forum.excito.org

I opened a new thread in the development forum to discuss about kernel upgrade, as it is an other subject. You can find it here with links to a working 3.2.61 kernel .

Hey

First I'd like to thank MouettE, for the great help in these posts:
http://forum.excito.net/viewtopic.php?f ... =45#p25533
http://forum.excito.net/viewtopic.php?f ... =45#p25541

The way to fix the MAC adresses should be merged into UBOOT upstream, this seems to solve the problem and only apply to the B3 so it seems like the solution.
We have with these instructions successfully unbricked a B3 (that could come to the B3> console, but didn't understand, run, reset or help command). There was a USB serial console on the B3 already.

We did however on FreeBSD and Fedora 19 not have success with the script you have made in the uboot-loader.zip upload. Both OS on different workstations give us an error while trying to upload the new UBOOT image.
Example: Not only zeros but also a few other numbers, and the image was not uploaded to the B3.
Seems the magic pattern was sendt, but it didn't fully prepare the B3 for taking the image.
If I only could explain what we did, but we used another program called cutecom to trigger the B3 to accept the new image. So I guess I'd like to know if you used python2.6 when you tested the script or maybe 3.x, or used anything that might default settings so that the python script just worked out of the box for you.

We did compile the UBOOT that Johannes linked to earlier in this thread, and we tried to modify the bootdelay in the bubba3.h file but that didnt work, but this could have made it easier getting to the newly booted image uploaded via serial. And we only modified pr instructions from MouettE.

The instructions seems a bit vague, in what UBOOT file to upload, also when to plug the power back in.
What we saw was when the B3 gave us char 0x15 we could upload the bwk-image. Sometimes the B3 gave us 0x91 after the magic pattern was sent, and this could not get the transfer going.
But I don't have the magic pattern that works every time, that would be great for everyone, if we or someone else could debug our way to that, could be a 'EOF' or some other char missing to make it smooth, or maybe just the correct timing when to send. We didn't see the same pattern, and we tried alot.

Last but not least a SPI image was loaded from a usb stick onto the B3 when we had booted it with the uart, and did a transfer from usb, and flashed the UBOOT from the B3> console so the B3 ended up working again. I guess these instructions could be useful to get into a complete guide if you trashed your UBOOT by mistake.

My python script is not very reliable and even worse I cannot make it work anymore myself. However recent versions of u-boot ships a little program for this task, kwboot, which works well at least for me. It is included in the Excito version, so You just need to compile it on the computer with the serial link like this : You'll find it in the tools subdirectory. It can modifiy a SPI image on-the-fly to make it UART bootable (no need to change kwbimage.cfg), directly spawns a terminal after succssful upload and is very simple to use. That makes it a lot more comfortable than my little script.

sortsnak wrote:I guess these instructions could be useful to get into a complete guide if you trashed your UBOOT by mistake.

I admit a feel a little a little lazy about writing detailed instructions on a subject with very few people interested ... However I will keep answering posts here !

Did you see this?

http://wiki.excito.org/wiki/index.php/R ... Arch_Linux

Good stuff!

johannes wrote:Did you see this?
http://wiki.excito.org/wiki/index.php/R ... Arch_Linux

Everyone capable is trying to port their favorite distribution on the b3 ; debian 7, archlinux now gentoo... I believe Slackware arm is next and I know some people which would probably be interested ...

johannes wrote:Did you see this?

http://wiki.excito.org/wiki/index.php/R ... Arch_Linux

Good stuff!

This link doesn't work anymore.
Are there another - working link - for this?

usually you just have to replace "excito.org" with "mybubba.org".

In this case, there seems to be a bit of string-reformatting required, but the article is still there under a slightly different URL: http://wiki.mybubba.org/wiki/index.php? ... Arch_Linux

MouettE wrote:Everyone capable is trying to port their favorite distribution on the b3 ; debian 7, archlinux now gentoo... I believe Slackware arm is next and I know some people which would probably be interested ...

Since Fedora 20 and onwards supports ARM as primary architecture, how viable would it be for someone to build a Spin specific to the Bubba3, with hardware drivers, wifi support, web admin interface, ssh over ethernet, root/root preconfigured etc. so that users can install a (modern, ShellShock proof, self-upgradable) distro without needing to risk soldering stuff on their precious limited edition black box?

I know I don't have the skills to do it myself, but I'd happily put $50 into a crowdfunded effort so everyone can benefit.

Not very likely I'd say

Currently-Supported ARM Architectures

armv7hl - 32-bit, little-endian, hfp for ARM v7 processors. Supported from F15 onwards.

armv5tel - 32-bit, little-endian, sfp for ARM v5 to v7 processors. Supported until F18 (including F18 updates).

(Community builds: Seneca is building for the armv6hl architecture specifically for the Architectures/ARM/F18/Remixes#Raspberry_Pi Raspberry Pi)

Aww. Thanks though. Yeah I saw they list Banana Pi and BeagleBone explicitly with full hardware support built in. And they have a walkthrough for creating ARM Spins. It all looks so promising! But it's beyond me to tell how much tweakery would be needed before it could compile for the B3.

Likewise PowerPC 32b and 64b builds are available but I suspect even a stripped down Spin would struggle on its 256Mb RAM (plus I personally never bought a B2).

Psynapse wrote:

MouettE wrote:Everyone capable is trying to port their favorite distribution on the b3 ; debian 7, archlinux now gentoo...

Since Fedora 20 and onwards supports ARM as primary architecture, how viable would it be for someone to build a Spin specific to the Bubba3,

Sakaki has now released RedSleeve for the Bubba3. RedSleeve 7.2 is a port of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2 so is on par with CentOS 7 and descended from Fedora 19.

This is awesome.

I tried to compile the u-boot version found at
github /Excito/U-Boot-B3
(Cannot post URL due to being a new user)

Unfortunately it doesn't compile under my arch linux setup on the B3 due to newer compiler version. I tried to fix it, but then got problems while linking. Anyways I found a compiled version here in the forum so I didn't bother anymore.