Unreadable characters in console

[melchior]

Hello,
I've a marvell development board with a kirkwood 6281 inside. I've been able to use kernel and filesystem provided by marvell, but as i'd like but struggling to compil applications i need to use on it, i'm trying to install debian following cyrius method. My issue is that after loading the kernel, i get unreadable characters in minicom and so can't do anything. Someone has an idea to help me ?

I used putty but have the same results in minicom except it deconnect's me right after kernel load.

screenshot

[MarkF]

Some people skip a step that is important.  Did you do this part:

When you get serial output, press a key to interrupt the boot process. We now have to configure the boot loader. First of all, you have to change a setting so the device will boot the kernel which is used by Debian:

setenv mainlineLinux yes
setenv arcNumber 2097
saveenv
reset

These command will put in the correct settings and then restart the device so the changes will take effect.

Your attached output looks like a mismatch in serial port setup (probably baud rate).  Check the console= line in the U-Boot environment and make sure the baud rate is the same as what you are using for U-Boot in minicom.

[melchior]

Yes i did the mentionned part, and tried again to be sure but i'm still having the issue. Minicom and uboot baud rate are well configured, and as i said, i had no problem if i used the kernel and filesystem provided by marvell.

[MarkF]

... i had no problem if i used the kernel and filesystem provided by marvell.

Perhaps the kernel you are using has a compiled command line with different console= settings?  I don't know if the U-Boot passed values over-ride the values compiled into the kernel or not.

[markusd112]

Hi,

I have exactly the same problem: I have installed Ubuntu with sheevaplug-installer V.1.0 and after decompressing and loading the kernel, only cryptical characters are displayed on the console port....

Did you find a solution for it?

Thanks,

Markus

[markusd112]

Hi,
I have now installed debian stable on my SheevaPlug and the problem with the cryptic characters on the console after loading the kernel isn't still present. Now it works.

So it seems to be really a problem in combination with the kernel of the ubuntu packages that I have installed. I have used the one that was "shipped" with the sheevaplug-installer-v.1.0

The guided installer of debian is great! I think I will go on with debian instead of ubuntu.

Bye,

markus

[cjm]

There was an issue with recent releases of the Marvell CPU that led to incorrect clock rates in the Linux kernel. Those appear to affect the serial baud rate as well. If you use later kernels, the clock rate is detected correctly.

Sorry, I don't have the exact kernel versions right now but I seem to remember that Martin Michlmayr has fixed this in the latest Debian Squeeze kernels as well, even though they are still based on 2.6.32.

Thanks,
--Christian

[nord666]

Hello all,

I have the same problem. I tried the Ubuntu packages coming with the Installer 1.0. I also tried Debian installer from http://plugcomputer.org/plugforum/index.php?topic=878.0, still no luck (picked the prebuilt packages).

Someone have a clean solution for that problem?

Thanks in advance.

[guidol]

As a solution you should take Kernel Version >= 2.6.32

see the notice at
http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-arm@lists.debian.org/msg10506.html

or the following threads:
plugcomputer.org/plugforum/index.php?topic=2002
plugcomputer.org/plugforum/index.php?topic=1985.0

[nord666]

Thank for you answer.
But I am a bit lost. I found this website from your links: http://sheeva.with-linux.com/sheeva/2.6.35.4/
Do I only need to download the uImage and Modules.tar.gz, rename then(to fit the same name as in the installer) and run the installer?
I hope you understand what i'm meaning. :/

Thank you!

Edit: And, do the time it takes to install it may cause problem? All the logs I have seen took like 65sec for the last step, it takes 250sec for me.

[guidol]

Thank for you answer.
But I am a bit lost. I found this website from your links: http://sheeva.with-linux.com/sheeva/2.6.35.4/

I installed a older version from there some time ago this way:

root@debian:/download# wget sheeva.with-linux.com/sheeva/README-2.6.35.3
root@debian:/download# mv README-2.6.35.3 inst26353.sh
root@debian:/download# chmod 755 *
root@debian:/download# ./inst26353.sh --rootkernel
root@debian:/download# cd /boot
root@debian:/boot# mv ./uImage ./uImage_old_backup
root@debian:/boot# mv ./sheeva-2.6.35.3-uImage ./uImage
root@debian:/boot# shutdown -r now