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Old u-boot in Cubietruck legacy Jessie desktop


CryBaby

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I'm getting broken connections when I download big files from my Cubietruck. I've tried reducing CPU freq and setting eth0 to 100 half duplex, as recommended in various places. No joy though.

 

It is said that a GMAC fix for this went into u-boot in mid 2015 but my u-boot appears to be older:

 

$ strings /boot/linux/u-boot.bin | grep 201
U-Boot 2011.09-rc1-00000-gc1cb2f9 (May 30 2014 - 10:19:03) Allwinner Technology
arm-none-linux-gnueabi-gcc (Sourcery G++ Lite 2010.09-50) 4.5.1
GNU ld (Sourcery G++ Lite 2010.09-50) 2.20.51.20100809

 

$ cat /etc/armbian-release
# PLEASE DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE
BOARD=cubietruck
BOARD_NAME="Cubietruck"
VERSION=5.20
LINUXFAMILY=sun7i
BRANCH=default
ARCH=arm

 

Is it possible/safe to install a newer u-boot? If so where can I get it?

 

Or perhaps someone can suggest an alternative solution?

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If you are booting from NAND you are forced to use that old U-boot loader. Modern opensource, which we use by default, does not contain NAND support ... boot from SD and you can use latest u-boot, hopefully all bugs free.

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Old u-boot is EOL / not supported for at least two reasons. First is that it's old (and buggy), second is that proper sources were lost long time ago, before Armbian project even started. There are sources on the GitHub but I don't know which one was used to build this one, which one is working o.k. ... 

 

Imagine how much time you need to invest to find a best working old NAND u-boot for Cubietruck and referred patch will not work. That one is for modern 2014.xx mainline U-boot. So you will need than to reinvent the wheel.

 

Try getting this new one to work. I heard it's possible but never found time to try. From our perspective is not an urgent issue.

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OK. I have another cubietruck running cubian, which I don't think has the network problem. I will see what it does differently. And I will try the latest mainline u-boot with armbian legacy.

 

U-boot on Cubian might be the same. It would help if you can rule this out.

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My Cubian nand install is using the same old Allwinner u-boot. Unfortunately I am not able easily to test its network performance with big files.

My Cubian sdcard install appears to be using whatever came out of the box with the Cubietruck. Presumably it is the same. The network is slow but it never stops.

 

I have noticed that when I initiate scp on my remote armbian Cubietruck (ie. push the files from remote to local) it does not stop. It only stops when I initiate the scp from my local machine (ie. pull).

Pushing files from local to remote also does not stop.

 

I haven't had the time yet to try the new u-boot. Presumably I would do a normal nand install then overwrite the old u-boot with the new. Are there instructions for that anywhere?

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I haven't had the time yet to try the new u-boot. Presumably I would do a normal nand install then overwrite the old u-boot with the new. Are there instructions for that anywhere?

 

With SD card boot you can have latest u-boot, but not if you wanna boot from NAND. That's the main problem. Network issues were resolved up to certain degree ... just don't expect full gigabit speed, especially if you use encryption. A20 is not powerful enough for such actions.

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