Possible bricked plug after trying to upgrade installer

[mbates]

Just got this thing from Global and figured out I needed to upgrade the installer and the kernel in order to access several devices via USB.

So I ran the upgrade installer from Linux, things seem to go fine and left it run for some time.  The light on the USB stick was still blinking after 30 minutes.  So I reset.

Now all I get is a green light but no blue light and no access to the serial console.

I tried to use openocd to recover but it just sits at

Code:

Info : JTAG Tap/device matched

This seems like a really cool device but pain to start working with.

Any thoughts and directions?

Mike

[mbates]

Well, I left the SheevaPlug unplugged overnight, no power - no mini-usb and still the same thing this morning.  I even rebooted the linux box just incase there was an issue there.  So still no blue light and no connectivity via the mini-usb.

Is a complete brick or is there something I can do to recover?

Mike

[Trune]

i had terrible trouble with at installer. and after searching for solutions and finding how many people couldnt get it working and how generally poor it seemed i ditched it and went for a manual method.

i take it you cant see any status at all from the mini usb?

[mbates]

Correct at the moment nothing from the mini-usb.  I figured if I had that working I could move forward with another method.  I was looking for other other methods and should find the manual method. 

So if I can get passed this point with the mini-usb, I should be good to move forward.

Mike

[Trune]

Have you tried this;
http://www.openplug.org/plugwiki/index.php/Setting_Up_OpenOCD_Under_Linux

[mbates]

Started down that road until I got a compile error I am looking into.  Also, if the jtag is not responding will it work?

Mike

[mbates]

Okay, good news. I have the blue light and Marvell prompt.  I had to use http://prdownload.berlios.de/openocd/openocd-0.2.0.tar.bz2 this release of openocd instead of the sourceforge release.  I now have access to the Marvel prompt.  When I try to boot I get the following:

Code:

Marvell>> boot

NAND read: device 0 offset 0x1000000, size 0x400000

Reading data from 0x4ff800 -- 100% complete.
## Booting image at 0080000 ...
Bad Magic Number

So now on to finding how to get this working from this point.  The fun for tonight and this weekend.

Mike

[Trune]

I guess you need to reflash your uboot now.

i used this guide for this, rather than the intaller etc.
ive never recovered a plug, so dont really know if this will work.. but if you have tftp access now i guess it would work? you can then upgrade to latest uboot.

http://www.cyrius.com/debian/kirkwood/sheevaplug/uboot-upgrade.html

[fragfutter]

he already has a working u-bot (the marvell prompt). he needs to flash a kernel, an operating system and configure the u-boot environment variables. this can be done in varius ways. Over jtag, from the u-boot prompt with tftp, or usb drive.

Guides how to do it can be found in the wiki, the debian install guide you referenced, or by reading the scripts of the sheevaplug installer.

[mbates]

Well I was able to get the OS image reinstalled and the system booting fine.  I played with installing Fedora on the SD card along with Ubuntu.  The problem with the fedora distribution I found was it did not seem to have all the modules built within the kernel.  I needed the USB serial along with other provided by Ubuntu.  In both cases I was able to install Java and the JDK and get them working. 

So things are looking pretty good Ubuntu.  I will have to consider moving to Debian since new releases of Ubuntu look not to be supporting the plug.

Nice device, just getting use to Ubuntu and how it works since I am familiar with Fedora.  I know I can build my own kernel but I am looking at software that will be easy for customers to work with, without a lot of work as I push out my weather software.

Thanks for all the help.

Mike

[creeble]

Weather software, great app for the Sheeva!

You'll eventually have to build your own kernel, no doubt.  It's pretty easy to cross-compile it on a x86 box if you follow the kernel build instructions in the wiki.  I downloaded the cross compiler from Code Sorcery (the binary tar worked fine on my Fedora-based development machine), found a mkimage somewhere, and even found a trick to modify the zImage magic number so it will boot (no arcNumber setting required, which doesn't work on my Marvell development kit).

A compile take about 5min on my relatively slow dev machine, and I've had success with 2.6.32 and a couple of other kernels.  I tftp boot the kernel, then nfs mount the (fedora or jaunty/ubuntu or whatever) file system from my dev machine.

I think it's an ideal dev environment -- except for the nfs boot problems I've been having.  Seems to boot about every third time; some hangup in udev *after* it's already mounted the root fs, but very early on.  Driving me crazy.

Let me know if you need help setting up this toolchain if you're interested.

[mbates]

I am interested.  The serial port binaries I am using have to be rebuilt as the ones I have are old and for 2.1 GLIBC instead of GLIBC 2.9.

If you could provide me URLs, I'll do the research needed to get this working.

I had a feeling I would have to do this so this will help.

Mike