[IMAGE] A13(-WIFI) Debian (now Ubuntu) + xfce flashable (Updated: 08 Mar: R18)

[skenter]

Thank you for your reply. Here is what I am trying, when I have connected the serial port of the board to my laptop terminal and I am power up the board everything works fine. Debian start and I can use vnc. Then I am disconnecting the serial port and power up the board again. After couples o minutes, that I am realize tha there is no ip connectivity and when I am using serial to get at the board I am getting only the sun5i# prompt.

How do you know it's getting stuck on sunxi? I'm not entirely sure what you mean. Do you mean that it's not getting past uboot?

Yes i know, but i can't undrestand why is not bootin with out the serial. With out it is geting on SUNXI

[jwischka]

I've verified that this is an issue (in R11 as well) - I'll go back and see if I can find what the problem is
and get back to you on it, but may wait until Sunday or Monday. Obv. I'll have to get that fixed.

Thank you for your reply. Here is what I am trying, when I have connected the serial port of the board to my laptop terminal and I am power up the board everything works fine. Debian start and I can use vnc. Then I am disconnecting the serial port and power up the board again. After couples o minutes, that I am realize tha there is no ip connectivity and when I am using serial to get at the board I am getting only the sun5i# prompt.

How do you know it's getting stuck on sunxi? I'm not entirely sure what you mean. Do you mean that it's not getting past uboot?

Yes i know, but i can't undrestand why is not bootin with out the serial. With out it is geting on SUNXI

[jwischka]

R11 released: (copied from the original post)

R11 (25 Jan 2013): We are now on Ubuntu. Specifically a build based on the linaro-developer branch. Image sizes will now be smaller downloads, owing to me building the card from scratch. Still requires a 4GB card, though. Both kernels are now included in the same release, and you can switch between them using "go-headless" and "go-video" scripts in the user folder (video kernel default). Various packages may be missing now, due to building more or less from scratch. If I'm missing one of your packages, let me know. Firefox and Filezilla are now installed by default.

Additionally, there are two different kernels installed in the image, and they are now switchable via a script on the card. The card will boot with the "video" kernel, which enables output to the VGA port, at the expense of about 100MB of memory headed to the MALI and the CEDAR video decoder. The second kernel is the "headless" version, which gives no video output, but gives you all of the memory on the board. Your choice. You can switch between them using two scripts - "go-headless" and "go-video" in the user folder - note these need to be run with sudo (i.e., "sudo ./go-headless").

Get previous version (R11) here.


Known bug: you do have to have a serial connection for some reason. I'm looking into it - I think it's a u-boot problem, actually, but we'll see. May be Monday before it's done.

[skenter]

Thank you jwischka, I have spend a lot of time trying to figure out what is happening.

Thank you for your reply. Here is what I am trying, when I have connected the serial port of the board to my laptop terminal and I am power up the board everything works fine. Debian start and I can use vnc. Then I am disconnecting the serial port and power up the board again. After couples o minutes, that I am realize tha there is no ip connectivity and when I am using serial to get at the board I am getting only the sun5i# prompt.

How do you know it's getting stuck on sunxi? I'm not entirely sure what you mean. Do you mean that it's not getting past uboot?

Yes i know, but i can't undrestand why is not bootin with out the serial. With out it is geting on SUNXI

[drspastic]

i saw the bug report and decided to save my card another write cycle.... i still cant work out how to get audio on the last debian image, although you no longer support the debian base, i still quite like this image and would happily stick with it, even just as a failsafe backup card. is it possible to issue a patch for the mali and sound? i did all sorts of searches for the module i need for audio and google gave me nothing i could use. i feel stupid. im sure its nothing that special.
if not i will have to wait and hope for the linaro image to start taking shape.
i suffer the human condition: scared of change, impatient, and ignorant.
all hail the aliens!

[drspastic]

ps; is there a way for us who appreciate your work to issue some kind of recompense for your hard work so far? if not then maybe olimex could open some kind of donation system seeing as you are doing so much to promote the platform. maybe next time i order i can give them a few extra bucks towards sending you the latest a10 offering when it comes out.

[mike1968]

Hello jwischka,

I use (R10) version video, vga is working well 
But when i want to use my lcd, nothing is on the screen.
I change the script.bin (use the script.bin for lcd from the wiki)
Whats wrong?
An older image works with lcd

Best regards
michael

[ozbekmert]

Hello jwischka,

i want to disable serial console(ttyS0) because i am going to use uart1. I googled lots of stuff including changing /etc/inittab ... Everything come up with re-compiling kernel. Could you help me with this? I am new at this field.

[JohnS]

You need to make some or all of these changes:
1. stop bootstrap messages
2. stop debug messages as the kernel boots / shuts down
3. stop the login prompt
4. er, anything I've forgotten

#1 build your own u-boot (or find out if it can be told to be quiet - I've not looked, bu try the doc!)
#2 I think you can do this by tweaking the command line passed to the kernel, which now says something like console=ttyS0
#3 yes, change inittab (look for the line about getty and tty1)
#4 be sure to post what you find LOL

John

[jwischka]

Thank you jwischka, I have spend a lot of time trying to figure out what is happening.

