Cubox Dev Platform OS images?
Hey there, I still have my old, original Cubox Dev Platform from a few years ago. When I power it on now though I don't get any indication it is booting up at all. I tried looking for newer boot/OS images to load on the SD card but everything now seems to be for the Cubox-i. Anyone have laying around or know where I could find something like this?
On Fri, Nov 21, 2014 at 02:47:16AM +0000, Thomas Milne wrote:
I still have my old, original Cubox Dev Platform from a few years ago. When I power it on now though I don't get any indication it is booting up at all.
I tried looking for newer boot/OS images to load on the SD card but everything now seems to be for the Cubox-i.
Anyone have laying around or know where I could find something like this?
I think I have Debian loaded on mine at the moment. Let me check on Monday at work (which is where the cubox currently is sitting). -- Len Sorensen
On Nov 22, 2014 7:22 PM, "Lennart Sorensen" <lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
On Fri, Nov 21, 2014 at 02:47:16AM +0000, Thomas Milne wrote:
I still have my old, original Cubox Dev Platform from a few years ago.
I power it on now though I don't get any indication it is booting up at all.
I tried looking for newer boot/OS images to load on the SD card but everything now seems to be for the Cubox-i.
Anyone have laying around or know where I could find something like
When this?
I think I have Debian loaded on mine at the moment. Let me check on Monday at work (which is where the cubox currently is sitting).
-- Len Sorensen
Awesome thanks :-)
Hey sorry to bug you, I am unemployed again and in dire need of a project :-) If you have that image or if you know a way I could generate my own, I tried searching but everything now is about the Cubox-i. Solidrun might have an original image but I would really like to have Debian armhf which is I assume what you have installed? Thanks!
Thomas, I think you sent to wrong address. In any case, keep us informed of your progress. CuBox is a little pricy compared to the rest, especially with the latest board ODROID-C1 http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G141578608433 selling at $35. -- William On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 09:55:29PM +0000, Thomas Milne wrote:
Hey sorry to bug you, I am unemployed again and in dire need of a project :-)
If you have that image or if you know a way I could generate my own, I tried searching but everything now is about the Cubox-i.
Solidrun might have an original image but I would really like to have Debian armhf which is I assume what you have installed?
Thanks!
--- GTALUG Talk Mailing List - talk@gtalug.org http://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
I have no idea what you are talking about. Can you not see the thread I'm replying too? On Tue, Dec 16, 2014, 5:53 PM William Park <opengeometry@yahoo.ca> wrote:
Thomas,
I think you sent to wrong address. In any case, keep us informed of your progress. CuBox is a little pricy compared to the rest, especially with the latest board ODROID-C1 http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_ code=G141578608433 selling at $35. -- William
On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 09:55:29PM +0000, Thomas Milne wrote:
Hey sorry to bug you, I am unemployed again and in dire need of a project :-)
If you have that image or if you know a way I could generate my own, I tried searching but everything now is about the Cubox-i.
Solidrun might have an original image but I would really like to have Debian armhf which is I assume what you have installed?
Thanks!
--- GTALUG Talk Mailing List - talk@gtalug.org http://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
--- GTALUG Talk Mailing List - talk@gtalug.org http://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 05:52:55PM -0500, William Park wrote:
Thomas,
I think you sent to wrong address. In any case, keep us informed of your progress. CuBox is a little pricy compared to the rest, especially with the latest board ODROID-C1 http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G141578608433
But the cubox has eSATA and a box. And some of us already have them and have had them for a while. But that is a very nice board. -- Len Sorensen
On 12/16/2014 04:55 PM, Thomas Milne wrote:
Hey sorry to bug you, I am unemployed again and in dire need of a project :-)
If you have that image or if you know a way I could generate my own, I tried searching but everything now is about the Cubox-i.
Solidrun might have an original image but I would really like to have Debian armhf which is I assume what you have installed?
Thanks!
Thomas, While working on my Hummingboard, I decided to explore the director structure of their download section. I found their archive of cubox bits. Poking around a see a few different distro images and various install scripts. Hope this helps. http://download.solid-run.com/pub/solidrun/cubox/ -- Scott Sullivan
On Sun, Dec 28, 2014 at 10:04 PM, Scott Sullivan <scott@ss.org> wrote:
On 12/16/2014 04:55 PM, Thomas Milne wrote:
Hey sorry to bug you, I am unemployed again and in dire need of a project :-)
If you have that image or if you know a way I could generate my own, I tried searching but everything now is about the Cubox-i.
Solidrun might have an original image but I would really like to have Debian armhf which is I assume what you have installed?
Thanks!
Thomas,
While working on my Hummingboard, I decided to explore the director structure of their download section. I found their archive of cubox bits. Poking around a see a few different distro images and various install scripts. Hope this helps.
