Apricot R5

[Royal Panda]

For all of you that are cursing APC with this crappy Kernel that they released,

Be glad that Mr Prisk is working hard.

So, with this kernel, we could release an Apricot R5 image, based on 3.10 Linux Kernel, with ALL driver we need except the GPU (Thank you WonderMedia).
I am not thinking that Apricot is mine, so if someone wants to do it, then do it. And publish it.

Here is the Kernel of Mr prisk : https://github.com/linux-wmt/linux-vtwm

Panda

[Royal Panda]

Hi Community,

I released an Apricot R5 rootfs : http://breizhcloud.eu/depot/Apricot-R5/Apricot-R5-rootfs-NoGui.tar.gz

Contents : 

• Very light :
• No graphics, only console
• Only net utilities are installed
• openssh-server
• Kernel Linux 3.10 from Tony Prisk Github : https://github.com/linux-wmt/linux-vtwm
• All Drivers that can be found in this kernel are built as modules
• NFS root is available

It have been made with Multistrap.

The kernel binary can be found at the root of the archive : /uzImage.bin

Only three kernel arguments are needed in order to boot : mem=512M root=/dev/.... rw

with an optional 'rootwait' for removable media.

I'll release some Ready to use Image soon.

Regards,

Panda

[Royal Panda]

Some informations :

• Login : root | password : apricot                ( CHANGE IT !)
• No other users, you will have to create them

scriptcmd for USB :  http://breizhcloud.eu/depot/Apricot-R5/scriptcmd-USB

scriptcmd for MMC : http://breizhcloud.eu/depot/Apricot-R5/scriptcmd-MMC

Don't forget to rename it to scriptcmd

[Royal Panda]

And the Ready-To-Use image : 

http://breizhcloud.eu/depot/Apricot-R5/Apricot-R5-NoGui-USB.img

• Windows Users : http://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/
  
• Linux Users : # dd if=Apricot-R5-NoGui-USB.img of=/dev/XXXXXX
  

As you noticed, this is an USB image. You need to tweak your APC in order to boot from USB Media. See here

In order to use it on SDCARD, just write the Image on your SDCARD and replace the scriptcmd file.

The good one is just in the post before, http://breizhcloud.eu/depot/Apricot-R5/scriptcmd-MMC, and don't forget to name it scriptcmd (remove the '-MMC' )

Regards,

Panda

[Roberto Ramírez]

Thanks!

Yair: You can install Xfce with the following command:

apt-get install xorg lightdm xfce4 xfce4-goodies

Other desktop environments can be installed that way, too.

[Royal Panda]

X is crashing the kernel.

This is the same Issue that crash Archlinux.

I'm working on it, but for now that means no Graphic stack.

If someone have the solution...

Regards,

Panda

[Royal Panda]

My bad, that is not crashing the kernel...

That is working well instead...

I have a mate session running right now.

I'll publish it in some days.

Panda

[Royal Panda]

Here it is, Mate (Gnome fork) graphic Apricot R5.

Wait 20 minutes, I'm still uploading now.

http://breizhcloud.eu/depot/Apricot-R5/Apricot-R5-Mate-USB.img.gz

Same as before, login root, password apricot

In qwerty, don't be tricked.

Regards,

Panda

[thunderace]

Thx for the good work royal Panda.

The headless version is perfect for me, i'll give it a try this week.

Regards.

Thunder

[thunderace]

R5 installed : no problem for now (monit, automount, motion, .

Tomorrow i'll try to put an USB wifi dongle.

To be continued...

Regards

[arifnd]

i has try Apricot R5 rootfs but after show apc logo only display white screen

[Royal Panda]

@arifnd, are you using HDMI or VGA ? If you are using HDMI, try VGA. If you are using VGA, more debug will be needed. A SSH server is available, try to use it.

Regards,

Panda

[arifnd]

but i success try Apricot-R5-Mate-USB.img, its cool :)

[Tony Prisk]

Royal Panda,

Good work releasing a working image. Nice to know someone is looking after the end-users.
If you get any feedback regarding missing drivers/features, let me know and I will do my best to get the support added so you release better images.

One question: You say it's based on 3.10 - is that the mainline 3.10 from kernel.org, or the 3.10 testing branch from my github repo?

Regards
Tony P

[Royal Panda]

It's based on yours. Without any tweak.

And, as you mentioned it, let me ask you if you wonder integrate the HDMI driver in the Kernel ? And maybe the ALSA Chipset ? I am not sure about this last one, but I think that it's not supported.
And a subsidiary question, not just for you but for every one looking at this post :

Do someone have, or may have, the Mali DDK Sources, or know someone who do (r3p0 if it's not asking too much)?

