Issues installing neuvoo on a touchbook using a new SD card
sirlark
I'm having trouble installing neuvoo on to a new SD card for my
touchbook. As per viridior's instructions, I'm following the pandora
instructions on the wiki loosely. Basically I've done the following
1. set the geometry of the SD card to 255/63/977 as per instructions
on TI's wiki
2. partitioned and formatted the new SD card with 2 partitions
- boot (fat32, bootable)
- root (ext3)
3. extracted a stage 5 onto root
4. extracted the relevant portions of the pandora-rootfs archive (lib/
firmware, boot/uImage etc..)
5. copied /boot/uImage* to the boot partition
6. set up autoboot.txt on the boot partition
7. done all the pre-boot configuration stuff
For the life of me, I can't figure out how to actually install u-boot.
When I turn on my touchbook with the new SD card, I get nothing, and
by nothing I mean black screen, backlight isn't een turned on. If I
open the case, a red LED comes on on the board, but it's on the
underside, and I can't easily read what it is, but I assume it's a
power indicator. Switching back to the old SD card works just fine.
Any and all help appreciated, and thanks for all the efforts. I hope
to be able to contribute soon myself
Viridior
> - boot (fat32, bootable)
> - root (ext3)
> 3. extracted a stage 5 onto root
mountpoint
> 4. extracted the relevant portions of the pandora-rootfs archive (lib/
> firmware, boot/uImage etc..)
from lib/
> 5. copied /boot/uImage* to the boot partition
> 6. set up autoboot.txt on the boot partition
>
> When I turn on my touchbook with the new SD card, I get nothing, and
> by nothing I mean black screen, backlight isn't een turned on. If I
> open the case, a red LED comes on on the board, but it's on the
> underside, and I can't easily read what it is, but I assume it's a
> power indicator. Switching back to the old SD card works just fine.
this point.
Some background with how U-boot will work.
X-Loader and U-Boot are already flashed on your NAND.
Case 1 (NAND U-Boot, SD rootfs): By default it would use these on NAND
which in turn *may* (javaJake should be answer this) look on the SD
card for an existing kernel and boot accordingly. If your NAND u-boot
isn't set up for that it may force use the kernel installed on NAND
which probably is hard-set to boot off of Pandora's Angstrom Linux
also on NAND.
Case 2 (SD standalone): Installing X-Loader and U-boot on SD card. By
pressing the appropriate key (Right Side Button?) it will tell the
device to not use NAND X-Loader/U-boot and "boot from SD card". If
you are telling it to do this without X-Loader and U-Boot there, then
it wont know how to do anything.
I currently don't have a Pandora so I'm a little out of the loop on
how it's boot from NAND is set up.
> Any and all help appreciated, and thanks for all the efforts. I hope
> to be able to contribute soon myself
James Dominy
>> 2. partitioned and formatted the new SD card with 2 partitions
>> - boot (fat32, bootable)
>> - root (ext3)
>
> I'll assume that boot is /dev/mmcblk0p1 and root is /dev/mmcblk0p2
I'm guessing so, although I can't actually check it on my touchbook, and
on my desktop the partitions are /dev/sde1 and /dev/sde2 respectively.
To confirm, boot is definitely the FIRST partition and marked bootable.
>> 3. extracted a stage 5 onto root
>
> tar -xvjpf --numberic-owner /path/to/tarball -C /path/to/mmcblk0p2/
> mountpoint
Yup!
>> 4. extracted the relevant portions of the pandora-rootfs archive (lib/
>> firmware, boot/uImage etc..)
>
> be careful to only copy lib/firmware and lib/modules, nothing else
> from lib/
Only firmware and modules, and stuff for boot
For the record, I have a touchbook, board revision C1 if that makes a
difference. I'm only following the pandora instructions because they
seem to fit the separate SD card setup better.
I'm clearly missing something in the boot chain, and it really does seem
to be at the very start, otherwise I assume I would see some or other
error message at least. I don't know enough, but I think that maybe Case
2 is in fact default (without pushing the button). And I haven't put
u-boot or x-loader onto the SD card, how do I do this?
Cheers,
James
Viridior
> difference. I'm only following the pandora instructions because they
> seem to fit the separate SD card setup better.
>
> I'm clearly missing something in the boot chain, and it really does seem
> to be at the very start, otherwise I assume I would see some or other
> error message at least. I don't know enough, but I think that maybe Case
> 2 is in fact default (without pushing the button). And I haven't put
> u-boot or x-loader onto the SD card, how do I do this?
>
> Cheers,
> James
because AI kernels after 2009.09c? force use a initrd with squashfs
and aufs to load up the "multi-boot" selection screen. This will not
work with a normal stock linux distro, which is why I made a squashfs
image (which I haven't done yet for neuvoo-0.3.0, damn I'm lazy) to
use with the touchbook's custom boot system. I really don't care for
the touchbook kernel, mostly because they hacked the beagleboard
kernel entries instead of patching in "touchbook" ones. This makes it
so I have to maintain multiple kernel trees and associated patches
just to have consistency. AI devs were supposed to fix this and push
upstream to tmlind's tree, but I doubt thats happened. So, long story
short for the touchbook either use the kernel from 2009.09c? which
doesn't have all of their multiboot mods, or use a squashfs image of
the rootfs. When I get home from work tomorrow I'll go ahead and see
about generating an official copy, sorry for my laziness.
Here is the link to my saved copy of the 2009.09c kernel and modules
so you dont have to go digging... its labeled 2009.09-r3 to be
compatible with Gentoo portage system.
http://neuvoo.org/neuvoo/distfiles/
Viridior
server here:
http://neuvoo.org/neuvoo/images/0.3.0/official/
James Dominy
Been busy, so sorry about the delayed response. Thanks for the squasfs
image, but it doesn't seem to work for me. I popped my AI supplied SD
card into my reader, and copied the squashfs image into .images on
/dev/mmcblck0p2, without removing any of the others.
Booting my touchbook now presents me with the usual multi-os boot
selection screen, with an extra blank rectangle to touch. This I presume
is neuvoo, so I touch it, and I get the following
switch_root: can't open '/dev/console': No such file or directory
[ 28.269073] Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!
I've tried both with and without the keyboard plugged in, no difference.
I'm going to try using an older kernel and go with a neuvoo only setup
tonight, I'll let you know how it goes
Thanks,
James (sirlark)
James Dominy
So I got it to boot and I've put xdm back in the default run level. I
can now start LXDE. A couple of issues though
1. I've set the timezone to Africa/Johannesburg by linking local time,
then I used date as root to set the correct time, but every reboot the
times gets reset to 1/1/1970 00:00. This has the know on effect of
forcing me to change passwords after every reboot
2. I tried adding the battery monitor plugin to the LXDE panel, and it
crashes the panel completely
3. I try running stuff from the panel (terminal, pidgin) and there's a
breif flare of CPU activity (< 1 sec) then nothing happens, I've droped
to console to look for error messages, but I can't see any. I've emerged
eix, and it claims pidgin and lxterminal are installed, so that's not
the problem.
4. I don't suppose there's an ebuild for fennec?
5. Touchscreen doesn't work at all
Cheers,
James