k into the block while the old script from Hans for F19
>  was doing both writing the uboot at 8 but also the uEnv-img.bin at
>  544.
>  Starts to worries me a lot since F19 is EOL'ed soon, I won't
>  have updates on my devices.
>
>     What am I missing ? 
Do you have a serial console hooked-up? F-21 is using upstream kernel
which does not yet have video output. So maybe it is booting but you're
just not seeing it.

You can also try using a rawhide image which will give you video output.

Regards,

Hans

[Daniel Veillard]

On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 08:25:24AM +0100, Hans de Goede wrote:
>  Hi Daniel,
>  
>  On 25-01-15 18:20, Daniel Veillard wrote:
>  >   I tried over and over following the instructions at
>  >  
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM/F21/Installation#For_the...
>  >
>  >after copying the Fedora-Minimal-armhfp-21-5-sda.raw.xz pointed by the
>  >doc n the sdcard (tried 2 different).
>  >And the board doesn't boot ! No disk activity, nothing on the display.
>  >I'm suspicious that the instruction only suggest to dd the uboot at
>  >seek=8 so 8k into the block while the old script from Hans for F19
>  >was doing both writing the uboot at 8 but also the uEnv-img.bin at
>  >544.
>  >Starts to worries me a lot since F19 is EOL'ed soon, I won't
>  >have updates on my devices.
>  >
>  >   What am I missing ?
>  
>  Do you have a serial console hooked-up? F-21 is using upstream kernel
>  which does not yet have video output. So maybe it is booting but you're
>  just not seeing it. 
  Ohhh ... This may be it ! No I'm just used to see the kernel booting
on the DVI link, I will have to look at this.

>  You can also try using a rawhide image which will give you video
> output. 
  Is it just the kernel or is there other parts I might need to upgrade ?

Daniel

-- 
Daniel Veillard      | Open Source and Standards, Red Hat
veillard(a)redhat.com  | libxml Gnome XML XSLT toolkit  http://xmlsoft.org/
http://veillard.com/ | virtualization library  http://libvirt.org/

[Hans de Goede]

Hi,

On 26-01-15 08:35, Daniel Veillard wrote:
>  On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 08:25:24AM +0100, Hans de Goede wrote:
> > Hi Daniel,
> >
> > On 25-01-15 18:20, Daniel Veillard wrote:
> >>    I tried over and over following the instructions at
> >>   
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM/F21/Installation#For_the...
> >>
> >> after copying the Fedora-Minimal-armhfp-21-5-sda.raw.xz pointed by the
> >> doc n the sdcard (tried 2 different).
> >> And the board doesn't boot ! No disk activity, nothing on the display.
> >> I'm suspicious that the instruction only suggest to dd the uboot at
> >> seek=8 so 8k into the block while the old script from Hans for F19
> >> was doing both writing the uboot at 8 but also the uEnv-img.bin at
> >> 544.
> >> Starts to worries me a lot since F19 is EOL'ed soon, I won't
> >> have updates on my devices.
> >>
> >>    What am I missing ?
> >
> > Do you have a serial console hooked-up? F-21 is using upstream kernel
> > which does not yet have video output. So maybe it is booting but you're
> > just not seeing it.
>
>     Ohhh ... This may be it ! No I'm just used to see the kernel booting
>  on the DVI link, I will have to look at this.
>
> > You can also try using a rawhide image which will give you video output.
>
>   Is it just the kernel or is there other parts I might need to upgrade ? 
You need a rawhide kernel and u-boot.

Regards,

Hans

[Kashyap Chamarthy]

On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 12:39:22PM +0800, Daniel Veillard wrote:
>  On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 09:29:57PM +0100, Kashyap Chamarthy wrote:
[. . .]

>  > Last month when I tried Cubietruck with F21, I was able to
> successfuly
>  > boot F21 via micrSD card after some fiddling around. My notes here [2]
>  > (based on the above URL you mention).
>  
>    Went through this, not sure first step is useful as you're writing
>  over the partition table in step2. Also a typo /dev/mmcblkp1 should
>  be /dev/mmcblk0p1 same for /dev/mmcblkp3 I think 
You're right on both accounts, copy/paste error, corrected.

>  Still no luck, on power with the new SIM as given only the red power
> LED
>  light up. If I put the old F19 SDcard in, Power led goes up, then Green LED2
>  then kernel boot on the video output, up to FS corruption errors and
>  reboot. 
Not that this should matter in this case, but for ease of debugging, all
of my testing was over a USB to TTL cable connected to via GNU screen:
`screen /dev/ttyUSB0 115200`

>  if I copy the first 2000 blocks of the F19 SIM onto the new one and
>  fix back the partition table to the original I get the second LED, the
>  green one to light, but it still doesn't give any boot sign ... weird. 
I could have retested this, but unfortunately my both microSD cards are
in use elsewhere. 


-- 
/kashyap

[Daniel Veillard]

On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 08:25:24AM +0100, Hans de Goede wrote:
>  Hi Daniel,
>  
>  On 25-01-15 18:20, Daniel Veillard wrote:
>  >   I tried over and over following the instructions at
>  >  
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM/F21/Installation#For_the...
>  >
>  >after copying the Fedora-Minimal-armhfp-21-5-sda.raw.xz pointed by the
>  >doc n the sdcard (tried 2 different).
>  >And the board doesn't boot ! No disk activity, nothing on the display.
>  >I'm suspicious that the instruction only suggest to dd the uboot at
>  >seek=8 so 8k into the block while the old script from Hans for F19
>  >was doing both writing the uboot at 8 but also the uEnv-img.bin at
>  >544.
>  >Starts to worries me a lot since F19 is EOL'ed soon, I won't
>  >have updates on my devices.
>  >
>  >   What am I missing ?
>  
>  Do you have a serial console hooked-up? F-21 is using upstream kernel
>  which does not yet have video output. So maybe it is booting but you're
>  just not seeing it. 
  Indeed that was the problem :-) used the serial link and I got the
Fedora 21 setup prompt !

  thanks, and sorry for the false alert...

Daniel

-- 
Daniel Veillard      | Open Source and Standards, Red Hat
veillard(a)redhat.com  | libxml Gnome XML XSLT toolkit  http://xmlsoft.org/
http://veillard.com/ | virtualization library  http://libvirt.org/