Sheeva with Debian - replace temporarily USB with eSATA?

[hausschuh]

I have a Sheevaplug with eSATA and the external HDD Case TB32CS with Silicon Image Chip (I think it's the SiI 5744CNU).
I have Debian squeeze running which does not support (e)SATA yet but it will in the very near future.
The external case can be connected via eSATA OR USB. My question is: Can I format the HDD in the external case to ext4 and connect it to the Sheevaplug via USB and store my data on it - and once Debian supports eSATA switch the cable from USB to eSATA and mount it the way it was before without loosing any data, file/directory rights etc.?
I would wait until Debian with (e)SATA support is released but I really lack diskspace and there would be 3000GB unused for an uncertain period of time.

I guess this will work but we are talking about 3000GB of data I might loose - so it would be nice to be confirmed.

[tbm]

I believe that would work.

But since you're in a hurry, you can simply install the kernel package from unstable directly:

Code:

wget http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/main/l/linux-2.6/linux-image-2.6.32-5-kirkwood_2.6.32-13_armel.deb
dpkg -i linux-image-2.6.32-5-kirkwood_2.6.32-13_armel.deb
flash-kernel

When you reboot, enter u-boot and issue the following commands:

Code:

setenv mainlineLinux yes
setenv arcNumber 2678
saveenv
reset

And now eSATA should hopefully work.

[hausschuh]

Thank you (again) 

What's the worst what can happen in this "unstable" phase? It dismounts the drive or can it destroy the partition table and delete my data?

Will it automatically update through apt-get update after it has left the unstable phase?

[tbm]

BTW, my instructions were incomplete.  Before running the commands above, do this:

Code:

wget http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/pool/main/l/linux-2.6/linux-base_2.6.32-13_all.deb
dpkg -i linux-base_2.6.32-13_all.deb

This will show an error because of missing dependencies.  Fix this with:

Code:

apt-get -f install

[tbm]

unstable is Debian's development tree.

However, this kernel is stable.  No harm in installing it.

[tzyn]

eSATA worked fine for me (Debian Lenny Kernel 2.6.33). No patch or something like that needed.

About your TB32CS question:
Yes, you can use your storage over usb and esata the same way. It only resets the discs if you change the mode (safe33/50,raid1,span...) and press the button on the board.

[hausschuh]

I have installed everything above.

fdisk -l does not show anything except the SD Card.

During the boot sequence I get several error messages:

SATA max UDMA/133
ata1: SATA Link down (SStatus 0 SControl F300)
ata2: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
2 SRST failed errorno = -16
limiting SATA link speed to 1.5GBps

What am I doing wrong?

[tbm]

Note: the instructions above are no longer needed since the kernel is in Debian squeeze now; see http://plugcomputer.org/plugforum/index.php?topic=1915.0

[tbm]

SATA max UDMA/133
ata1: SATA Link down (SStatus 0 SControl F300)
ata2: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
2 SRST failed errorno = -16
limiting SATA link speed to 1.5GBps

Maybe it doesn't like your disk... I don't know.  Can you boot the whole log?

[hausschuh]

I reinstalled everything using your updated tutorial. I still get the same error message. The Sheeva does like my hard disk. I tested the ESIA installer and it worked (out of the box). The big difference is using another (older) uboot version (uboot-sata-090903.bin from NewIT). But with this version your installer won't work (I've already tried that).
 

Here's the content of my dmesg:

Code:

