EspressoBin mainline u-boot/atf

[dhewg]

New patches for mainline u-boot have been posted, so that espressobin should finally work now.

That gives us a recent version of u-boot, compared to that old and unmaintained marvell fork.

 

I opened a PR for OpenWRT to ship mainline u-boot/atf builds. Those also include distro boot:

openwrt/openwrt#3360
 

And now we need testers
openwrt/openwrt#3360 (comment)

 

While this is a PR for OpenWRT, I boot vanilla debian with it. In the end the distro shouldn't matter

 

Note:

* All builds are currently CPU_800_DDR_800 only for stability reasons

* There is no build for v5 with 2GiB RAM, does anyone have such a board? builds added in the posted v2 binaries

* The v5 1GiB build is 2CS, does anyone have 1GiB 1CS? builds added in the posted v2 binaries

 

And feedback is appreciated!

[Igor]

On 8/31/2020 at 1:32 PM, dhewg said:

I opened a PR for OpenWRT

I appreciate your work on OpenWRT, but this entire infrastructure is dedicated to support "Armbian on something". If u-boot making scripts would be altered with our script this would help. We won't test twice. First to support OpenWRT and then if we find time, to support Armbian. 

Anyway we need to find time and interest to switch to mainline. Decision is far from straightforward.
 

On 8/31/2020 at 1:32 PM, dhewg said:

I boot vanilla debian with it.

On Debian users forums they would be very mad when asking for supporting Ubuntu or other 3rd party distributions. Even they are technically the same and share most of the things / problems ... 

[dhewg]

I'm not sure I understand you correctly. But I didn't ask for armbian to change or support anything.

This is about testing and improving a firmware based on mainline components. That helps every distro, no matter if armbian, debian, openwrt or whatever.

In the end I believe we can get a more recent bootloader with many bugs fixed. And when that happens armbian can decide if or when it wants to switch from the downstream forks to mainline.

So as far as I'm concerned this is distro independent and the more people chime in the better the result, so I'm confused by the distro-X-vs-Y hostility...

 

 

[Igor]

4 hours ago, dhewg said:

This is about testing and improving a firmware based on mainline components.

We think its pointless to waste our private money for Debian, OpenWRT, Manjaro or whatever. Its already highly questionable wasting it for Armbian but on a problem which we think its technically pointless, on the edge, possible bring just work and no benefit for a long time? Most of this project, 99.5% goes for common good and that is not good enough? Investing into common has limits. We already have a dev/null wish list where we probably should move this topic https://forum.armbian.com/forum/38-feature-requests/ for which common good projects we would need several millions to finish them, while your donations doesn't cover server electricity. Why your common good project deserves more attention?

 

4 hours ago, dhewg said:

That helps every distro, no matter if armbian, debian, openwrt or whatever.

 

We have a working solution and we can't afford to invest into your common good low probable hunch. Once again - yes, it would be very nice to have a modern u-boot and clean code everywhere ... like half of the project from other users wish list.

[dhewg]

Right.

 

No wait, WHAT?

 

Anyway, if you honestly don't see the advantages of what I'm trying to archive here... just ignore it? I'm sure there're owners of this board who'd welcome a mainline firmware.

[Pali]

@dhewg: Look at issue https://forum.armbian.com/topic/10281-espressobin-all-boards-and-all-nics-have-the-same-mac-address/?do=findComment&comment=107341 Armbian boot script basically damaged any uniqueness of MAC addresses, plus it erase factory MAC address. That is why I put into README file that warning and steps how to recover Espressobin from broken Armbian. And based on this and other @Igor's reaction in other threads it looks like it is joking or trolling. I guess that problem in https://forum.armbian.com/topic/15054-kernel-54-rc4-worksdo-i-need-u-boot-v201904-rc4/ may be also related to some changes in uboot/script/kernel.

 

[Igor]

3 hours ago, dhewg said:

Anyway, if you honestly don't see the advantages

Surely there are potential advantages but for us this is yet another investment into the black hole. 

There is double "no". Sadly we have no resources to jump on yet another in users interest project and we think this is technically not a good idea. I can explain you in details but I don't want you to discourage or make you stop doing what you do. The goal is legit and development in this direction is O.K., just leave us out of this. We are already investing around 3.000 EUR into mainly common OSS per day and less than one % is covered.

 

3 hours ago, dhewg said:

I'm sure there're owners of this board who'd welcome a mainline firmware.

When this will be worth dealing with. Mainline doesn't automatically means anything. Few patches could only make a sign that one day mainline will be available. Experiences tells me its not worth touching mainline months after some signs shows up.

In case you want to help owners of this board - you are welcome: https://docs.armbian.com/Process_Contribute/

[Igor]

5 minutes ago, Pali said:

Armbian boot script basically damaged any uniqueness of MAC addresses, plus it erase factory MAC address.

