Guest Blisk Posted June 24, 2015 Posted June 24, 2015 Greetz // Pozdrav vsem uporabnikom vsezmagovalcev! I am planning to use my Cubietruck for a general-purpose desktop computer to surf the internet, write documents, watch movies (youtube, VLC, lan/dlna), etc. Basically I'd like to install a lightweight desktop image on it and connect it to my SmartTV in the living room via a short HDMI cable. I'll probably need video acceleration for a 1080p resolution. Thing is I'm currently in a bit of a dilemma because there are so many premade images out there, and most of them seem outdated. Can you recommend me which image to use for my goal (possibly a LTS release)? I've been leaning towards Lubuntu, but I see debian has some images too. I hear it's recommended to use the old 3.4.x kernel from linux-sunxi github repository when media acceleration is needed (I'll be watching youtube). This I can compile myself, but I'm not too sure about compatibility with the newer linux releases due to some of them using systemd that might (?) be incompatible with older kernels? Finally, I'm planning to install the OS (rootfs) onto a 120GB SSD that is connected via the SATA port and boot the image from the NAND flash. I think a special uboot is needed for this as well? Kind regards!
Guest Blisk Posted June 28, 2015 Posted June 28, 2015 I've compiled the stage/sunxi-3.4 (3.4.104+) kernel and a mainline u-boot (2015-07-rc2). I'm currently booting from a SD-card and the system seems to boot up fine. For the distro I tried to find an up-to-date rootfs image and chose ubuntu-mate. https://ubuntu-mate.org/armhf-rootfs/ I've put the rootfs on an ext4 partition on a SSD that's connected via the SATA port, and did some details like copying kernel modules over, set the rootfs in uboot to /dev/sda, edit fstab, etc. The system boots up fine and brings up the desktop welcome screen on my HDMI monitor, but it gets stuck after I complete the first-boot configuration. Serial console gets stuck on this line: A start job is running for End-user...tallation (27min 28s / no limit) EDIT: Seems like two messages are getting overwritten there. One of them is "Starting End-user configuration after initial OEM installation..." and the other "A start job is running for" something...
Igor Posted June 29, 2015 Posted June 29, 2015 If you are trying to glue kernel, uboot and some generic root-fs you are going few steps back. You need to fix default Debian / Ubuntu that things run smoothly, you won't be able to compile modules and upgrading will probably fail. My work covers this. Get my latest (3.4.108 if you need audio video features + some hw acceleration, otherwise 4.x) kernel with many patches and latest stable u-boot. This is somehow a good start. I am not working much on desktop but I successfully upgraded my distribution toward graphics environment, MATE (on Debian) included. Note that all graphics memory reservation is disabled by default since this is "server image". Check Cubian X1, cubian.org or cubiuntu.com as reference. Unfortunately none of those are not supported any more so it would be better to work from my fairly updated basis.
Guest Blisk Posted June 29, 2015 Posted June 29, 2015 Haha bingo! Now you see why I'm having so much trouble locating an appropriate *SUPPORTED* linux image. This ubuntu-mate distro seems like a recent one, but I'm having problems running it. Personally I don't care too much about upgrading the kernel/u-boot because the kernel I'm using is the sunxi one and it isn't being as actively developed any more, but it does have hardware acceleration unlike the current mainline. I've already cross-compiled it as well as the modules, and they seems to work fine (tried on arch linux arm). So yes, this is why I decided to stick with sunxi-3.4 for the time being. Huh, there is kernel version 3.4.108? I thought the one in linux-sunxi github repo (stage/sunxi-3.4 branch, version 3.4.104+) was the most recent one...
Igor Posted June 29, 2015 Posted June 29, 2015 No, we are using alternative 3.4.x kernel which has all what has default sunxi community kernel + lemaker fixes + many 3rd party patches and also one known disadvantage - it's not possible to compile latest MALI drivers with it but eventually this will be fixed. Maybe this doesn't work with default kernel anyway? Haven't got a chance to test. It was developed within Cubieboard community then Daniel and I continue to keep it up to date. https://github.com/dan-and/linux-sunxi
Guest Blisk Posted June 29, 2015 Posted June 29, 2015 Do you perhaps know, if there are any incompatibilities between a recent debian-based linux distro and an old kernel like 3.4?
Igor Posted June 29, 2015 Posted June 29, 2015 Kernel 3.4 will work fine but Jessie (current stable) not with default kernel configuration so better use this: https://github.com/igorpecovnik/lib/blob/next/config/linux-sunxi.config
Guest Blisk Posted June 29, 2015 Posted June 29, 2015 Thanks. My current kernel config was not too far off from that one. Do you perhaps have a good cubietruck FEX file? I'm currently using the one from sunxi-boards here: https://github.com/linux-sunxi/sunxi-boards/blob/master/sys_config/a20/cubietruck.fex
tkaiser Posted June 30, 2015 Posted June 30, 2015 Do you perhaps have a good cubietruck FEX file? Igor's stuff is on github and he applied some tweaks: https://github.com/igorpecovnik/lib/commits/next/config/cubietruck.fex
Guest Blisk Posted June 30, 2015 Posted June 30, 2015 Thanks. I took a look into that FEX file and compared it against my own. The files seem very similar apart from some additional comments, but one section that caught my eye was the dram section. In Igor's FEX why are certain parameters like dram_rank_num, dram_chip_density, dram_io_width, etc. set to negative one? Is this supposed to be used in some kind of autodetection or am I better off using the existing numbers? Igor's cubietruck FEX: [dram_para] dram_baseaddr = 0x40000000 dram_clk = 432 dram_type = 3 dram_rank_num = 0xffffffff dram_chip_density = 0xffffffff dram_io_width = 0xffffffff dram_bus_width = 0xffffffff dram_cas = 9 dram_zq = 0x7f dram_odt_en = 0 dram_size = 0xffffffff dram_tpr0 = 0x42d899b7 dram_tpr1 = 0xa090 dram_tpr2 = 0x22a00 dram_tpr3 = 0x0 dram_tpr4 = 0x1 dram_tpr5 = 0x0 dram_emr1 = 0x4 dram_emr2 = 0x10 dram_emr3 = 0x0sunxi cubietruck FEX: [dram_para] dram_baseaddr = 0x40000000 dram_clk = 432 dram_type = 3 dram_rank_num = 1 dram_chip_density = 8192 dram_io_width = 16 dram_bus_width = 32 dram_cas = 9 dram_zq = 0x7f dram_odt_en = 0 dram_size = 2048 dram_tpr0 = 0x42d899b7 dram_tpr1 = 0xa090 dram_tpr2 = 0x22a00 dram_tpr3 = 0x0 dram_tpr4 = 0x1 dram_tpr5 = 0x0 dram_emr1 = 0x4 dram_emr2 = 0x10 dram_emr3 = 0x0
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