Regards,
Panda

[shogun x]

Hey Tony,

I pulled down your git repo... any chance I could get a .config file?  Make oldconfig does not seem to be doing the trick.

Thanx,

Scott

[Royal Panda]

I don't have the .config I used for the R5, but you can have it in /proc/config.gz

But a good start would be wiki of T.P. github : https://github.com/linux-wmt/linux-vtwm/wiki/Build-the-source
That let you know what you have to include.

Regards,
Panda

[Dan Hockey]

I'm using R5 mate on a 32gb sdcard and I'm getting a blank black screen on the hdmi port. I can ssh in and updated everything but still no hdmi video.

[Royal Panda]

Hi,

As mentioned in some post before, HDMI is not supported in R5.

Regards,

Panda

[Diego Diez]

Hello,

Mr. Royal Panda, I really want to thank you for the
hard work you have done. I'm using my APC again (I have 2, accumulating dust for over a year),
and you are one of the few that made this piece of hardware something useful.

That's a shame for VIA, I feel completly dissapointed with his support for this product.

I'm using the Apricot R5 release with MATE.

It boots flawlessly in headless mode. I updated the system. I didn't test the GUI yet, but I plan to do it.

I want to use one APC.IO in my workshop as a limited web browser (in order to reduce my procrastination) and as an audio player via MPD.

I installed mpd, and alsa-utils, but ALSA didn't discover any soundcard.

I tried with a external DAC  (an XMOS receiver  with a SABRE9023 DAC),
once plugged, an lsusb command enumerates this device, but ALSA keeps saying that there
is no soundcard available.

Can you lend me a hand here with a pointer towards what I need to do/research/play ?

Thanks in advance, sorry for my english, Diego.

[Steve Zingman]

Not sure if anybody is still playing with the APC 8750...

Thanks to to work of Mr. Prisk and Royal Panda, I've been able to build a

newer kernel. Linux apricot 3.13.0-rc8+ #1 Wed Mar 25 10:55:51 EDT 2015 armv6l GNU/Linux

I started with Panda's R5 image and replaced the uzImage.bin and scriptcmd in /boot.

The script to build the kernel, .config and some notes are at:

https://github.com/N4IRS/AllStar/tree/master/platforms/wm8750-apc8750

As of now, It's running. For the project it's intended to run, I need OSS and /dev/dsp.

Which are not working yet. More fun to come.

Steve N4IRS

[Roberto]

I'm still using it. Thanks for your notes.

[Steve Zingman]

No problem.

I just built a basic Wheezy image using debootstrap.

Still lots of work to do, but it's functional.

Steve N4IRS

[Gergely Imreh]

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the update!

I could not download Royal Panda's image, so took a look at doing it from scratch. I'm using Buildroot to compile the kernel, as it does not really have any requirements on the host system, it creates all the toolchain itself. http://buildroot.uclibc.org/

Looks like the linux-vtwm kernel that you are using is good compiled with the defconfig (vt8500_v6_v7_defconfig), so didn't need to add any extra kernel config. For Buildroot here's the minimal defconfig I could come up with is here: https://github.com/viaembedded/buildroot/blob/333d19d4827932bde97c843df558816cd43d1cb4/configs/via_apc8750_defconfig

This will compile an uImage and a very basic rootfs based on busybox (but that's can be switched off if you already do debootstrap or another rootfs). Just been playing with it the last two days running it all over nfs (load both the kernel and the rootfs over the network), works pretty decent.

Might be able to use newer, upstream kernel too, except that the upstream device tree is missing some parts compared to the linux-vtwm code (notably the ethernet device). That needs some more work as well.

Cheers,

   Greg

[Steve Zingman]

Greg,

That is great stuff! I've used buildroot before, but it was x86 host to a x86 target. If nothing else, I'll use buildroot on my x86 build maching and use debootstrap for the rootfs.

My single interest here is a recent kernel with headers so I can compile dahdi and a older version of asterisk for use in a ham radio project. Don't need HDMI VGA or much else.

Just ssh and MUST have OSS support. If nothing else, I'm learning a lot and having fune.

Thanks, Steve  

[clemen...@free.fr]

Hi all of you.

Just to be sure everybody is aware, any stuff tony prisk's did is now in the current official kernel release.
So you can directly use the last kernel release. Or any other.

