Re: Debian on a Iomega StorCenter ix4-200d...
On 2021-02-03, Marco Gaiarin wrote:
> a) found the serial pin and connected a serial cable/adapter
>
> b) understood that in ARM there's no 'automatic hardware inventory', and the
> exact hardware inventory have to be provided via a DTB file.
>
> c) found the DTB of this box here:
> https://forum.doozan.com/read.php?2,12096
If you're using a .dtb file, you should generally get it from the one
shipped in the kernel package, otherwise it may be inconsistant with the
running kernel you're using...
> so, i've downloaded the 'raw' linux kernel and built a uImage from here:
>
> http://ftp.it.debian.org/debian/dists/buster/main/installer-armel/current/images/kirkwood/netboot/
> with:
> cat vmlinuz-4.19.0-13-marvell kirkwood-iomega_ix4_200d.dtb > uKernel
> mkimage -A arm -O linux -T kernel -C none -a 0x00008000 -e 0x00008000 -n "Debian kernel" -d uKernel uImage
>
> and downloaded the initrd from here:
>
> http://ftp.it.debian.org/debian/dists/buster/main/installer-armel/current/images/kirkwood/netboot/marvell/guruplug/
>
> then i've setup a tftp server and booted from tftp.
>
>
> system booted correctly, and i was able to install debian. Cool!
Nice work!
> Some question:
>
> a) (not specific ARM, indeed, but...) in installation, done clearly via
> serial terminal, on the top there's some 'window' coices, eg:
>
> 1: installer 2: terminal 3: log 4: ...
>
> how can i access other term? I've looked in installation manual, but i was
> not able to found the key combination to switch 'window'/VT
On the serial console it uses "screen", so to switch terminals it's
CTRL-a n (for next) or CTRL-a p (for previous) or CTRL-a 4 (to switch to
specific number).
> b) at the end of the installation, the system warn me that there's no 'boot
> loader support' (or something like that), and the resulting system was not
> bootable. This was expected, but i hoped that the installer have the option
> to chroot on the new installed system to be able to to some manual
> bootloader setup, or at least to scp out the initrd.
It is a bit misleading, as you likely already have a working
bootloader... this error means there's no flash-kernel database entry
for this system. For an example that was recently merged, see:
https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/flash-kernel/-/merge_requests/25/diffs
Although if your u-boot version is some vendor fork, it may not support
the generic boot script and may need a custom boot script. There are a
few examples in flash-kernels of other boot scripts...
Good luck!
live well,
vagrant
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