Debian 11 on Sheevaplug?

Gilles

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Jun 2, 2022, 8:20:03 AM6/2/22

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Hello,

A search in the archives returned no hits.

Martin Michlmayr's page* shows how to install Debian 10 on a USB
keydrive to run on a Sheevaplug.

Does it mean Debian 11 still isn't available for that device?

Thank you.

* https://www.cyrius.com/debian/kirkwood/sheevaplug/install/

Rick Thomas

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Jun 2, 2022, 9:00:02 PM6/2/22

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Have you tried just following Martin's instructions for 10 using the corresponding components for 11?

I'd like to do the same thing (upgrade to 11) on my SheevaPlug. Maybe I'll try that.

Enjoy!
Rick

Paul Wise

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Jun 2, 2022, 9:40:03 PM6/2/22

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On Thu, 2022-06-02 at 14:15 +0200, Gilles wrote:

> A search in the archives returned no hits.

This mail says Sheevaplug support will be dropped *after* bullseye:

https://lists.debian.org/msgid-search/5393e08f-0224-4f83...@www.fastmail.com

That doesn't seem to have happened yet though, see below.

> Martin Michlmayr's page* shows how to install Debian 10 on a USB
> keydrive to run on a Sheevaplug.
>
> Does it mean Debian 11 still isn't available for that device?

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Gandalf

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Jun 3, 2022, 12:20:03 AM6/3/22

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Thanks, good to know !
May be I'll try to give a test...
Good example of long time support !!!

--

🧙 – Gandalf (from “The Conjurers”) ©️ 1982-2022

Jim MacKenzie

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Jun 3, 2022, 9:20:02 AM6/3/22

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Perhaps it will break at some point, but I have one of my Sheevaplugs on
bookworm, and there is a 5.17.0-1-marvell kernel for it.

Jim

Martin Michlmayr

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Jun 6, 2022, 3:00:03 AM6/6/22

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* Paul Wise <pa...@debian.org> [2022-06-03 09:36]:

> > Does it mean Debian 11 still isn't available for that device?
>
> I found that there are Sheevaplug installer images for bullseye,
> so I suspect that Debian 11 still supports the Sheevaplug,
> so Martin probably just hasn't updated the page yet and
> probably using the bullseye images will work fine.

Unfortunately, I can't remember why I didn't update the page.
Normally I update my pages or add a note that newer releases are no
longer supported, but I've done neither with the Sheevaplug pages and
I can't remember why.

Gilles, if you could test Debian 11 and report back, I'll go ahead and
update the pages.

I remember that u-boot in Debian buster was broken (see
<https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=934974>; I'm not
sure if that was fixed in a later point release or not); it would be
good to know if the bullseye version works.

(CCing Rick Thomas who might also be able to help with testing,
especially with u-boot)

--
Martin Michlmayr
https://www.cyrius.com/

Gilles

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Jun 6, 2022, 12:10:02 PM6/6/22

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Hello

Thanks all for the help.

Using a fresh 64GB USB keydrive, I sucessfully launched the D11
installer with default options… which fails creating the swap partition:

https://gofile.io/d/MO7pb1

Any idea what it could be?

Martin Michlmayr

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Jun 7, 2022, 12:00:02 AM6/7/22

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* Gilles <codeco...@free.fr> [2022-06-06 18:02]:

> Using a fresh 64GB USB keydrive, I sucessfully launched the D11 installer
> with default options… which fails creating the swap partition:
>
> https://gofile.io/d/MO7pb1

Can you go back to the main menu when this happens and open a shell
(it's at the bottom of the list) and then look at /var/log/syslog to
see what the exact error is.

Gilles

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Jun 7, 2022, 9:40:03 AM6/7/22

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On 07/06/2022 05:57, Martin Michlmayr wrote:
> * Gilles <codeco...@free.fr> [2022-06-06 18:02]:
>> Using a fresh 64GB USB keydrive, I sucessfully launched the D11 installer
>> with default options… which fails creating the swap partition:
>>
>> https://gofile.io/d/MO7pb1
> Can you go back to the main menu when this happens and open a shell
> (it's at the bottom of the list) and then look at /var/log/syslog to
> see what the exact error is.

