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

[tehowe]

Thanks for the reply (I've been up north in the land of no internet)... I'll check at my local hobbyist electronics shop to see if I can get one of those, and figure out how to use it.

It sounds like there's some sort of kernel panic happening, perhaps. Is there any chance you have a usb-serial adapter and could get a log of the messages? It's going to be really hard to debug what's going on without that (unless I actually figure out a way to redirect it to the VGA, which is on the eventual to-do list).

Hello;

By way of report, I haven't had any luck yet with R17, R15, R12 on my board.

After numerous iterations, the most promising outcome has been that my OLinuXino enters a sort of boot-loop, where the screen fades in grey then goes black again every 15s, sometimes with a fine line about 1/3 of the way down the LCD.

The board's a rev.c WIFI with the 7" LCD and touchscreen, as well as the Olimex-supplied AC adapter. It's been flashed with the LCD image to internal NVRAM.

I've tried a limited variety of sizes and brands of uSD card (Adata 16GB, Kingston 4GB, Phillips 4GB). DD actually returns an out-of-room error when I try flashing the images to either 4GB card. I've tried both 'sudo dd if=yourfile.img of=/dev/sdX' as well as 'sudo dd bs=4M oflag=sync if=yourfile.img of=/dev/sdX' (where X is the letter representing the flash card in question). I 'Eject This Card Safely' from Nautilus each time as well postflash.

The board boots Android ok. I also have tried an Olimex-supplied Debian uSD card. That just boots into Android with a message about a damaged SD card. So I'm out of ideas.

Any tips? Sorry to bug jwischka and other contributors - without you, we neophytes wouldn't have an in, so thanks.

[iso9660]

Which Linux & kernel version are you using?  Some have a broken (something, probably a .so) that causes that.

Try a 2.x kernel-based system if you can.  7zip seems OK, too

John

I use Ubuntu 12.04.2.
I'll try 7z, thanks.

[JohnS]

and kernel ver?

[ozko]

I`m new to all this. So here`s my problem, I managed to get the R17 to run, but I can`t run the video... I`m using olinuxino wifi and when i run /home/olinuxino/go-video it says: cannot run kernels/video/Uimage.
Here is the log from the serial :

Code Select Expand


* Stopping Network connection manager wicd                                             [ OK ]
                                                                         [ OK ] * Asking all remaining processes to terminate...
                                                                         [ OK ] * All processes ended within 4 seconds....
                                                                         [ OK ] * Deactivating swap...
                                                                               umount: /run/lock: not mounted
                                                                                                             umount: /run/shm: not mounted
                                                                                                                                           * Will now restart
                                                                                                                                                             [  211.680000] Restarting system.

U-Boot SPL 2012.10-04268-gf925eea-dirty (Jan 20 2013 - 15:46:58)
DRAM: 512MB
SUNXI SD/MMC: 0


Thanks in advance
Hristiyan

[jwischka]

I`m new to all this. So here`s my problem, I managed to get the R17 to run, but I can`t run the video... I`m using olinuxino wifi and when i run /home/olinuxino/go-video it says: cannot run kernels/video/Uimage.
Here is the log from the serial :

Code Select Expand


* Stopping Network connection manager wicd                                             [ OK ]
                                                                         [ OK ] * Asking all remaining processes to terminate...
                                                                         [ OK ] * All processes ended within 4 seconds....
                                                                         [ OK ] * Deactivating swap...
                                                                               umount: /run/lock: not mounted
                                                                                                             umount: /run/shm: not mounted
                                                                                                                                           * Will now restart
                                                                                                                                                             [  211.680000] Restarting system.

U-Boot SPL 2012.10-04268-gf925eea-dirty (Jan 20 2013 - 15:46:58)
DRAM: 512MB
SUNXI SD/MMC: 0


Thanks in advance
Hristiyan

Is the video not working? Can you post the whole log? Are you using sudo (e.g. "sudo ./go-video")?

[saand]

Hi Jwishchka,
great help so far, having an issue im hoping you cna help with.

I am trying to use a USB wifi adapter TL-WN721N which is supported by ATH9K_HTC driver.

In the headless kernel appears to have this module however the video version does not.

Is there a reason for the video version not to have this module.
if not is it possible to include this in the next release.
Thanks

[jwischka]

Probably an oversight. I'll try to get a new kernel out tomorrow, and make sure the wireless adapter support is common across the two.

Hi Jwishchka,
great help so far, having an issue im hoping you cna help with.

I am trying to use a USB wifi adapter TL-WN721N which is supported by ATH9K_HTC driver.

In the headless kernel appears to have this module however the video version does not.

Is there a reason for the video version not to have this module.
if not is it possible to include this in the next release.
Thanks

[iso9660]

I've been testing your image and I've found some things that can be improved.
I think that you could better use the Linaro 12.11 http://releases.linaro.org/12.11/ubuntu/leb-panda, that comes with Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS whitch is more polished and stable. I have found some programs that don't work in the last Linaro release.