Yes i know, but i can't undrestand why is not bootin with out the serial. With out it is geting on SUNXI

Ok. I know why this is happening, and I've come up with a fix for it. I don't really like the fix for it, but I think for most people it won't really matter. Essentially the u-boot output is getting looped around to the u-boot input when the serial console is not plugged in (I'm not sure why this is happening at the moment, but I know that it is, and is causing the problem). Which means that it's pausing the boot, which is very clever. Setting the bootwait to zero fixes this, but means you can't pause u-boot. So there's that. The next release (R12, uploading soon) will contain a zero-wait default, so everyone should see faster boot times and booting when you don't have a serial console plugged in - but you may also not be able to pause the boot. Pick your poison.

i saw the bug report and decided to save my card another write cycle.... i still cant work out how to get audio on the last debian image, although you no longer support the debian base, i still quite like this image and would happily stick with it, even just as a failsafe backup card. is it possible to issue a patch for the mali and sound? i did all sorts of searches for the module i need for audio and google gave me nothing i could use. i feel stupid. im sure its nothing that special.
if not i will have to wait and hope for the linaro image to start taking shape.
i suffer the human condition: scared of change, impatient, and ignorant.
all hail the aliens!

The kernel should be independent of the debian/ubuntu issues - you should be able to grab the kernel from the latest releas(es) and put it on the old image, and all should be fine. If you're interested, I can pack the kernel/modules up for download and you can get them separately, and give you instructions for replacement, if necessary. Likewise you could always go back to the previous kernels if they actually worked.

The newest video kernels should have Mali and sound support - if you try them out and they don't, let me know and I'll see if I can help you debug it.

ps; is there a way for us who appreciate your work to issue some kind of recompense for your hard work so far? if not then maybe olimex could open some kind of donation system seeing as you are doing so much to promote the platform. maybe next time i order i can give them a few extra bucks towards sending you the latest a10 offering when it comes out.

Thank you for the thought - I do appreciate it, but I'm really not doing it for money. I'd love if olimex sent me a developer version of the A10s micro board, and I'd probably consider doing releases for other boards they sent me, but it's certainly not something I expect. If you really do feel like it's been beneficial and would like to donate something, I would ask that you find a local organization in your area that feeds hungry people and give the money to them - I am very fortunate to have more than I need, but try to spend time working with and helping people who have real trouble putting food in their mouths. Even if they are on the other side of the world, their needs are more important than my beer fund. Again, I really do appreciate the thought, and I would be honored if you gave the price of a meal to a local organization that feeds the hungry.

Hello jwischka,

I use (R10) version video, vga is working well 
But when i want to use my lcd, nothing is on the screen.
I change the script.bin (use the script.bin for lcd from the wiki)
Whats wrong?
An older image works with lcd

Best regards
michael

It looks like LCD support may have accidentally been removed. I've added it back in in R12, along with some framebuffer support, which takes the memory down a bit on the video side of things. I'm open to removing it, if people don't use the frame buffer parts of things. I run headless, so I don't care. Let me know what seems to work best for you (and let me know if it doesn't work in the most recent release (R12).

There's also been some traffic on the sunxi github about LCD modules not loading properly. I haven't been paying attention to it, but if this still doesn't work let me know and I'll actually read the emails and see if it applies to our situation.

Hello jwischka,

i want to disable serial console(ttyS0) because i am going to use uart1. I googled lots of stuff including changing /etc/inittab ... Everything come up with re-compiling kernel. Could you help me with this? I am new at this field.

Do you need help recompiling the kernel? You should be able to do it with a uEnv.txt file or boot.scr. I can definitely give you pointers on recompiling the kernel though.


I am currently finalizing the image and making sure most stuff works. I'll post again when it's finished uploading.

[jwischka]

R12 is up.

Should have LCD support back in (sorry!). If it doesn't work, let me know.

Bootwait has been changed to "fix" a problem wherein the board wouldn't start if the serial console wasn't attached. This is not a good fix, and it's not one that I really like, but it is one that really works. I'm open to better ways of fixing it, if someone has one.

Also added some framebuffer support, which has taken us back down into the ~330MB total available memory range on the video kernel. For those of you who use video, let me know what your primary usage is - if most of you don't want/need the CEDAR acceleration, you could have 80MB of memory back. I never hook up a monitor, so it's no skin off my back either way. If we had 1GB instead of 512MB to play with, none of this would really matter, but that's how life goes.

A couple of package updates, added aptitude.

Get the image (R12) here.

[buzibus]

thanks jwischka for making new releases

and the DL now is much faster - thanks for that too - no more waiting 3h to get the file

[jwischka]

No problem. I'm not sure what changed on the server (or, perhaps I should say, I didn't change anything), but it has seemed faster today in download times. Let's hope it's permanent!

thanks jwischka for making new releases

and the DL now is much faster - thanks for that too - no more waiting 3h to get the file

[drspastic]

hi, tanks for the offer yes it would be great if you post the kernel and modules so i can mix and match. it would also help with the learning curve. maybe include source code too, if its not to big, or put in a seperate link. its easier to learn if i see all the building blocks in front of me.

[jwischka]

For source you'll want to just clone into the github - then I can post .config files if you want. There are a few guides on the forum about building kernels that help things along.

I probably don't have the old versions of kernels (everything pre-10, probably) but will try to post them along with instructions on changing them out later on.

hi, tanks for the offer yes it would be great if you post the kernel and modules so i can mix and match. it would also help with the learning curve. maybe include source code too, if its not to big, or put in a seperate link. its easier to learn if i see all the building blocks in front of me.