Re: What is the status of Debian on Lemote Fuloong?
Hi,
On Thu, Jul 05, 2012 at 01:47:06PM +0000, Code Blue wrote:
> Can anyone please tell me the status of Debian on the Lemote Fuloong? I
> saw Lemote and MIPS Inc. have been submitting patches against the Linux
> kernel and binutils pretty regularly. I have been looking around but have
> not found any page that is current describing how to install Debian on the
> Fuloong Mini. I am hoping to get a very recent kernel to take advantages of
> the latest support for this device.
I regularly run and test the latest mainline Linux kernels with Fuloong
Mini. It works pretty well. I'm using the Debian stable as rootfs and
I haven't noticed any major issues on the userspace side.
The PMON bootloader is crap, at least the version shipped with my
board. You cannot fully enable the serial console (USB keyboard & VGA is
always needed). Secondly, there is a bug that limits the initramfs image
size to some really small size (as a workaround, I'm using a kernel with
embedded initramfs.) I'm looking forward to try out the latest GRUB that
should include support to use it as a firmware on Fuloong to replace
the PMON. However, first I would need to acquire tools/HW to backup and
restore the original firmware flash as I don't want to risk bricking my
board (any advice for this, anyone?).
The box could be almost used to replace my current desktop. The biggest
issue I'm seeing is the poor USB 2.0 performance. The disk I/O is really
slow and I would need this to take backups of the internal HD. There was
also some problems with the network interface, but disabling RX checksum
offload fixed those (I believe it's a HW bug in the ethernet device).
> I still had the original configuration I partitioned the hard drive and then
> installed OpenBSD. I have partitions ready to go for the Debian installation
> but since the device doesn't have a CD or DVD drive and I was not able to find
> a bootable USB installer for it, I have no idea what to do next. All help
> will be appreciated. Thank you.
I don't know if there's any official installer, but you could always
build your own kernel and use debootstrap.
A.
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