Re: sd image creator: armstrap anyone?
On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 12:59 PM, Jeremiah C. Foster
<jeremiah@jeremiahfoster.com> wrote:
> Which do you recommend then for "board bringup" with Debian?
personally? absolutely none of them. reason: they all create a
1gbyte+ pre-installed pre-option-chosen
absolutely-zero-configuration-option root filesystem. which is
complete madness when there's a perfectly good system already in place
called "debian installer" which, in its minimalist form (netboot)
weighs in at approximately 5mbyte.
if you're going to spend *any* time at all help make it easier to
create debian-installers for arm systems.
> I rarely have problems getting a board to run, I usually stuff an
> Ubuntu kernel and then use debbootstrap, but if there was a way to add
> a Debian kernel I'd be on that in a New York minute.
> Right now
> cross-compilation is painful be it in a chroot or with Yocto, so if I
> could stay in an all Debian environment I'd be much more comfortable.
i've said it once and i'll say it a thousand times: the reason why
all these systems are hard to bring up is because of the hard-wired
options in each and every device which you CANNOT code around. every
single system flooding out of china is COMPLETELY different from every
single other device and there IS no common ground between them.
so unless someone has gone to the trouble of doing the kernel-level
bring-up and u-boot-level bring-up (which often involves that
cross-compilation that you mention) then you have absolutely no other
choice but to do some form of reverse-engineering to get it.
so i keep on having to tell people this: we get people on a regular
basis on debian-arm "how can i put debian on random low-cost tablet
hardware brand X from china i bought" and these people with absolutely
no programming experience whatsoever basically have to be told "you
need to learn programming and then go one step beyond that and become
a reverse-engineer" which is complete madness but is the hard truth.
with A10 devices it's a *little* easier because there's this thing
which is very similar to device-tree called "script.fex" that,
basically, means you don't have to recompile the kernel (or u-boot),
you can just edit a file with a layout similar to config.ini [*1] but
unfortunately you get stuck with some rather odd choices for drivers,
and you also get stuck with an _android_ kernel.
so one solution is basically this: find some specific devices of
particular types (tablet, laptop, e-reader, tv box), get a group buy
together, do the reverse-engineering and publish the results.
then, when someone comes on the list and says "i bought
tablet/laptop/box X can you help me get debian on it" it will be
possible to say to them "sell it on ebay or return it and get one of
these brand Y ones instead".
l.
Reply to: