{"id":1772,"date":"2016-07-12T06:28:48","date_gmt":"2016-07-12T05:28:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rglinuxtech.com\/?p=1772"},"modified":"2016-07-12T06:28:48","modified_gmt":"2016-07-12T05:28:48","slug":"arm-next-chip-armv7-first-impressions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rglinuxtech.com\/?p=1772","title":{"rendered":"ARM – Next CHIP ARMv7 – First Impressions.."},"content":{"rendered":"

After pre-ordering one many months ago, I finally got my Next CHIP<\/strong> ARMv7 system in the post..<\/p>\n

\"Next<\/a>

Next CHIP<\/p><\/div>\n

It certainly is fairly small, but seems well-constructed..\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Details are at http:\/\/docs.getchip.com\/chip.html#chip-hardware<\/a><\/p>\n

After connecting the UART\/USB cable, as normal, the system booted into a cut-down version of Debian..\u00a0\u00a0 There is no hdmi, or sdcard connector, or Ethernet, but the wi-fi connection works as well as can be expected..\u00a0\u00a0 Quite a bargain at only $9..\u00a0\u00a0 The on-board storage (only 4GB) is in the UBIFS format, and this needed some more research…<\/p>\n

The plan – initially – was to get it to boot onto a rootfs on an USB stick (ext4) and run Fedora 24..\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This was relatively easy, involving a change to the u-boot bootargs parameter to point to sda1 – the USB stick.<\/p>\n