[    0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpuset
[    0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpu
[    0.000000] Linux version 2.6.32-5-kirkwood (Debian 2.6.32-15) (ben@decadent.org.uk) (gcc version 4.3.5 (Debian 4.3.5-1) ) #1 Thu Jun 3 15:54:38 UTC 2010
[    0.000000] CPU: Feroceon 88FR131 [56251311] revision 1 (ARMv5TE), cr=00053977
[    0.000000] CPU: VIVT data cache, VIVT instruction cache
[    0.000000] Machine: Marvell eSATA SheevaPlug Reference Board
[    0.000000] Memory policy: ECC disabled, Data cache writeback
[    0.000000] On node 0 totalpages: 131072
[    0.000000] free_area_init_node: node 0, pgdat c03db168, node_mem_map c0448000
[    0.000000]   Normal zone: 1024 pages used for memmap
[    0.000000]   Normal zone: 0 pages reserved
[    0.000000]   Normal zone: 130048 pages, LIFO batch:31
[    0.000000] Built 1 zonelists in Zone order, mobility grouping on.  Total pages: 130048
[    0.000000] Kernel command line: console=ttyS0,115200
[    0.000000] PID hash table entries: 2048 (order: 1, 8192 bytes)
[    0.000000] Dentry cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
[    0.000000] Inode-cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
[    0.000000] Memory: 256MB 256MB = 512MB total
[    0.000000] Memory: 509696KB available (3548K code, 583K data, 120K init, 0K highmem)
[    0.000000] SLUB: Genslabs=11, HWalign=32, Order=0-3, MinObjects=0, CPUs=1, Nodes=1
[    0.000000] Hierarchical RCU implementation.
[    0.000000] NR_IRQS:114
[    0.000000] Console: colour dummy device 80x30
[    0.000123] Calibrating delay loop... 1192.75 BogoMIPS (lpj=5963776)
[    0.240085] Security Framework initialized
[    0.240104] SELinux:  Disabled at boot.
[    0.240129] Mount-cache hash table entries: 512
[    0.240418] Initializing cgroup subsys ns
[    0.240433] Initializing cgroup subsys cpuacct
[    0.240443] Initializing cgroup subsys devices
[    0.240452] Initializing cgroup subsys freezer
[    0.240460] Initializing cgroup subsys net_cls
[    0.240502] CPU: Testing write buffer coherency: ok
[    0.241196] devtmpfs: initialized
[    0.242835] regulator: core version 0.5
[    0.243041] NET: Registered protocol family 16
[    0.243537] Kirkwood: MV88F6281-A0, TCLK=200000000.
[    0.243549] Feroceon L2: Enabling L2
[    0.243582] Feroceon L2: Cache support initialised.
[    0.243995] initial MPP regs: 01111111 11113322 00001111 00100000 00000000 00000000 00000000
[    0.244017]   final MPP regs: 01111111 11113322 00001111 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
[    0.245613] bio: create slab <bio-0> at 0
[    0.245885] vgaarb: loaded
[    0.246326] Switching to clocksource orion_clocksource
[    0.249911] NET: Registered protocol family 2
[    0.250206] IP route cache hash table entries: 4096 (order: 2, 16384 bytes)
[    0.250969] TCP established hash table entries: 16384 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
[    0.251321] TCP bind hash table entries: 16384 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)
[    0.251501] TCP: Hash tables configured (established 16384 bind 16384)
[    0.251510] TCP reno registered
[    0.251657] NET: Registered protocol family 1
[    0.251826] Unpacking initramfs...
[    0.606008] Freeing initrd memory: 5432K
[    0.606120] NetWinder Floating Point Emulator V0.97 (double precision)
[    0.606405] audit: initializing netlink socket (disabled)
[    0.606445] type=2000 audit(0.600:1): initialized
[    0.612949] VFS: Disk quotas dquot_6.5.2
[    0.613210] Dquot-cache hash table entries: 1024 (order 0, 4096 bytes)
[    0.613299] JFFS2 version 2.2. (NAND) (SUMMARY)  © 2001-2006 Red Hat, Inc.
[    0.613923] msgmni has been set to 1006
[    0.615526] alg: No test for stdrng (krng)
[    0.615646] Block layer SCSI generic (bsg) driver version 0.4 loaded (major 253)
[    0.615658] io scheduler noop registered
[    0.615665] io scheduler anticipatory registered
[    0.615673] io scheduler deadline registered
[    0.615854] io scheduler cfq registered (default)
[    0.621828] Serial: 8250/16550 driver, 2 ports, IRQ sharing disabled
[    0.622284] serial8250.0: ttyS0 at MMIO 0xf1012000 (irq = 33) is a 16550A
[    0.942045] console [ttyS0] enabled
[    0.946093] NAND device: Manufacturer ID: 0xec, Chip ID: 0xdc (Samsung NAND 512MiB 3,3V 8-bit)
[    0.954784] Scanning device for bad blocks
[    0.967593] Bad eraseblock 296 at 0x000002500000
[    1.083192] Creating 3 MTD partitions on "orion_nand":
[    1.088366] 0x000000000000-0x000000100000 : "u-boot"
[    1.093902] 0x000000100000-0x000000500000 : "uImage"
[    1.099378] 0x000000500000-0x000020000000 : "root"
[    1.105593] mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice
[    1.111197] rtc-mv rtc-mv: rtc core: registered rtc-mv as rtc0
[    1.117151] i2c /dev entries driver
[    1.120818] cpuidle: using governor ladder
[    1.125043] cpuidle: using governor menu
[    1.129089] Registered led device: plug:green:health
