Using latest Debian Loongson-3 kernels on a XingHuo 3A "Spark"

[David Kuehling]

Hi,

I'm running a Xinghuo 3A Desktop machine, currently with a kernel
3.5.0-9 built from Lemote's sources. I stopped upgrading to newer
kernels, as these seemed to require a Bios upgrade which I feared to
brick my machine.

Now Debian Jessie also has a 3.16 kernel for Loongson-3A in its package
repository. How are my chances to make these run on my Xinghuo machine?
Any simple-to-follow guides about how to safely upgrade the Bios on
these machines? Any known-good kernels that I can safely use for
booting into the system after an upgrade?

thanks for any info,

cheers,

David
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[张福新]

I think a safe way to try is use a ram version pmon(make tgt=ram) first. The ram version can be loaded from disk or network at old pmon command line. If the functionality is ok, the updating of pmon itself is quite safe. 

Regards 

 

 

------------------ Original ------------------

From:  "David Kuehling"<dvdk...@posteo.de>;

Date:  Sat, Jan 16, 2016 09:41 AM

To:  "loongson-dev"<loongs...@googlegroups.com>;

Subject:  [loongson-dev] Using latest Debian Loongson-3 kernels on a XingHuo 3A "Spark"

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[David Kuehling]

Hi Fuxin,

>>>>> "张福新" == 张福新 <zha...@lemote.com> writes:

> I think a safe way to try is use a ram version pmon(make tgt=ram)
> first. The ram version can be loaded from disk or network at old pmon
> command line. If the functionality is ok, the updating of pmon itself
> is quite safe.

Thanks for the reply.

"make tgt=ram" means I'd have to recompile PMON from sources? Isn't the
PMON version for Loongson3A/mini-ITX closed-source [1]? All the recent
source-links I could find are not working any more [2] (and they may not
even have the code for the mini-itx board, if I read the mail
correctly).

cheers,

David

[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-mips/2015/02/msg00004.html
[2] http://www.loongnix.com:8000/dev/gitweb/pmon-loongson3

[Unknown]

在 2016-01-18一的 02:48 +0100，David Kuehling写道：

> Hi Fuxin,
>
> > > > > > "张福新" == 张福新  <zha...@lemote.com> writes:
>
> > I think a safe way to try is use a ram version pmon(make tgt=ram)
> > first. The ram version can be loaded from disk or network at old
> > pmon
> > command line. If the functionality is ok, the updating of pmon
> > itself
> > is quite safe.
>
> Thanks for the reply.
>
> "make tgt=ram" means I'd have to recompile PMON from sources?  Isn't
> the
> PMON version for Loongson3A/mini-ITX closed-source [1]?  All the
> recent
> source-links I could find are not working any more [2] (and they may
> not
> even have the code for the mini-itx board, if I read the mail
> correctly).

http://mirrors.ustc.edu.cn/loongson/pmon/updates.lemote.com/files/uploa
d/lm/firmware/pmon/

[David Kuehling]

>>>>> "Unknown" == Unknown <lius...@gmail.com> writes:

>> > I think a safe way to try is use a ram version pmon(make tgt=ram) >
>> first. The ram version can be loaded from disk or network at old >
>> pmon > command line. If the functionality is ok, the updating of pmon
>> > itself > is quite safe.
>>
>> Thanks for the reply.
>>
>> "make tgt=ram" means I'd have to recompile PMON from sources?  Isn't
>> the PMON version for Loongson3A/mini-ITX closed-source [1]?  All the
>> recent source-links I could find are not working any more [2] (and
>> they may not even have the code for the mini-itx board, if I read the
>> mail correctly).

> http://mirrors.ustc.edu.cn/loongson/pmon/updates.lemote.com/files/uploa
> d/lm/firmware/pmon/

Thanks, this is exactly what I was looking for. Got myself a copy of
the sources and looking forward to playing around with RAM-only version
of PMON.

cheers,

David

[张福新]

The main reason for upgrading pmon should be that new pmon uses a new way to pass information to the kernel(we have defined a specification for this, ). I have  a rough idea to avoid upgrading pmon: write a little app for pmon and use it to fill the information tables then load new kernels with them. Since pmon support load and run an elf app compiled for it,  it should be viable and safe. But recent days we don't have  resources to do it, might try later.

The mentioned spec:  http://wiki.loongnix.org/index.php/%E5%9B%BA%E4%BB%B6%EF%BC%8D%E5%86%85%E6%A0%B8%E6%8E%A5%E5%8F%A3%E8%A7%84%E8%8C%83. 

http://ftp.loongnix.org/doc/05spec/%E9%BE%99%E8%8A%AFCPU%E5%BC%80%E5%8F%91%E7%B3%BB%E7%BB%9F%E5%9B%BA%E4%BB%B6%E4%B8%8E%E5%86%85%E6%A0%B8%E6%8E%A5%E5%8F%A3%E8%AF%A6%E7%BB%86%E8%A7%84%E8%8C%83V1R21.pdf

Pity that they are written in Chinese, maybe you can use google translator to understand most of it.

Regards

 

------------------ Original ------------------

From:  "David Kuehling"<dvdk...@posteo.de>;

Date:  Wed, Jan 20, 2016 08:30 PM

To:  "loongson-dev"<loongs...@googlegroups.com>;

Subject:  Re: [loongson-dev] Using latest Debian Loongson-3 kernels on aXingHuo 3A "Spark"