[SOLVED] Slack ARM on Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Net

ahmadj · 05-27-2011, 10:41 AM

Just bought one of these.. basically a SheevaPlug but with 2 SATA ports and minus the USB hub..

Going to be looking to install Slackware ARM on a USB stick, with 2 hard drives in RAID 10 f2.

The 'box' will hopefully perform the following duties:

NAS
Wuala trading node
Torrent client with WebGUI (Deluge)
Internet connection sharing to desktop (will be connected to router via USB/Ethernet adapter, and to desktop via gigabit)
Scheduled (cron) backups of desktop via rsync
Web server for some experimental projects

Anyone been there before me? Any tips/caveats to share?

tmfizzle · 05-27-2011, 10:55 PM

I have successfully installed armedslack 13.37 on a sheevaplug. I had to upgrade uboot, no experience with a go flex but I am sure there is documentation if you use your google-fu about the differences, also if you ftp transfer the armedslack tree make sure that you transfer in binary and not ascii as it will mangle your kernel and you will be stuck with a bad crc data error and unable to boot for the installer. Otherwise it was quite easy after getting those things out of the way for me. Hope this helps.

ahmadj · 05-31-2011, 12:13 PM

Thanks for the info. Just about to try and get myself a serial cable...

After some googling it seems I may need a custom Uboot to get the SATA ports working?

http://206.217.130.189/index.php5?ti...Net&oldid=3591

Does anyone know if this would be necessary for Slackware?

I never knew something so small could be so daunting

ahmadj · 06-02-2011, 05:14 AM

Still not got a serial cable; further research...

U-Boot installation seems to be pretty easy using this: http://jeff.doozan.com/debian/uboot/

The kernel side is a little more difficult. The all-in-one patch for 2.6.37 is here: http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?2,4702,4778#msg-4778

I have a few options, but I think the following may be most sensible:

Upgrade uBoot.
Set SheevaPlug ArcNumber
Install Slackware
Boot into Slackware
Apply kernel patch and re-compile the kernel
Install the new kernel.
Reboot, set the newly-added GoFlex ArcNumber
et voila?

Am I understanding this correctly? I there a better/quicker way?

ahmadj · 06-03-2011, 05:35 AM

Just been poking around the kernel source and seems kernel patching won't be needed.. 2.6.38.1 supports the GOFLEXNET machtype (3089)

Considering installing straight onto a SATA drive now... I'll keep this thread updated with progress.

Gotta love Slackware

EDIT: It has the machtype but maybe not support for SATA and LEDs.. more hunting to be done I guess.

EDIT EDIT: Yup, still needs patching.

tmfizzle · 06-03-2011, 11:13 PM

In the install-kirkwood.txt it explains that it is possible to install to an esata drive, you may want to keep up the Jeff Doozan's uboot setups. Not sure if this applies to your setup but here are a few links. http://jeff.doozan.com/debian/uboot/build_uboot.htm and http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?3,1893,2055

ahmadj · 06-04-2011, 05:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tmfizzle

In the install-kirkwood.txt it explains that it is possible to install to an esata drive, you may want to keep up the Jeff Doozan's uboot setups. Not sure if this applies to your setup but here are a few links. http://jeff.doozan.com/debian/uboot/build_uboot.htm and http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?3,1893,2055

Thanks for the links. I had already installed Jeff's latest uboot, but prior to that had connected to Pogoplug and couldn't stop it downloading an update. Which meant that I faced some issues having installed Jeff's uboot and can now no longer get into the Pogoplug OS.

However, I have successfully installed Slackware onto a USB hard drive and booted into it

I've applied the kernel patch with GoFlex support (http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?2,4702,4778#msg-4778) and have just hit 'make'...

After installing the kernel, I will remove the external hard drive from its enclosure, place it into the SATA port, set the correct arcnumber + IDE boot parameters in uboot console.. and see what happens...

I do not think I will need to make/install a new initrd, but can someone just confirm that the Marvell SATA driver is built-in in the default config?

And once the kernel is 'made', is it simply a case of copying across to /boot?

ahmadj · 06-04-2011, 03:00 PM

Semi-success

I installed the patched+recompiled kernel, and Slackware does now boot with the arcNumber set to 3089 (it didn't before)

Next step is to test SATA functionality and then try booting from SATA...

