Re: Cubox-i-notes questions

[Rainer Dorsch <ml@bokomoko.de>]

Hi Ian,

sorry for the delayed response.

On Wednesday 23 July 2014 10:43:37 you wrote:
> Hi Rainer,
> Thanks for your reply. Your comments make sense to me so I'll give them a
> go.  My aim was to get a solid Debian installation which was easy to
> maintain.  

Similar here.

> Debian jessie could likely go final around December and
> predictions are the jessie kernel will be 3.16. My hope is full support for
> the Cubox hardware is mainlined into the 3.16 by then - a year after I
> purchased the device.  

I am not a kernel expert, but I have not seen significant work going into the 
3.16 kernel for imx6.

If you need video or wireless, I recommend to use either the 3.0.x or the 
3.10.x kernel from solid-run. Be aware that the 3.10.x kernel has some bugs, 
e.g.

https://github.com/rabeeh/android-imx6-kitkat/issues/3

I have not done that myself yet, though.

There are rumors that there is work ongoing to port the patches to a more 
recent kernel. I hope this helps then getting the patches mainlined.

> Setting up a cubox has been a lot harder than I
> imagined and I've spent a lot of time on it so I'm really happy with your
> docs.

Thanks, I was hoping that they are useful for some people and indeed quite a 
few people seem to read my notes.

> 
> I'll have more feedback for you soon.  Regarding your SD card setup. I note
> you started the first partition around 8M instead of 2M. Was this to future
> proof? 

That was how my SD card was partitioned when I bought it. I thought that is 
done, because there is an 8 kB erase block size, it is a good idea to stick 
with 8kB blocks. Also the boundary between swap and root partition is on an 8 
kB boundary.

> The size of your swap partition choice was unclear when I was
> following.  Would you consider adding a note on this and use human readable
> fdisk partition values like +100M etc?

Thanks, I will add the note.

> Are you happy with your cubox running kernel 3.14 from the jessie distro?

I am running 3.15 (and realize that now 3.16 is in experimental):

rd@home:~$ uname -a
Linux home 3.15-trunk-armmp #1 SMP Debian 3.15.5-1~exp1 (2014-07-10) armv7l 
GNU/Linux
rd@home:~$ apt-cache policy linux-image-3.15-trunk-armmp 
linux-image-3.15-trunk-armmp:
  Installed: 3.15.5-1~exp1
  Candidate: 3.15.5-1~exp1
  Version table:
 *** 3.15.5-1~exp1 0
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
rd@home:~$ apt-cache search linux-image
linux-headers-3.14-2-armmp - Header files for Linux 3.14-2-armmp
linux-headers-3.14-2-armmp-lpae - Header files for Linux 3.14-2-armmp-lpae
linux-image-3.14-2-armmp - Linux 3.14 for ARMv7 multiplatform compatible SoCs
linux-image-3.14-2-armmp-lpae - Linux 3.14 for ARMv7 multiplatform compatible 
SoCs supporting LPAE
linux-image-armmp - Linux for ARMv7 multiplatform compatible SoCs (meta-
package)
linux-image-armmp-lpae - Linux for ARMv7 multiplatform compatible SoCs 
supporting LPAE (meta-package)
linux-headers-3.16-rc6-armmp - Header files for Linux 3.16-rc6-armmp
linux-headers-3.16-rc6-armmp-lpae - Header files for Linux 3.16-rc6-armmp-lpae
linux-image-3.16-rc6-armmp - Linux 3.16-rc6 for ARMv7 multiplatform compatible 
SoCs
linux-image-3.16-rc6-armmp-lpae - Linux 3.16-rc6 for ARMv7 multiplatform 
compatible SoCs supporting LPAE
linux-image-3.15-trunk-armmp - Linux 3.15 for ARMv7 multiplatform compatible 
SoCs
linux-image-3.14-1-armmp - Linux 3.14 for ARMv7 multiplatform compatible SoCs
rd@home:~$ 

I think quite a number of fixes went into 3.15.

> The debian website suggests using enablement patches to get full hardware
> support, I looked at the date of the patches and it seem unclear how to
> keep the patches up to date with latest updates going happening in Debian
> kernel land.

I have not tried that either.

Rainer

> 
> Ian
> 
> On 21 July 2014 21:07, Rainer Dorsch <ml@bokomoko.de> wrote:
> > Hi Ian,
> > 
> > thanks for reporting back.
> > 
> > On Sunday 20 July 2014 10:37:42 you wrote:
> > > Hi Rainer,
> > > I was just following your cubox-i notes at
> > > <http://bokomoko.de/~rd/Debian/cubox-i-notes.txt>
> > > Very helpful thanks. After following your notes exactly I ran into
> > > problems with the deb bootstrap command.
> > > I wondered if you had any ideas that could help?
> > > Thanks
> > > Ian Davidson
> > > 
> > > original command...
> > > blackbox:~# qemu-debootstrap --foreign
> > 
> > --include=ntp,ntpdate,less,u-boot,u-boot-tools,flash-kernel,linux-image-3.
> > 14> 
> > > -1-armmp,bash-completion,linux-firmware,fake-hwclock,emacs
> > > --exclude=nano
> > > --arch=armhf jessie /mnt/tmp
> > > http://http.debian.net/debian
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Problem 1) 'linux-firmware' package did not exist. I changed this to
> > > 'firmware-linux-free'. Seemed to be ok.
> > 
> > Better is to use apt-get in a later step and omit all the includes
> > altogether.
> > 
> > > Problem 2) initramfs dependancy package did not like to be
> > > debootstrapped.
> > > 
> > > 
> > > #cat /mnt/tmp/debootstrap/debootstrap.log
> > > 
> > > Setting up initramfs-tools (0.115) ...
> > > update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated)
> > > Processing triggers for initramfs-tools (0.115) ...
> > > update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-3.14-1-armmp
> > > Warning: root device  does not exist
> > > Unsupported platform.
> > > run-parts: /etc/initramfs/post-update.d//flash-kernel exited with return
> > > code 1
> > > 
> > > dpkg: error processing package initramfs-tools (--configure):
> > >   subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit
> > > 
> > > status 1
> > > 
> > > Errors were encountered while processing:
> > >   initramfs-tools
> > 
> > That is probably related to FK_MACHINE.
> > 
> > I have an updated version of the notes, which I took some days back, when
> > I
> > tried to prepare an SD card for the cubox-i2ultra. The should cover your
> > issues, but I could not fully test it since the Debian u-boot seems to be
> > incompatible with the Cubox-i2ultra, therefore I did not release it so
> > far,
> > but your feedback tells me, I should distribute the update, even though it
> > is
> > not tested:
> > 
> > http://bokomoko.de/~rd/Debian/cubox-i-notes-untested.txt
> > 
> > Please let me know if you have any positive of negative feedback.
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > Rainer
> > 
> > --
> > Rainer Dorsch
> > http://bokomoko.de/

-- 
Rainer Dorsch
http://bokomoko.de/