On Jun 2, 2015, at 9:15 AM, Martin Michlmayr <tbm@cyrius.com> wrote: > * Rick Thomas <rbthomas@pobox.com> [2015-05-31 19:11]: >> I’ve got an old Marvell OpenRD Base computer that I’d like to install Debian Jessie on. >> >> I believe that I’ll need to up-grade the u-boot on it to handle new features in the Jessie kernel. > > I haven't had an OpenRD in years but back then I always used the > original u-boot without any problems. Why do you think a new u-boot > is required for jessie? Have you tried it and things are not working? As a data point, I was just upgrading an OpenRD-Ultimate from squeeze to wheezy, and as a first test upgraded to the wheezy-backports kernel, which was enough to break things, as it was then failed to produce any output beyond: Uncompressing Linux... done, booting the kernel. I'm afraid I'm a bit vauge about where the uboot on that OpenRD came From (and I've just upgraded it, so cannot paste the line, but it was a DENX from early 2012 IIRC, it said something about "2011 ... dirty" -- if anyone cares which version that was, I can check on the next one I upgrade). At the time these machines were installed I had a choice of uboots, none of which supported all boot options. IIRC the Marvel didn't deal with SATA, and the DENX gave the impression of supporting mmc, but could not actually load any files in a way that gave matching checksums, or some such. I therefore settled on the one that supported SATA, since that was the most urgent requirement. Anyway, using tbm's 2014.10+dfsg1-4 (linked to below) worked fine for me (this being an OpenRD-Ultimate) -- in fact it worked much better than the old uboot, since that was obviously being very dumb about driving the SATA, and would take over a minute to load the uInitrd, which now loads pretty much instantly :-) > (After jessie, the kernel has been converted to DTB, but flash-kernel > already appends the correct DTB.) > >> 1) Where to get a suitable u-boot image? (Will the one at >> https://people.debian.org/~tbm/u-boot/2014.10+dfsg1-4/openrd_ultimate/ >> work? > > No, the Ultimate and Base are different. I just checked and I was > going to say that there's support for the Base in DENX. However, I > noticed that even the Ultimate target was removed in Debian's u-boot > recently: > http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/collab-maint/u-boot.git/commit/debian/targets?id=ea2f6ce84b7788cda2cb7deb29690cb368451e8c > > So if you want to work out why it doesn't build and whether it boots, > I'm sure Vagrant Cascadian would be interested in hearing from you; > but it's probably easier to stay with the original u-boot unless that > has problems. Vagrant, This is good timing, since I've not touched these machines since installing them, and am now being paid to upgrade them all, so I could do some testing for you if you like. I'm very much able to test the SATA, but the rest may be a bit of struggle, since the machines are in London, while I'm presently in Hamburg. I _may_ have another OpenRD-Ultimate in a box in the cellar, in which case I'd be more easily able to do testing other boot media. Cheers, Phil. -- |)| Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560] HANDS.COM Ltd. |-| http://www.hands.com/ http://ftp.uk.debian.org/ |(| Hugo-Klemm-Strasse 34, 21075 Hamburg, GERMANY
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