If anyone needs it, I can upload my uImage - completely stock armedslack 2.6.38.4 kernel apart from added support for GoFlex Net and GoFlex Home via their unique arcnumbers.

ahmadj · 06-05-2011, 02:30 PM

SATA functionality tested and working from within Slackware

I'm still trying to troubleshoot booting from it, though.

A couple of notes:

U-Boot detects the SATA ports 'backwards', ie. sda as port 1 and sdb as port 0 [EDIT: THIS IS NOT TRUE ANY MORE]
Linux allocates device nodes to SATA before USB... so with 1 SATA drive installed, any USB storage will be sdb(+). With 2 installed, USB drives will be sdc(+). The latter is an assumption and I am yet to test it.

I've switched from Jeff's U-Boot to the one provided by U-BIT 0.5 - http://plugapps.com/index.php5/UBIT_U-Boot_images, http://jeff.doozan.com/debian/goflex/v0.5/goflexnet.kwb. Would have gone with 0.6, but can't seem to find a compiled image anywhere?

I've also managed to boot into the Slackware install environment (over tftp) using my custom kernel, meaning one can install straight onto a SATA drive.

One thing I don't quite understand, is that I can see terminal output while booting the install environment from RAM (as in the armedslack install instructions), but not when booting from USB or (attempting to) from SATA - is this fixable? It would make things a lot easier right now. I have 'bootargs console=ttyS0,115200' set in both cases.

ahmadj · 06-06-2011, 05:24 AM

Here are the relevant commands (assuming you set up partitions as-per the official install howto):

Code:

setenv arcNumber 3089
setenv bootargs_console console=ttyS0,115200
setenv bootargs_root 'root=/dev/sda3 waitforroot=10 rootfs=ext4'
setenv bootcmd 'setenv bootargs $(bootargs_console) $(bootargs_root); run bootcmd_slk ; reset'
setenv bootcmd_slk 'usb start;ide reset;ext2load ide 0:1 0x01100000 /uinitrd-kirkwood;ext2load ide 0:1 0x00800000 /uImage-kirkwood;bootm 0x00800000 0x01100000'

Hard drive is in the right-hand-side port (ide0). It's the bold bit that makes the difference - for some reason, Uboot will not find the kernel images unless USB is started before loading them.

Problems

Serial console stopped working altogether after boot.. I can only SSH in. Troubleshooting this later.

tmfizzle · 06-07-2011, 09:55 PM

any success with the wuala client on arm?

ahmadj · 06-08-2011, 04:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tmfizzle

any success with the wuala client on arm?

Not tried it yet. Will keep you informed.

ahmadj · 06-08-2011, 11:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tmfizzle

any success with the wuala client on arm?

Wuala seems to be working perfectly, though bear in mind I'm only using it for trading. The 100GB trading limit is a little low for my liking, but does mean I can at least make use of my 160GB root drive, and dedicate the 1TB drive to solely NAS duties

I am using Oracle Java as recommended in the docs: ftp://ftp.splack.org/pub/armedslack/...D_PACKAGES.TXT

Now to set-up an rc.d script for it...

EDIT: Already earned 2.19GB of storage

tmfizzle · 06-08-2011, 01:47 PM

I could only find packages related to x86 and x64, is there source somewhere?

ahmadj · 06-08-2011, 02:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tmfizzle

I could only find packages related to x86 and x64, is there source somewhere?

No source is available, apparently... you have to use Oracle's binaries. From the 'README_REMOVED_PACKAGES.TXT':

Code:

  jre				x86 only (no source)

  For Java on ARM, your best best is to download the evaluation version
  from Oracle:

  http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/ja...sp-135769.html

  Choose: "ARMv5 Linux - Headless: EABI, Soft Float, Little Endian"

You will have to provide an email address to get hold of it, unfortunately. Extract it to /usr/local and it works a charm.

The init script I used for wuala is here: http://bugs.wuala.com/view.php?id=4485

I set up a user called 'wuala' with no extra privileges, logged-in to wuala manually from that user, and set the trade size to 100GB. Then edit the init script (renamed to rc.wuala), chmod +x it and reference it from rc.local. Reboot, and Bob's yer uncle!

Hope this helps.