Regards,
Clément

----- Mail original -----
De: "Steve Zingman" <szin...@gmail.com>
À: apc-pico-...@googlegroups.com
Envoyé: Mardi 31 Mars 2015 15:46:15
Objet: Re: Apricot R5

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[Gergely Imreh]

Hi Clement,

I really wish that too, though it's unfortunately not the case. As I've checked, for the wm8750 device tree there are a couple of clock sources and the ethernet device missing in the upstream kernel.

As an example, here's Tony's current testing kernel, the device tree with ethernet:

https://github.com/linux-wmt/linux-vtwm/blob/c4386efea112830fb82e33dfaf0fe712ee57f5a9/arch/arm/boot/dts/wm8750.dtsi#L389-L394

Here's the same part of the device tree upstream:

https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/6c310bc1acdd02110182a2ec6efa3e7571a3b80c/arch/arm/boot/dts/wm8750.dtsi#L346

Please let me know if I have missed something!

This was discussed on the linux-vtwm mailing list as well (this thread: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/vt8500-wm8505-linux-kernel/ExU3vsS7Bhs ) and checking out now to actually upstream all of Tony's changes, so that any kernel could be used.

Cheers,

   Greg

[clemen...@free.fr]

My bad,

I was more than one year late :)

Regards,
Clément

----- Mail original -----

De: "Gergely Imreh" <imr...@gmail.com>
À: clemen...@free.fr
Cc: "Steve Zingman" <szin...@gmail.com>, apc-pico-...@googlegroups.com
Envoyé: Mercredi 1 Avril 2015 05:40:33
Objet: Re: Apricot R5

[Royal Panda]

[William Henning]

I've been cleaning up my lab and unearthed three 8750's and two Rocks, so I'd love to see some working Wheezy images for them.

[Steve Zingman]

Here is a Jessie Image I used for a project using the 8750. Sorry I did not have time to resize it for upload.

<https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByDmt8HV_FwMSlFDb3RYSEI4VlE/view?usp=sharing>

Steve

[William Henning]

Thank you!

I am downloading the uncompressed image, looks like you pasted the wrong link for the tar...

On Sunday, June 14, 2015 at 6:06:31 AM UTC-7, Steve Zingman wrote:

Here is a tar image:

<https://groups.google.com/forum/?pli=1#!category-topic/apc-pico-itx-boards/apricot/fu56X1NqTOU>

Steve

[Steve Zingman]

OK,

Let's try this again...

<https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByDmt8HV_FwMeTBIQ1JZYlNiaFE/view?usp=sharing>

Sorry for the error

[Roberto]

Thanks for the image!

I've been scavenging images for this thing for a while, but what I'd really like is to know how to make them. I'm afraid some day people would just stop caring. So would someone here mind pointing me out to information on how to make them, please? I'm familiar with programming and computing in general, but I have zero knowledge on building the linux kernel. Let alone building a distribution.

Any help is appreciated.

[Steve Zingman]

Here are the basic notes I use to build the image.

This does not cover the content needed for the image.

I'll find the notes for that.

Build the image .img to write to a sd card.

aptitude install multipath-tools

Create a empty image file

dd if=/dev/zero of=./disk.img bs=1 count=0 seek=6000M

Next, create 2 primary partitions using fdisk disk.img; one is FAT32 and other is EXT4

Now, format both partitions in order to create file-systems to be mounted.

kpartx -a disk.img   #it maps (mounts) found partitions to /dev/mapper/loop...

mkfs.vfat -F 32 -n boot /dev/mapper/loop0p1

mkfs.ext4 -L root /dev/mapper/loop0p2

Now, mount the empty partitions so we can fill them with "stuff"

mkdir -p /mnt/boot

mkdir -p /mnt/root

mount  /dev/mapper/loop0p1 /mnt/boot

mount  /dev/mapper/loop0p2 /mnt/root

cp boot_stuff /mnt/boot

cp root_stuff /mnt/root

umount /dev/mapper/loop0p1

umount /dev/mapper/loop0p2

kpartx -d disk.img

disk.img is ready to be written to a sd card.

[William Henning]

Thank you!

[William Henning]

And another thank you!

[Roberto]

Thanks!

[arifnd]

Pada Senin, 15 Juni 2015 03.46.06 UTC+7, Steve Zingman menulis:

OK,

Let's try this again...

<https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByDmt8HV_FwMeTBIQ1JZYlNiaFE/view?usp=sharing>

Sorry for the error

Thanks, for Wheezy images. I can compile linux driver for TL-WN725N Wireless USB Adapter.

But i have problem for root password