It ends with a single error : "partman: mkswap: can't open '/dev/sda5':
No such file or directory":

https://pastebin.com/raw/h0beZWnP

I then ran the D11 installer on another, 4GB USB keydrive. The installer
worked, but the keydrive fails booting:

sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_ERROR
driverbyte=DRIVER_OK cmd_age=0s
sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] tag#0 CDB: Read(10) 28 00 00 77 2d 20 00 00 08 00
blk_update_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 7810336 op 0x0:(READ)
flags 0x80700 phys_seg 1 prio class 0

https://pastebin.com/raw/9HnhZDkT

Next, to check if the original problematic 64GB keydrive had a hardware
problem, I used Rufus on Windows to burn Ubuntu on it, and then used it
boot a laptop: Success.

Rick Thomas

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Jun 7, 2022, 7:20:03 PM6/7/22

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On Tue, Jun 7, 2022, at 6:32 AM, Gilles wrote:
> It ends with a single error : "partman: mkswap: can't open '/dev/sda5':
> No such file or directory":
>
> https://pastebin.com/raw/h0beZWnP

It looks like /dev/sd5 doesn't actually exist. This is probably because the USB stick has an MBR partition table which by default only provides partitions 1-4. You may need to pre-partition it with a GUID partition table.

Rick

Gilles

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Jun 8, 2022, 7:30:03 AM6/8/22

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Good call. After using Windows' diskpart*, I removed the MBR and
converted to GPT. The installer went one step further… and failed:

https://postimg.cc/ns5XMQL7

Here's the log:

https://pastebin.com/raw/htYCmhS3

* https://www.diskpart.com/articles/remove-mbr-partition-3889i.html

Philip Hands

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Jun 8, 2022, 9:40:03 AM6/8/22

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The ``bad block bitmap checksum'' relating to /dev/sda2, followed by
``Remounting filesystem read-only'' seems to be the source of your
problem.

After that point nothing's going to work because your new root
filesystem (/target/) is faulty, and is now read-only, so there's no way
to create the /target/boot directory, so the mount of the boot partition
fails.

My guess would be an underlying hardware fault on whatever /dev/sda2 is.

I don't suppose there's any chance it's a fake USB stick - see:

http://oss.digirati.com.br/f3/ (packaged for Debian as ``f3'')

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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Gilles

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Jun 9, 2022, 9:20:03 AM6/9/22

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I used another USB stick, with the root+boot formated in ext4, the
install completed, but… Uboot fails loading:

=========
U-Boot 2011.12 (Mar 11 2012 - 18:59:46)
Marvell-Sheevaplug - eSATA - SD/MMC

SoC:   Kirkwood 88F6281_A0
DRAM: 512 MiB
WARNING: Caches not enabled
NAND: 512 MiB
In:    serial
Out:   serial
Err:   serial
Net:   egiga0
88E1116 Initialized on egiga0
Hit any key to stop autoboot: 0
(Re)start USB...
USB:   Register 10011 NbrPorts 1
USB EHCI 1.00
scanning bus for devices... 2 USB Device(s) found
       scanning bus for storage devices... 1 Storage Device(s) found
Loading file "/uImage" from usb device 0:1 (usbda1)
Failed to mount ext2 filesystem...
** Bad ext2 partition or disk - usb 0:1 **
Loading file "/uInitrd" from usb device 0:1 (usbda1)
Failed to mount ext2 filesystem...
** Bad ext2 partition or disk - usb 0:1 **
## Booting kernel from Legacy Image at 00800000 ...
   Image Name:   kernel 4.9.0-18-marvell
   Image Type:   ARM Linux Kernel Image (uncompressed)
   Data Size:    2080634 Bytes = 2 MiB
   Load Address: 00008000
   Entry Point: 00008000
   Verifying Checksum ... Bad Data CRC
ERROR: can't get kernel image!
Marvell>>
=========

That was with the original settings:
setenv bootargs_console console=ttyS0,115200
setenv bootcmd_usb 'usb start; ext2load usb 0:1 0x00800000 /uImage;
ext2load usb 0:1 0x01100000 /uInitrd'
setenv bootcmd 'setenv bootargs $(bootargs_console); run bootcmd_usb;
bootm 0x00800000 0x01100000'

=> Does Uboot support ext4, or just ext2? Or is the 2011.12 release too
old, and I should either upgrade or go back to ext2 instead?