setenv bootargs “root=\/dev\/sda1 rootfstype=ext4 rootwait rw”<\/p>\n

After this, the device booted into Fedora 24:<\/p>\n

...............<\/span><\/strong>\r\n(FEL boot)<\/span><\/strong>\r\n...........................<\/span><\/strong>\r\nUBI: attaching mtd1 to ubi0<\/span><\/strong>\r\nUBI: scanning is finished<\/span><\/strong>\r\nUBI: attached mtd1 (name \"mtd=4\", size 8176 MiB) to ubi0<\/span><\/strong>\r\nUBI: PEB size: 2097152 bytes (4096 KiB), LEB size: 2064384 bytes<\/span><\/strong>\r\nUBI: min.\/max. I\/O unit sizes: 16384\/16384, sub-page size 16384<\/span><\/strong>\r\nUBI: VID header offset: 16384 (aligned 16384), data offset: 32768<\/span><\/strong>\r\nUBI: good PEBs: 2044, bad PEBs: 0, corrupted PEBs: 0<\/span><\/strong>\r\nUBI: user volume: 1, internal volumes: 1, max. volumes count: 128<\/span><\/strong>\r\nUBI: max\/mean erase counter: 2\/0, WL threshold: 4096, image sequence number: 1098611298<\/span><\/strong>\r\nUBI: available PEBs: 0, total reserved PEBs: 2044, PEBs reserved for bad PEB handling: 40<\/span><\/strong>\r\nLoading file '\/boot\/sun5i-r8-chip.dtb' to addr 0x43000000 with size 22617 (0x00005859)...<\/span><\/strong>\r\nDone<\/span><\/strong>\r\nLoading file '\/boot\/zImage' to addr 0x42000000 with size 5619496 (0x0055bf28)...<\/span><\/strong>\r\nDone<\/span><\/strong>\r\nKernel image @ 0x42000000 [ 0x000000 - 0x55bf28 ]<\/span><\/strong>\r\n## Flattened Device Tree blob at 43000000<\/span><\/strong>\r\n Booting using the fdt blob at 0x43000000<\/span><\/strong>\r\n Loading Device Tree to 49ff7000, end 49fff858 ... OK<\/span><\/strong>\r\nStarting kernel ...<\/span><\/strong>\r\n[ 0.000000] Booting Linux on physical CPU 0x0<\/span><\/strong>\r\n.................<\/span><\/strong>\r\nFedora 24 (Twenty Four)<\/span><\/strong>\r\nKernel 4.3.0-ntc on an armv7l (ttyS0)<\/span><\/strong><\/pre>\n
$ cat \/proc\/cpuinfo<\/span><\/strong>\r\nprocessor : 0<\/span><\/strong>\r\nmodel name : ARMv7 Processor rev 2 (v7l)<\/span><\/strong>\r\nBogoMIPS : 1001.88<\/span><\/strong>\r\nFeatures : half thumb fastmult vfp edsp neon vfpv3 tls vfpd32 <\/span><\/strong>\r\nCPU implementer : 0x41<\/span><\/strong>\r\nCPU architecture: 7<\/span><\/strong>\r\nCPU variant : 0x3<\/span><\/strong>\r\nCPU part : 0xc08<\/span><\/strong>\r\nCPU revision : 2<\/span><\/strong>\r\nHardware : Allwinner sun4i\/sun5i Families<\/span><\/strong>\r\nRevision : 0000<\/span><\/strong>\r\nSerial : 1625428a0982b662<\/span><\/strong><\/pre>\n
After that, I configured wireless networking, and everything seemed to be OK, but then the device ‘died’ suddenly…\u00a0\u00a0 I had read that the USB port was rather low-powered, and so I attached a powered USB2 hub, reattached to USB stick to that, re-booted, and all is well, now..<\/p>\n
I installed the mtd-utils-ubi<\/strong><\/em> package to handle the UBIFS mount, and added the commands to do this to rc.local<\/strong>, after creating the nand-root<\/em> mount point..\u00a0\u00a0 I will be changing the pre-configured volume name to something other than ‘rootfs’ to avoid confusion..<\/p>\n
# ubiattach \/dev\/ubi_ctrl -m 4<\/span><\/strong>\r\n[ 501.640000] ubi0: attaching mtd4<\/span>\r\n[ 503.080000] ubi0: scanning is finished<\/span>\r\n[ 503.120000] ubi0: attached mtd4 (name \"rootfs\", size 8176 MiB)<\/span>\r\n[ 503.130000] ubi0: PEB size: 4194304 bytes (2048 KiB), LEB size: 2064384 bytes<\/span>\r\n[ 503.140000] ubi0: min.\/max. I\/O unit sizes: 16384\/16384, sub-page size 16384<\/span>\r\n[ 503.140000] ubi0: VID header offset: 16384 (aligned 16384), data offset: 32768<\/span>\r\n[ 503.150000] ubi0: good PEBs: 2044, bad PEBs: 0, corrupted PEBs: 0<\/span>\r\n[ 503.160000] ubi0: user volume: 1, internal volumes: 1, max. volumes count: 128<\/span>\r\n[ 503.160000] ubi0: max\/mean erase counter: 2\/0, WL threshold: 4096, image sequence number: 1098611298<\/span>\r\n[ 503.170000] ubi0: available PEBs: 0, total reserved PEBs: 2044, PEBs reserved for bad PEB handling: 40<\/span>\r\n[ 503.190000] ubi0: background thread \"ubi_bgt0d\" started, PID 639<\/span>\r\nUBI device number 0, total 2044 LEBs (4219600896 bytes, 3.9 GiB), available 0 LEBs (0 bytes), LEB size 2064384 bytes (2.0 MiB)<\/span>\r\n.....................................<\/span>\r\n# mount -t ubifs ubi0:rootfs \/nand-root<\/span><\/strong>\r\n[ 634.770000] UBIFS (ubi0:0): background thread \"ubifs_bgt0_0\" started, PID 646<\/span>\r\n[ 636.570000] UBIFS (ubi0:0): UBIFS: mounted UBI device 0, volume 0, name \"rootfs\"<\/span>\r\n[ 636.580000] UBIFS (ubi0:0): LEB size: 2064384 bytes (2016 KiB), min.\/max. I\/O unit sizes: 16384 bytes\/16384 bytes<\/span>\r\n[ 636.590000] UBIFS (ubi0:0): FS size: 4108124160 bytes (3917 MiB, 1990 LEBs), journal size 18579457 bytes (17 MiB, 9 LEBs)<\/span>\r\n[ 636.600000] UBIFS (ubi0:0): reserved for root: 0 bytes (0 KiB)<\/span>\r\n[ 636.610000] UBIFS (ubi0:0): media format: w4\/r0 (latest is w4\/r0), UUID 6BCEE06C-CCC9-42CF-B11E-A4A92824F204, small LPT model<\/span><\/pre>\n
As the wi-fi connection is so slow, here, I am planning to fit a USB\/Ethernet adapter for the network connection – similar to the Hikey and 410c, and – of course – I will be compiling my own kernel..<\/p>\n
Robert Gadsdon.\u00a0 July 11, 2016.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After pre-ordering one many months ago, I finally got my Next CHIP ARMv7 system in the post.. It certainly is fairly small, but seems well-constructed..\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Details are at http:\/\/docs.getchip.com\/chip.html#chip-hardware After connecting the UART\/USB cable, as normal, the system booted into a cut-down version of Debian..\u00a0\u00a0 There is no hdmi, or sdcard connector, or Ethernet, but the wi-fi …<\/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":[91,1275,10,11,15,16,1395,19,20],"tags":[576,101,1398,160,242,1396,1175,1397],"class_list":["post-1772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arm","category-armv7","category-fedora","category-hacks","category-linux-2","category-linux-arm","category-next-chip","category-opinion","category-performance-2","tag-armv7","tag-boot","tag-fedora-24","tag-first-impressions","tag-linux","tag-next-chip","tag-success","tag-ubifs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rglinuxtech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1772","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=1772"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/rglinuxtech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1775,"href":"https:\/\/rglinuxtech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1772\/revisions\/1775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rglinuxtech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rglinuxtech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rglinuxtech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}