LeMaker Banana Pro and Slackware ARM

saxa · 12-10-2018, 04:25 AM

Hi Justin, ok. I could not boot the beast anymore, I suspect that with so many writes to the sd card something went wrong with it. I will try to set up again the Arch image supplied by Lemaker and keep that safe just in case.

My question right now is what is the prefered method to install slackware on a sd card ?

Right now I do not plan to make the install on a HDD as I do not have one for it. Just want to do it on a 16GB SD card. Later if needed I move things around and prepare a single boot SD card.

I have not been able to make the debug header on Banana Pro show me anything. But can be my cable too. I have a USB-RS232 cable which gets recognized as PL2303, but since its all closed I have no idea what kind of chip does it have in and if its 5V or 3,3V or even 12V need to measure it.

Another question, is there an ready to burn image os Slackware-current for BananaPro ?

Rgds
Sasa

justwantin · 12-10-2018, 06:38 AM

Justin or justwantin? I didn't see a Justin in this thread.

Quote:

what is the preferred method to install slackware on a sd card ?

I don't think there is a (official) preferred way. Just the installation (ways) as provided in /slackwarearm-current/installdocs. That being said it can be done using a single sd card. I seem to recall I did it and I partitioned and formatted the sd card then set up a boot directory with kernel, intrid.img and some other stuff. My slackware-arm source was on a usb stick but there is a work around for this (I think) but I'd have to give it a go to be sure.

Quote:

I have not been able to make the debug header on Banana Pro show me anything.

I'm not quite sure what this debug header thing is. So I'll skip this one.

Quote:

I have a USB-RS232 cable which gets recognized as PL2303

That's good, that's all you need. Don't worry about the chip if dmesg tells you its recognised as below you are happy.

Code:

[23099.007644] usbserial: USB Serial support registered for pl2303
[23099.007674] pl2303 9-5:1.0: pl2303 converter detected
[23099.028181] usb 9-5: pl2303 converter now attached to ttyUSB0

Moving on .....

Quote:

and if its 5V or 3,3V or even 12V need to measure it.

Don't worry about the voltage better yet don't even think about it. You will only be using the Neg, RX and TX wires for UART. The red wire (whatever voltage) is redundant for serial comms. Fold it back and tape it so it doesn't accidentally short on some pin and make magic smoke.

Quote:

is there an ready to burn image os Slackware-current for BananaPro ?

There are no official images. Remember ... this is Slackware and we do things the hard way ..... not really, it just seems hard at first because everybody else is burning images and will only learn a fraction of what you will know after awhile running Slackwarearm and connecting all sorts of things to your BananaPro .... hopefully no magic smoke.

As for micro SD cards, I just go to the local office supply and purchase regular old Sandisk class 10 cards. You will see a little C on the card with a 10 inside. I also have a couple Kingston class 10 cards as well that I picked up out of country. No problem with them either. You can go out and get a real good n' expensive card after you up and running and have a need for one.

It's getting late here, perhaps I've answered your questions, maybe not, anyway I've got a spare BananPro up on the shelf that I could do an sd card install on to refresh my mind tomorrow as well as take notes so as to give you something to work with. I'm not sure if such an install has been documented yet. Just let me know if you are interested. Otherwise I work in the veggie patch.

Question .. do you have a usb stick you can put the slackwarearm-current installation source on?

saxa · 12-10-2018, 08:01 AM

Ups sorry, I meant you justwantin

Thanks for all your detailed answers. I am at work now, but maybe later today or in the weekend I take this journey further.

I use slackware for about 20 years already so I am quite comfortable of the install process although on x86 but yeah. I did it
many times.

We keep in touchand if I have any other troubles I will ask or comment here. Thanks for now mate.

ponce · 12-10-2018, 10:52 AM

ftp://ftp.arm.slackware.com/slackwar...onnections.jpg

I'm sorry not being able to help with installing on an sd card, but, if can be useful, I can confirm that installing on a sata hard disk works (I have done it again recently using this guide).

saxa · 12-10-2018, 01:02 PM

Hi Ponce I know about those docs and photos. But my screen session does not show anything at all. I need to figure it out why. In the weeked I will play a bit more with it.

drmozes · 12-10-2018, 05:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by saxa

Hi Ponce I know about those docs and photos. But my screen session does not show anything at all. I need to figure it out why. In the weeked I will play a bit more with it.

https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...ml#post5931890

saxa · 12-11-2018, 10:02 AM

hi Dr Mozes, thanks, I tried to swap the RX and TX pins but no luck, at least at the time. I think the cable is ok as
I started minicom on ttyUSB0, bridged pin2 and 3 on a DB9 connector and enabled local echo and I got all double characters when I was typeing.