[jwischka]

I've been testing your image and I've found some things that can be improved.
I think that you could better use the Linaro 12.11 http://releases.linaro.org/12.11/ubuntu/leb-panda, that comes with Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS whitch is more polished and stable. I have found some programs that don't work in the last Linaro release.

Thanks for your suggestion. I prefer to be more on the cutting edge of things, and given that 12.04 LTS is about to be two major versions behind (with the release of Raring in two months), I'd prefer not to go back to it.

Which programs are you finding that don't work? Admittedly I don't do a lot of UI type stuff, mostly dev work, but I haven't found anything that's given me any problems. In general, I've found more support in Quantal for packages than in Precise, though not by a huge margin. I suspect that as Raring is going to be released specifically with ARM support in mind, the direction to go is forward, not back.

All of that said, you're certainly welcome to build your own Precise image for distribution. This is just a side product of a base image we are exploring for use at work, that I thought people might find useful.

[iso9660]

Which programs are you finding that don't work?

Codelite IDE that I use to develop directly on board.

All of that said, you're certainly welcome to build your own Precise image for distribution.

I first tested with your image (changing the uboot and kernel) but as I said, some programs don't work. Then I moved to the stable version (Linaro 12.11). Remember the version your image use is a developer (Linaro developer) one.

[jwischka]

Which programs are you finding that don't work?

Codelite IDE that I use to develop directly on board.

All of that said, you're certainly welcome to build your own Precise image for distribution.

I first tested with your image (changing the uboot and kernel) but as I said, some programs don't work. Then I moved to the stable version (Linaro 12.11). Remember the version your image use is a developer (Linaro developer) one.

FWIW, I just installed Codelite and it seems to work fine, both on my image and on my Cubieboard image (also Quantal).

The Linaro developer version is not "dev" because it is "unstable", but because it has development tools (g++, etc) preinstalled. Quantal is the current stable version of Ubuntu, and the Linaro dev image is a Quantal image, not a Precise image. One huge reason not to use the LTS release, if for no other reason, is that it can only be upgraded in place to another LTS release - which won't happen for another year or two. With Raring expected to give significant improvement to ARM support, I don't want an image that I'll have to reformat (something I potentially can't do when they're sitting in a box in the field) in order to upgrade.

Look - again, I'm happy you're on the desktop release and that it's working out for you. But there are, in fact, actual engineering reasons I've chosen to use the Quantal release (and why I'll bump to Raring when it is released). I'm happy to make changes to the image for people if it's something that is broadly helpful and doesn't conflict with my own needs for the board. Moving everything back to Precise (and maintaining two sets of images), though, is a fairly major change, not to mention a lot more work for me, and something that probably isn't going to be in the cards.

As I said, if you think it would be a huge benefit to the community to have a flashable Linaro Desktop release, I'd be more than happy for you to support it. I'll even host the files for you. But at the moment I've got my hands full supporting one release, and it feels like I'm behind on it most of the time. If I add support for something else, it would be the A13-Micro, or the A10s-Micro, when it comes out.

[ontsurt]

First off, let me start by saying that I love the linux image. Once if figured out that root wasn't a member of the sound group it was trivial to install Squeezeslave on it so now it's plugging away as my squeezebox replacement in the kitchen.

On thing though, it does consume quite a bit of energy even in it's headless state. Is there a way to make it use less energy? I was thinking about disabling the XServer alltogether but I can't figure out how to do that (without breaking anything)

Any thoughts on both?

Cheers,

Leon

[jwischka]

First off, let me start by saying that I love the linux image. Once if figured out that root wasn't a member of the sound group it was trivial to install Squeezeslave on it so now it's plugging away as my squeezebox replacement in the kitchen.

On thing though, it does consume quite a bit of energy even in it's headless state. Is there a way to make it use less energy? I was thinking about disabling the XServer alltogether but I can't figure out how to do that (without breaking anything)

Any thoughts on both?

Cheers,

Leon

I have cpufreq disabled, so the board is running @ 1GHz the entire time. I can add it in a kernel update, if people are interested.

[ontsurt]

The way I look at it: at 50 watt continuously the board uses about 95 Euro's worth of energy per year. That just feels so wasteful for a radio/squeezebox that I only listen too 2 or 3 hours per day when having breakfast or dinner.

Then again I don't know it there are any drawbacks from using cpu freq and allowing the board to go into near complete idle mode. If that makes it completely unsuitable for other purposes for instance then obviously it makes sense not to implement it.

I've tried to do some reading on it but this and came across some references to using cpufreq in combination with sched_mc_power_savings which apparently gives the best results or something but honestly this is beyond my current understanding of Linux.

If you do it you make me a happy man is about all I can 'meaningfully' say.

Kind regards,

Leon

[JohnS]

Just turn it off when not in use.

It's hardly its main market!

John