Gilles

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Jun 9, 2022, 9:30:02 AM6/9/22

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Forgot to write that I tried this line manually:

Marvell>> setenv bootcmd_usb 'usb start; ext4load usb 0:1 0x00800000
/uImage; ext4load usb 0:1 0x01100000 /uInitrd'

Marvell>> print
baudrate=115200
bootargs=console=ttyS0,115200
bootargs_console=console=ttyS0,115200
bootcmd=setenv bootargs $(bootargs_console); run bootcmd_usb; bootm
0x00800000 0x01100000
bootcmd_usb=usb start; ext4load usb 0:1 0x00800000 /uImage; ext4load usb
0:1 0x01100000 /uInitrd
bootdelay=3
ethact=egiga0
ethaddr=02:50:43:e7:5c:e1
ipaddr=192.168.0.10
serverip=192.168.0.12
stderr=serial
stdin=serial
stdout=serial
x_bootargs=console=ttyS0,115200
mtdparts=orion_nand:512k(uboot),4m@1m(kernel),507m@5m(rootfs) rw
x_bootargs_root=ubi.mtd=2 root=ubi0:rootfs rootfstype=ubifs
x_bootcmd_kernel=nand read 0x6400000 0x100000 0x400000
x_bootcmd_sata=ide reset;
x_bootcmd_usb=usb start;
Environment size: 706/131068 bytes

Marvell>> run bootcmd

(Re)start USB...
USB: Register 10011 NbrPorts 1
USB EHCI 1.00
scanning bus for devices... 2 USB Device(s) found
scanning bus for storage devices... 1 Storage Device(s) found

Unknown command 'ext4load' - try 'help'
Unknown command 'ext4load' - try 'help'

## Booting kernel from Legacy Image at 00800000 ...
   Image Name:   kernel 4.9.0-18-marvell
   Image Type:   ARM Linux Kernel Image (uncompressed)
   Data Size:    2080634 Bytes = 2 MiB
   Load Address: 00008000
   Entry Point: 00008000
   Verifying Checksum ... Bad Data CRC
ERROR: can't get kernel image!
Marvell>>

Martin Michlmayr

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Jun 9, 2022, 9:50:03 AM6/9/22

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* Gilles <codeco...@free.fr> [2022-06-09 15:14]:

> U-Boot 2011.12 (Mar 11 2012 - 18:59:46)

> => Does Uboot support ext4, or just ext2? Or is the 2011.12 release too old,
> and I should either upgrade or go back to ext2 instead?

It might be worth upgrading u-boot just in case. These instructions
are still correct:
https://www.cyrius.com/debian/kirkwood/sheevaplug/uboot-upgrade/

(It's not the latest version of u-boot, but it is one that worked for
a long of people. Rick Thomas agreed to test the latest and report
back. I will update my web site accordingly.)

I'm not sure about ext4, but we generally recommend a separate /boot
partition with ext2 and that's IIRC what the guided partitioner
creates.

Rick Thomas

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Jun 9, 2022, 7:00:02 PM6/9/22

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Hi Giles,
It really looks like the version of uboot you're using only understands ext2 (and fat, most likely, but I'm not sure that helps you in this situation)

Try dropping back to ext2 for anything that needs to be accessed by uboot.
Enjoy!
Rick

Gilles

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Jun 10, 2022, 5:30:03 PM6/10/22

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I let the installer reformat and repartition the pendrive, with /boot as
ext2 and / as ext4, and D11 installed successuflly.

Lessons learned:

1. If the pendrive has an MBR, convert it to GPT

2. On a computer, perform a full test to check for backblocks

3. Uboot might not support ext4, so either upgrade or use ext2 for /boot

Thanks all!