Wow, that looks pretty awesome, though I haven't looked too closely. They have the original Ubuntu 10 image at least so I can make sure it's actually working. There are also files under Debian that say 'armhf' that look promising. Thanks for this! -- Thomas Milne
On 12/16/2014 04:55 PM, Thomas Milne wrote:
Hey sorry to bug you, I am unemployed again and in dire need of a project :-)
If you have that image or if you know a way I could generate my own, I tried searching but everything now is about the Cubox-i.
Solidrun might have an original image but I would really like to have Debian armhf which is I assume what you have installed?
Ah, I knew there was something bugging me. Thomas, wanting a armhf port for the cubox is, to use a bit of hyperbole, like wanting an 64bit port for your i686. Allow me to set up some background information then explain. Debian's armhf port is for ARMv7 instruction set hardware which mandated the inclusion of floating point hardware. https://wiki.debian.org/ArmHardFloatPort Debian's armel is for older arm instruction sets that where a floating point hardware was not mandatory in the chips. https://wiki.debian.org/ArmEabiPort Your Cubox uses a Marvell Kirkwood system on a chip (SoC). That SoC was base on a ARMv5 instruction set. As such it is supported by the armel port only. Much like 32bit intel hardware is only supported by the i386. So, asking for armhf is inapporiate as your hardware can't run it. But the armel port should be keeping up todate with all the package updates just like i386 follows amd64. So I don't think your goal has change, which is get as modern a debian you can on the cubox. Just know you need to be looking at the armel port. On that note, I found this little message outlining Mainline Kernel support for the cubox. The Marvel Kirkwood SoC has been well supported for many years now, and with the move to Device Tree the cubox can be supported with a far more generic kernel. https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/5/26/562 A Device Tree is basically a listing handed to the kernel that tells it how the SoC may be uniquely wired to other devices on the circuit board. SoC, unlike intel computers, will multiplex function on their pins to allow device designers to pick and choose what functions they will use. It's part of why they can be put in such small form factor devices, at the cost of software complexity. Specifically for you Thomas, you'll need to take an armel port of debian and the dts (Device Tree) for the cubox and combine them. Go hunting for information on other Marvell Kirkwood Devices for examples (the PogoPlug v2 and Dreamplug, being two examples I personally own). Now just general information expanding on the armel vs armhf. ARMv4, ARMv5 and ARMv6 hard was an interesting matrix of common capabilities due to the nature of optional phyical hardware blocks. The means there had to be some careful choices by the debain maintainers. https://wiki.debian.org/ArmEabiPort#Choice_of_minimum_CPU The gist of the above is that some devices CPU instruction will not be taken advantage of even if the SoC _does_ have the optional hardware. The greatest current example of this is the Raspberry Pi, an ARMv6 device which does have floating point hardware. This meant that while the armel port will run on the Raspberry Pi's Broadcom SoC, it's not at full performance. The Raspbian Distro is a port of debian targeting the specifically available hardware in the Broadcom SoC for all the performance benefits that can bring. -- Scott Sullivan
On Sun, Dec 28, 2014 at 11:34:02PM -0500, Scott Sullivan wrote:
Ah, I knew there was something bugging me.
Thomas, wanting a armhf port for the cubox is, to use a bit of hyperbole, like wanting an 64bit port for your i686. Allow me to set up some background information then explain.
The original cubox as a marvell 510 CPU, which is ARMv7, and runs armhf just fine, as long as you have a kernel for it. The one on my desk at work is running Debian armhf SID at the moment, with a custom compiled kernel. Performance wise it is somewhere between a Cortex-A8 and a Cortex-A9.
Debian's armhf port is for ARMv7 instruction set hardware which mandated the inclusion of floating point hardware. https://wiki.debian.org/ArmHardFloatPort
Debian's armel is for older arm instruction sets that where a floating point hardware was not mandatory in the chips. https://wiki.debian.org/ArmEabiPort
Your Cubox uses a Marvell Kirkwood system on a chip (SoC). That SoC was base on a ARMv5 instruction set. As such it is supported by the armel port only. Much like 32bit intel hardware is only supported by the i386.
The cubox is NOT a kirkwood. It is an armada. So the rest of the email is just irrelevant to the cubox. -- Len Sorensen
On December 29, 2014 8:38:43 AM EST, Lennart Sorensen <lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
On Sun, Dec 28, 2014 at 11:34:02PM -0500, Scott Sullivan wrote:
Your Cubox uses a Marvell Kirkwood system on a chip (SoC). That SoC was base on a ARMv5 instruction set. As such it is supported by the armel port only. Much like 32bit intel hardware is only supported by the i386.
The cubox is NOT a kirkwood. It is an armada.
So the rest of the email is just irrelevant to the cubox.
