Re: Proposal to replace/extend current armhf builders
On Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 7:03 PM, peter green <plugwash@p10link.net> wrote:
> Steve McIntyre wrote:
>>
>> if we're happy that they're stable and supportable.
>>
>
> Having had a 2GB nitrogen6x running as a raspbian buildd for a while I would
> consider it "stable and supportable". We did have some crashes on both the
> nitrogen6x and the wandboard quad caused by the eglibc testsuite in the
> past but since upgrading to 3.11.0-armv7-x13 that seems to have stopped
> happening.
>
> Adding a heatsink is reccomended, the IMX6 gets bloody hot without one.
> http://uk.farnell.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?SKU=2084441
>
> Kernel wise I currently run one of robert nelsons "mainstream based" kernels
> (partly so I can run the same kernel on my nitrogen6x and my wandboard
> quads). I'd be happy to test a debian kernel though if people want (now I
> have the four wanboards at bytemark I can more easilly afford to pull the
> "test" autobuilders out of the pool for testing stuff).
Once debian's pushes out a v3.12.x armmp final it should be pretty
close to my patched v3.11.x based kernel your running now, as i
essentially pulled in most of the imx for-next branch..
Btw, one thing I've noticed on the wand quad's, with v3.12.x they seem
more stable if you just force the performance cpufreq, for some reason
mine keep having sata/cpufreq kernel dumps. (the sata drives might be
failing too thou, they've been abused over the years on lots of random
arm usb/sata hardware...)
Otherwise the sabrelite/nitrogen6x's have been rock solid..
>
> Bootloader wise I patched up uboot to combine the support for booting plain
> zimages/initrds (I HATE uImages) with support for the 2GB nitrogen6x. I
> posted details of this to debian-arm some time back.
>
> The board boots up immediately on power on so remote power control would be
> easy enough to accomplish either by giving each board a seperate PSU and
> plugging them into a switchable PDU or by using a networkable relay board.
> Serial is RS232 levels and the board comes with a cable that brings the
> serial ports out to 9 way D connectors (specifically female ones with DCE
> wiring) so serial console should be easy enough.
>
> The board is similar enough to a sabre lite that it will boot and key
> hardware (serial console, sata, network) will work with the sabre lite
> device tree file. Indeed that is how i'm running mine at the moment.
>
> Overall i'd say the board ticks all the important boxes for an autobuilder.
> The reasons I picked the wandboard quad instead of the nitrogen6x for
> raspbian were price (which is not an issue if the boards are donated) and
> physical size (which AIUI is not a massive deal for the hosting arrangements
> debian has).
Regards,
--
Robert Nelson
http://www.rcn-ee.com/
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