Now that the DreamPlug has a stable power supply (see previous post..) I decided to live dangerously and update the u-boot version and install a modern ‘device tree’ plus kernel..<\/p>\n
It has been mentioned many times before that the u-boot update for a DreamPlug is fraught, and can result in a ‘brick’..\u00a0\u00a0 There should be a way of recovering from this by use of openocd<\/strong> and the JTAG<\/strong> connection, but I tested this many times, and it simply did not work…\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This failure has been documented by several others, and when I see the instruction to ‘keep trying until it works’ I know that something is badly wrong – with the method, or hardware, or both….<\/p>\n There is documentation for DreamPlug u-boot updates, if you look for it..\u00a0\u00a0 Most of the info I found was rather ‘old’, and somewhat contradictory!\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Remember to take a copy of the old DreamPlug u-boot parameters, as these will get overwritten by the update, and you will need some of the info (including the ethernet mac<\/em> addresses) to add back..<\/p>\n It is worth mentioning here that you do not<\/span> need to do this, if you don’t want to!\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The latest kernels can be compiled successfully to produce a kernel-with-appended-device-tree <\/em>image, which will still work with the ‘older’ version of u-boot on the DreamPlug..<\/p>\n However, I finally plucked up the courage, and went from:<\/p>\n to<\/p>\n There are more recent versions of u-boot, but this version was the only one I found documented for the DreamPlug update that worked, and it does provide support for device-tree (and ext2 boot..) as well..<\/p>\n The kernel source was standard 4.0-rc1 from kernel.org<\/strong><\/em> and I cross-compiled the kernel from source in its own directory, including ~\/boot and ~\/lib sub-directories to receive the kernel image and modules, etc….\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As usual, there are other ways of doing this, but this works, for me..<\/p>\n My workflow was:<\/p>\n – then run<\/p>\n Then copy the boot files and lib\/modules and lib\/firmware contents to the DreamPlug SDCard..<\/p>\n For booting with device tree support, the changed u-boot parameters were:<\/p>\n I was still using fatload, but I may change to boot partition from fat to ext2 in the future and use ext2load..<\/p>\n You may find that the SDCard usb device\/address is different – several examples I found showed it as usb 0:1<\/strong>…<\/p>\n After all this, the DreamPlug booted with Kernel 4.0-rc1:<\/p>\n In case you were wondering, the last Fedora version that supports armv5 was F18..<\/p>\n Robert Gadsdon.\u00a0\u00a0 March 3, 2015.<\/em><\/p>\n ** Thanks to Marcus Roeder<\/strong> for this information..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Now that the DreamPlug has a stable power supply (see previous post..) I decided to live dangerously and update the u-boot version and install a modern ‘device tree’ plus kernel.. It has been mentioned many times before that the u-boot update for a DreamPlug is fraught, and can result in a ‘brick’..\u00a0\u00a0 There should be a way …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,7,10,11,14,16,19,20,937],"tags":[1174,628,136,1019,242,1175,372,379,448],"class_list":["post-1354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-compilation","category-crash-and-burn","category-dreamplug","category-fedora","category-hacks","category-kernel","category-linux-arm","category-opinion","category-performance-2","category-u-boot-2","tag-arm","tag-device-tree","tag-dreamplug-2","tag-kernel-4-0-rc1","tag-linux","tag-success","tag-u-boot","tag-update","tag-warning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rglinuxtech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rglinuxtech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rglinuxtech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rglinuxtech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rglinuxtech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1354"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/rglinuxtech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1392,"href":"https:\/\/rglinuxtech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1354\/revisions\/1392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rglinuxtech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rglinuxtech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rglinuxtech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}U-Boot 2011.06-02334-g8f495d9-dirty (Mar 28 2011 - 05:21:06)<\/strong>\r\nMarvell-DreamPlug<\/strong><\/pre>\n
U-Boot 2013.07 (Mar 03 2015 - 21:24:17)<\/strong>\r\nMarvell-DreamPlug<\/strong><\/pre>\n
export ARCH=arm<\/strong>\r\nexport CROSS_COMPILE=armv7hl-mandriva-linux-gnueabi-\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>(insert your own cross-compiler reference here, and don't forget the dash at the end..)\r\nexport INSTALL_PATH=..\/<\/strong>\r\nexport INSTALL_MOD_PATH=..\/<\/strong><\/pre>\n
make multi_v5_defconfig <\/strong>(if necessary..)\r\nmake xconfig\u00a0 <\/strong>(make any necessary changes, for selinux support, etc...)\r\nmake<\/strong>\r\nmake LOADADDR=000008000 uImage <\/strong><< Changed March 29, 2015 - Now gives correct<\/span> amount of total memory after boot >> **<\/strong>\r\nmake modules_install<\/strong>\r\nmake firmware_install<\/strong>\r\ncp System.map ..\/boot<\/strong>\r\ncp arch\/arm\/boot\/dts\/kirkwood-dreamplug.dtb ..\/boot<\/strong>\r\ncp arch\/arm\/boot\/uImage ..\/boot<\/strong><\/pre>\nsetenv x_bootcmd_fdt fatload usb 1:1 0xd000000 kirkwood-dreamplug.dtb<\/strong>\r\nsetenv x_bootcmd_kernel fatload usb 1:1 0x6400000 uImage<\/strong>\r\nsetenv bootcmd '${x_bootcmd_usb}; ${x_bootcmd_kernel}; ${x_bootcmd_fdt}; setenv bootargs ${x_bootargs} ${x_bootargs_root}; bootm 0x6400000 - 0xd000000;'<\/strong><\/pre>\nFedora release 18 (Spherical Cow)<\/strong>\r\nKernel 4.0.0-rc1 on an armv5tel (ttyS0)<\/strong>\r\n........................<\/strong>\r\n[root@rgdreamplug ~]# uname -a<\/strong>\r\nLinux rgdreamplug 4.0.0-rc1 #1 PREEMPT Mon Mar 2 23:20:37 PST 2015 armv5tel armv5tel armv5tel GNU\/Linux<\/strong><\/pre>\n