I stand corrected. Thanks for that Len. I don't know how I got the notion that it was a Kirkwood. Maybe I was just hoping for company. I have a half dozen Kirkwood devices that I'll need to move to Debian armel since Fedora dropped their version of the port. -- Scott Sullivan
On Mon, Dec 29, 2014 at 8:38 AM, Lennart Sorensen <lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
On Sun, Dec 28, 2014 at 11:34:02PM -0500, Scott Sullivan wrote:
Ah, I knew there was something bugging me.
Thomas, wanting a armhf port for the cubox is, to use a bit of hyperbole, like wanting an 64bit port for your i686. Allow me to set up some background information then explain.
The original cubox as a marvell 510 CPU, which is ARMv7, and runs armhf just fine, as long as you have a kernel for it. The one on my desk at work is running Debian armhf SID at the moment, with a custom compiled kernel.
What am I looking at for compiling a kernel like that? For example, I assume I have to have something already installed on the Cubox, no? And it would have to be something newer than the original default Ubuntu I would guess. -- Thomas Milne
On Thu, Jan 01, 2015 at 07:30:23PM -0500, Thomas Milne wrote:
What am I looking at for compiling a kernel like that?
For example, I assume I have to have something already installed on the Cubox, no? And it would have to be something newer than the original default Ubuntu I would guess.
I installed the ubuntu image, then I used debootstrap to create a chroot with debian, then I transfered that to be the main filesystem on the SD card. The only non debian part at that point is the kernel image and modules and the boot loader. debootstrap is a marvolous thing. -- Len Sorensen
On Jan 1, 2015 11:08 PM, "Lennart Sorensen" <lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
On Thu, Jan 01, 2015 at 07:30:23PM -0500, Thomas Milne wrote:
What am I looking at for compiling a kernel like that?
For example, I assume I have to have something already installed on the Cubox, no? And it would have to be something newer than the original default Ubuntu I would guess.
I installed the ubuntu image, then I used debootstrap to create a chroot with debian, then I transfered that to be the main filesystem on the SD card. The only non debian part at that point is the kernel image and modules and the boot loader.
debootstrap is a marvolous thing.
It sounds like it. Wow. So can I boot into that Debian system and compile a new kernel from inside that? And do I need to know what options to choose at compile and modules to load for Cubox hardware or is that automatic? Pardon my dumb questions. I was reading this, about installing Debian and compiling a new kernel: http://www.solid-run.com/archive/mw/index.php/Debian_netboot_installer I might be in over my head. Those instructions assume that I know how to do a lot of things that I do not.
On Fri, Jan 02, 2015 at 11:30:58AM -0500, Thomas Milne wrote:
It sounds like it. Wow.
So can I boot into that Debian system and compile a new kernel from inside that? And do I need to know what options to choose at compile and modules to load for Cubox hardware or is that automatic?
Kernel config is not automatic. That bit you have to deal with.
Pardon my dumb questions. I was reading this, about installing Debian and compiling a new kernel:
http://www.solid-run.com/archive/mw/index.php/Debian_netboot_installer
I might be in over my head. Those instructions assume that I know how to do a lot of things that I do not.
That's the problem when the people writing the instructions know what they are doing already. -- Len Sorensen
On Fri, Jan 2, 2015 at 11:13 PM, Lennart Sorensen < lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
On Fri, Jan 02, 2015 at 11:30:58AM -0500, Thomas Milne wrote:
It sounds like it. Wow.
So can I boot into that Debian system and compile a new kernel from inside that? And do I need to know what options to choose at compile and modules to load for Cubox hardware or is that automatic?
Kernel config is not automatic. That bit you have to deal with.
There wiki shows this command: "make cubox_defconfig" So, they've already created a default configuration for you to start from.
Pardon my dumb questions. I was reading this, about installing Debian and
compiling a new kernel:
http://www.solid-run.com/archive/mw/index.php/Debian_netboot_installer
I might be in over my head. Those instructions assume that I know how to do a lot of things that I do not.
That's the problem when the people writing the instructions know what they are doing already.
I guess the best thing to do is start from the beginning and when you're stuck you can post on the mailing list the specific problem you're having and someone should be able to help. (Also, you after you figure out what's missing you could modify their wiki to either have the info you need or link to it)
On Jan 5, 2015 8:55 AM, "Tim Tisdall" <tisdall@gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, Jan 2, 2015 at 11:13 PM, Lennart Sorensen <
On Fri, Jan 02, 2015 at 11:30:58AM -0500, Thomas Milne wrote:
It sounds like it. Wow.
So can I boot into that Debian system and compile a new kernel from
inside
that? And do I need to know what options to choose at compile and modules to load for Cubox hardware or is that automatic?
Kernel config is not automatic. That bit you have to deal with.
There wiki shows this command: "make cubox_defconfig" So, they've already created a default configuration for you to start from.