For about three years since board was introducted, there was no relation whatsoever between MAC address written on PCB and shown in Linux. I invested my time for your education but you remained uneducated.

 

7 minutes ago, Pali said:

looks like it is joking or trolling.

Neither. Just standard procedure. If you are asking for support, you have to:
- use official stable build

- supply logs

If you don't, you are not worth any attention. Even you do, we sometimes can't handle.

[dhewg]

You seriously must be trolling, but I'll bite:
As response to my call for testers for mainline builds, you talk about "common good", "investing", "waste money" and "technically pointless problems". Honestly, what are you even talking about?

Because you have a "working solution" you want me "to leave you out of this"? You seem to miss how the whole linux economy works. It works by contributing to mainline, not by sticking to buggy and unsupported vendor forks. That's how the stack improves and all users gain from it.

Nobody asked you or armbian as a project for anything. There's no "investment" or "money wasted". You don't have to do anything. Maybe one day mainline improves so much that it's not "technically pointless" for you anymore. At which point you can choose if you want to jump on it. And all that for free!

And on top of that you now get personal and attack @pali, who actually contributes to u-boot mainline. Way to go, Igor!

[Igor]

1 hour ago, dhewg said:

not by sticking to buggy and unsupported vendor forks

I am not saying that this is generally a bad idea. I only told you that we have no plans to deal with this anytime soon or invest our resources to support your ideas. No matter how modest or beneficial they are. There are about 1000 more open ideas then people and there is a long line where you have to wait before you might get addressed. If this case is directly related to armbian and in our short term plan. Everything else ... forget it. That is what you don't understand.

 

1 hour ago, dhewg said:

Nobody asked you or armbian as a project for anything.

Forum is part of the project where we provide free technical support for our users. You came asking for support that we / this forum / don't provide. I didn't remove your posts which means users can do whatever they like. But since they already provide very little help to our development I can only wish you good luck.

 

1 hour ago, dhewg said:

You don't have to do anything. Maybe one day mainline improves so much that it's not "technically pointless" for you anymore. At which point you can choose if you want to jump on it. And all that for free!

You don't help me. You (think to) help users. Just the other way we do.

 

1 hour ago, dhewg said:

who actually contributes to u-boot mainline.

And he, because of that, deserve special treatment when making fool out of our work? I explained him very politely why we idiots broke MAC address ... but my patience has limits.

[dhewg]

Okay, you're not even listening or trying to understand, maybe you don't want to.

I don't even know WHY there's a need to argue.

You're even arguing AGAINST mainline, which I consider harmful to the linux community.

I'm done wasting my time on this nonsense.

 

To anyone still willing to test: Results are very much welcome, but please post on the linked github PR, I'm out of here.

 

Feel free to lock this derailed fail thread.

[Igor]

58 minutes ago, dhewg said:

You're even arguing AGAINST mainline, which I consider harmful to the linux community.

I am strongly against attempts to change our priorities since this is harmful for the project.

 

1 hour ago, dhewg said:

To anyone still willing to test:

We certainly will plan https://docs.armbian.com/Process_Release-Model/#release-planning to test and predict when to implement. 20.11 is too soon. We just finished major 20.08 update and a 20.08.1 bug fix update. Probably in 21.02. if contributors and maintainers will find time for this.

[Pali]

@dhewg: It is classic internet troll who just want to make people angry and spam discussion. It is its primary aim... you probably have not seen such trolls in technical discussions/mailinglists as there is no place for such entities. Just ignore it and all its comments as they contains zero information. Do not loose your temper, do not write any reply to its posts, i.e. do not feed trolls. Looks like it does not understand main fact that without people like you who develop, test and prepare binaries of upstream images, there would be no working hw support, and therefore also no armbian support...

 

EDIT, @dhewg: you can put it into ignore list and its comments would be hidden, so no troll spam anymore.

Edited September 4, 2020 by Pali

[Pali]

@dhewg: There are more variants of A3720 SOC and they differs in CPU freq. Variant number is printed on SOC. So if you have SOC with 1GHz CPU you should use/flash 1GHz firmware image, if you have only SOC with 800MHz CPU then you should flash 800MHz image. In part order number documents is also 1.2GHz variant of SOC but I have not see it yet. No idea if Marvell started producing it.

 

In this public document https://www.marvell.com/content/dam/marvell/en/public-collateral/embedded-processors/marvell-embedded-processors-armada-37xx-hardware-specifications-2019-09.pdf at page 154 is decoder of numbers printed on SOC and on page 153 is decoder of numbers, important is speed code. Based on SOC chip which you have on your Espressobin you should prepare firmware (WTM+ATF+U-Boot) and flash it.

 

So this if somebody flashed incorrect variant then it is probably reason for instability of Espressobin.