Re: Update APEX for fatted nslu2 (FatSlug)
On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 09:31:33PM +0100, Asier wrote:
> Hi all!
>
> I own a fantastic NSLU2 device and have installed Debian on it some months
> working pretty well, but 32 MB of main memory isn't enough so I fatted it
> with two 64MB modules, so it has 128 MB of main memory.
>
> Memory isn't recognized. I can reinstall debian/armel with the
> slug-firmware.net image, but because of APEX version it only recognizes 32
> MB, so I must upgrade APEX to more recent version.
I'm not positive, but I thought that the Debian released version of
APEX supported memory detection.
> In the nslu2 wiki there's lots of methods but I can't make work any of
> them: "Debian and FatSlugs"[1], "Compile APEX"[2], "FatSlug Made"[3] and so
> on. Some says that parameters to apex-env should be enclosed with '', others
> say don't... I'm confused.
>
> I've tryed to compile APEX 1.5.14, make new di-nslu2.bin updated images and so
> on, without luck. I've reinstalled Debian so many times that my girlfriend
> isn't very happy with it (about 4 hours each install...)
>
> How can I upgrade APEX? Is there some kind of HOWTO or precompiled APEX
> images?
>
> (my nslu2 doesn't have serial port)
If you want to debug this, it is worthwhile installing the console
port. You soldered RAM down after all, so you cannot be afraid of the
iron.
>
> Thanks a lot
>
> [1] http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/Debian/FatSlug
> [2] http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/Debian/CompileApex
> [3] http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/HowTo/Fat-SlugMade
> --
> Asier
I hope you recognize that the Linux kernel does not reliably support
more than 64MiB of memory due to a bug in the DMA memory handling for
the ixp4xx kernel. I've read that there is some progress in solving
the issue.
The crux of detecting more than 32MiB of memory are the APEX commands
sdram-init and memscan. The APEX startup command that I'm using reads
as follows:
sdram-init; memscan -u 0+64m; copy -s fis://kernel 0x00008000; copy -s fis://ramdisk 0x01000000; wait 10 Type ^C key to cancel autoboot.; boot
sdram-init updates the SDRAM controller settings to handle all of the
available memory in your system. The memscan command tells APEX to
perform its boot-time check for memory and revise it's view of
available memory. Notice that I'm limiting the memscan to 64MiB as my
SLUG has 128MiB of memory.
You can change the APEX startup command using the apex-env command.
Try this command from the command prompt of your running slug.
# sudo apex-env
The command you need to change is ina the variable 'startup'.
See the apex-env manual page for instructions for editing the APEX
environment. Be aware that you can make your SLUG unbootable using
apex-env.
Cheers.
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