Pardon my dumb questions. I was reading this, about installing Debian and compiling a new kernel:
http://www.solid-run.com/archive/mw/index.php/Debian_netboot_installer
I might be in over my head. Those instructions assume that I know how to do a lot of things that I do not.
That's the problem when the people writing the instructions know what they are doing already.
I guess the best thing to do is start from the beginning and when you're stuck you can post on the mailing list the specific problem you're having and someone should be able to help. (Also, you after you figure out what's missing you could modify their wiki to either have the info you need or
lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote: link to it) Ya I will probably give it a try, unless Lennart wants to be all magnanimous and just upload an image of his install for me ;) Right now I am fixated on a whole wireless ethernet bridge ... thing. Thanks for the pointer, much appreciated.
On Wed, Jan 07, 2015 at 07:38:28PM -0500, Thomas Milne wrote:
Ya I will probably give it a try, unless Lennart wants to be all magnanimous and just upload an image of his install for me ;)
The problem is getting around to it, and it might be pretty big.
Right now I am fixated on a whole wireless ethernet bridge ... thing.
Thanks for the pointer, much appreciated.
-- Len Sorensen
On Thu, Jan 8, 2015 at 10:35 AM, Lennart Sorensen <lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
On Wed, Jan 07, 2015 at 07:38:28PM -0500, Thomas Milne wrote:
Ya I will probably give it a try, unless Lennart wants to be all magnanimous and just upload an image of his install for me ;)
The problem is getting around to it, and it might be pretty big.
Any time ever would be absolutely amazing and appreciated. I know it's a lot to ask. If you were willing, I could get it from you by Subaru network of course :-)
Right now I am fixated on a whole wireless ethernet bridge ... thing.
Thanks for the pointer, much appreciated.
-- Thomas Milne
On Thu, Jan 08, 2015 at 11:51:33AM -0500, Thomas Milne wrote:
Any time ever would be absolutely amazing and appreciated. I know it's a lot to ask. If you were willing, I could get it from you by Subaru network of course :-)
I am giving it a go at the moment when I have a bit of spare time. I now have the debian jessie 3.16 kernel running on the cubox. It needed two small patches from the upstream kernel to fix a couple of tiny problems, and then I enabled about 8 missing config entries in the debian kernel. With that and adding the CuBox to the flash-kernel package, I can now install a kernel and have it configure u-boot automatically the debian way. No graphics support yet, but I am testing a build with some patches pulled from Russell King's tree that might solve that. It even includes support for using the marvell binary video decoder libraries with the video decoder hardware in the CPU, so perhaps that would be useful for something. So pretty soon I should be able to have a nice clean Jessie install of Debian with only a slightly modified debian kernel package matching exactly what Jessie expects (I was running a 3.8 kernel before). So far USB, uSD and SATA as well as the IR port are working with the Jessie kernel no problem. -- Len Sorensen
On Jan 9, 2015 9:20 PM, "Lennart Sorensen" <lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
On Thu, Jan 08, 2015 at 11:51:33AM -0500, Thomas Milne wrote:
Any time ever would be absolutely amazing and appreciated. I know it's a lot to ask. If you were willing, I could get it from you by Subaru network of course :-)
I am giving it a go at the moment when I have a bit of spare time.
I now have the debian jessie 3.16 kernel running on the cubox. It needed two small patches from the upstream kernel to fix a couple of tiny problems, and then I enabled about 8 missing config entries in the debian kernel. With that and adding the CuBox to the flash-kernel package, I can now install a kernel and have it configure u-boot automatically the debian way.
No graphics support yet, but I am testing a build with some patches pulled from Russell King's tree that might solve that. It even includes support for using the marvell binary video decoder libraries with the video decoder hardware in the CPU, so perhaps that would be useful for something.
Weren't you going to use yours for video playback as part of whole home theater setup? Or is this something different?
So pretty soon I should be able to have a nice clean Jessie install of Debian with only a slightly modified debian kernel package matching exactly what Jessie expects (I was running a 3.8 kernel before).
So far USB, uSD and SATA as well as the IR port are working with the Jessie kernel no problem.
Very cool. Jessie is really an incredible release.
On Sat, Jan 10, 2015 at 02:42:30PM -0500, Thomas Milne wrote:
Weren't you going to use yours for video playback as part of whole home theater setup? Or is this something different?
That was my plan, but it turns out the video decoding and such are not open source and not standard. Rather unfortunate, because by spec it is perfect for the job. There exist gstreamer and xmbc support for the marvell ipp libraries for the video decoding, but not sure mythtv can use it. Most likely the CuBox-i would be much easier to get working.
Very cool. Jessie is really an incredible release.
Well it's getting there. -- Len Sorensen
participants (5)
-
Lennart Sorensen -
Scott Sullivan -
Thomas Milne -
Tim Tisdall -
William Park