Not sure if toggle local echo does this without the cable....

interndan · 12-11-2018, 02:02 PM

Plug your cable into your usb port, then as root run dmesg to see if it is being assigned to ttyusb0. You may need to adjust the script to connect to the correct port. Also on my cable I did indeed need to connect tx-rx rx-tx.

justwantin · 12-11-2018, 07:31 PM

I may have missed something ... but .... have you set up your sd card with A20/u-boot/bin/BananaPiPro.sdcard_latest.img.xz as per section 2.5 in INSTALL_AllWinner_A20.TXT?

Also I have had a go with installing onto the micro sd card from the micro sd card with source on a usb stick and made an image. No network required. It will boot into the slackwarearm install and run as you would expect. After install the existing boot.cmd file is edited for a new boot image. I've tested the image on a 8G card so a didn't do a full install but should work the same on a 16 or 32G card. It is kind of like doing a SARPI install. I used slackwarearm-current as of yesterday and u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin from u-boot-2019.01-rc1.

saxa · 12-12-2018, 12:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by interndan

Plug your cable into your usb port, then as root run dmesg to see if it is being assigned to ttyusb0. You may need to adjust the script to connect to the correct port. Also on my cable I did indeed need to connect tx-rx rx-tx.

Hi, yes I am sure it got assigned /dev/ttyUSB0 , I should be fine reading from it as I am part of plugdev group but will check permissions too. Thanks.

saxa · 12-12-2018, 12:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by justwantin

I may have missed something ... but .... have you set up your sd card with A20/u-boot/bin/BananaPiPro.sdcard_latest.img.xz as per section 2.5 in INSTALL_AllWinner_A20.TXT?

Also I have had a go with installing onto the micro sd card from the micro sd card with source on a usb stick and made an image. No network required. It will boot into the slackwarearm install and run as you would expect. After install the existing boot.cmd file is edited for a new boot image. I've tested the image on a 8G card so a didn't do a full install but should work the same on a 16 or 32G card. It is kind of like doing a SARPI install. I used slackwarearm-current as of yesterday and u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin from u-boot-2019.01-rc1.

No I have not been able to boot anymore neither the Arch install I reinstalled again later. This is what makes me think of the SD card gone bad. I will check this weekend again and play a bit more with it.

justwantin · 12-13-2018, 05:27 AM

Maybe you've covered al of this but these are the things I'd be looking at if I were you.

Did you just write to that card to install the Arch image? If you can write to that card you should be able to read from it. If you can't see it with fdisk -l that's another matter. I've had card readers go bad as well as the big sd card holder that one slips the micro sd card into to read/write the micro card via the sd card reader. Try swapping the micro card in other big sd card holders if you have any lying about to see if you can get something with fdisk -l. If you can read/write to the card but get nothing when booting maybe you have corrupted the beginning of your card (before the partition) and u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin is stuffed. Instead of arch, if you can read/write the card, try putting BananaPiPro.sdcard_latest.img.xz on the card as per section 2.5 inf the install doc. With just that on the card you will at least get u-boot up on your monitor if the card is still OK.

saxa · 12-13-2018, 07:16 AM

Justwantin, thanks for the tips. I have not checked with fdisk, will check this too. For the SD card adapters yes I have plenty of them as nearly every micro sd card comes with one of them.

I tried to write only the BananaPiPro.sdcard_latest.img.xz as stated in the doc and it didnt flash the green or blue leds only red led was on and nothing apeared on the screen session.

This is why i then decided to rewrite the ArchLinux image but also that one have no longer booted, only red led is lit and there it stays.
I suppose that also my power cable could be a problem. I will try to solder up a new cable and drive the banana pro from the SATA power as it is more reliable than the micro USB one.

justwantin · 12-14-2018, 01:43 PM

I have one BPro powered from the sata connector and two others that are not. It works both ways. The reason I'm using the sata connector on one is because I have an ssd, arduino board and weather sensors connected as well and wanted to ensure good power to both BPro and the arduino/sensor circuit from the same power adapter. With Slackwarearm up and running I only ever have the red led on, never the blue or green. The red shows power to the board nothing else. Are you using a serial connection and watching for a boot on your monitor? If so have you tried connecting to a monitor to see if anything happens?

Also fdisk -l will show if your sd card is still being recognised. If so try erasing the beginning of the sd card with dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sd??? bs=1M count=1 and then write BananaPiPro.sdcard_latest.img to the card again

saxa · 12-15-2018, 12:32 PM

Ok, fact is that my sd card writer does not function properly. I have reinstalled the arch image and all is ok and working now. Now I will try to play the thingy with slackware and
a test install on a separate sdcard.

Card reader have some bad connections and I will work that out firstly.

Justwantin, thanks for the pic. For the monitorthing I have not watched it on the monitor as if i connected hdmi cable it got no signal on my monitor. But will play a bit with cables and stuff right now
and report my success or not.