[    1.134129] mv_xor_shared mv_xor_shared.0: Marvell shared XOR driver
[    1.140547] mv_xor_shared mv_xor_shared.1: Marvell shared XOR driver
[    1.186386] mv_xor mv_xor.0: Marvell XOR: ( xor cpy )
[    1.226385] mv_xor mv_xor.1: Marvell XOR: ( xor fill cpy )
[    1.266385] mv_xor mv_xor.2: Marvell XOR: ( xor cpy )
[    1.306385] mv_xor mv_xor.3: Marvell XOR: ( xor fill cpy )
[    1.313045] TCP cubic registered
[    1.316286] NET: Registered protocol family 17
[    1.320781] Gating clock of unused units
[    1.320789] before: 0x00c701dd
[    1.320796]  after: 0x00c7c1d9
[    1.321092] registered taskstats version 1
[    1.325821] rtc-mv rtc-mv: setting system clock to 2010-06-15 06:46:44 UTC (1276584404)
[    1.333883] Initalizing network drop monitor service
[    1.338936] Freeing init memory: 120K
[    1.413123] udev: starting version 157
[    1.761340] SCSI subsystem initialized
[    1.772570] MV-643xx 10/100/1000 ethernet driver version 1.4
[    1.798665] mv643xx_eth smi: probed
[    1.802364] mmc0: mvsdio driver initialized, using GPIO 47 for card detection
[    1.857034] net eth0: port 0 with MAC address 00:50:43:01:c1:e6
[    1.949947] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbfs
[    1.957960] usbcore: registered new interface driver hub
[    1.966037] usbcore: registered new device driver usb
[    1.988611] libata version 3.00 loaded.
[    2.006094] ehci_hcd: USB 2.0 'Enhanced' Host Controller (EHCI) Driver
[    2.012773] orion-ehci orion-ehci.0: Marvell Orion EHCI
[    2.018112] orion-ehci orion-ehci.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
[    2.027812] mmc0: new high speed SDHC card at address b368
[    2.047145] mmcblk0: mmc0:b368 SDC   7.51 GiB
[    2.051765]  mmcblk0: p1 p2 p3 < p5 >
[    2.057064] orion-ehci orion-ehci.0: irq 19, io mem 0xf1050000
[    2.076425] orion-ehci orion-ehci.0: USB 2.0 started, EHCI 1.00
[    2.082425] usb usb1: New USB device found, idVendor=1d6b, idProduct=0002
[    2.089295] usb usb1: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=1
[    2.096563] usb usb1: Product: Marvell Orion EHCI
[    2.101286] usb usb1: Manufacturer: Linux 2.6.32-5-kirkwood ehci_hcd
[    2.107682] usb usb1: SerialNumber: orion-ehci.0
[    2.116474] usb usb1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[    2.123035] hub 1-0:1.0: USB hub found
[    2.126870] hub 1-0:1.0: 1 port detected
[    2.131465] sata_mv sata_mv.0: version 1.28
[    2.140488] sata_mv sata_mv.0: slots 32 ports 2
[    2.180889] scsi0 : sata_mv
[    2.186175] scsi1 : sata_mv
[    2.189487] ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 irq 21
[    2.193618] ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 irq 21
[    2.546378] ata1: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl F300)
[    8.096362] ata2: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
[   12.596360] ata2: SRST failed (errno=-16)
[   18.146359] ata2: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
[   22.646360] ata2: SRST failed (errno=-16)
[   28.196360] ata2: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
[   57.656356] ata2: SRST failed (errno=-16)
[   57.660385] ata2: limiting SATA link speed to 1.5 Gbps
[   62.666361] ata2: SRST failed (errno=-16)
[   62.670389] ata2: reset failed, giving up
[   62.807007] kjournald starting.  Commit interval 5 seconds
[   62.812545] EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
[   63.314530] udev: starting version 157
[   63.870994] Adding 386040k swap on /dev/mmcblk0p5.  Priority:-1 extents:1 across:386040k SS
[   64.018131] EXT3 FS on mmcblk0p2, internal journal
[   64.190068] loop: module loaded

[tbm]

I reinstalled everything using your updated tutorial. I still get the same error message. The Sheeva does like my hard disk. I tested the ESIA installer and it worked (out of the box). The big difference is using another (older) uboot version (uboot-sata-090903.bin from NewIT). But with this version your installer won't work (I've already tried that).
 

Yeah you'll definitely need an uboot with SATA support.  So you're saying that with uboot-sata-090903.bin the Debian installer doesn't work?  What's the problem exactly?

[maisondouf]

Perhaps not the installer, but the default environment shipped with it.

[hausschuh]

Ok. My lack of "linux knowledge" (that SATA is not just a "driver problem") plus some contradictions lead to my confusion (and problems I have).

Your tutorial states: "If you're running a version of u-boot older than 3.4.19 or if you're running version 3.4.27 you have to upgrade u-boot before proceeding with this installation! ". The link to upgrade u-boot leads to U-Boot 3.4.27+pingtoo binary. Everything works fine as long as you don't need SATA support. Now you added the SATA images so I thought everything is just fine.

Using the older! ATA enabled uboot from NewIT there's the contradiction with your tutorial because this image has uboot 3.4.16. Never the less I ignored that and I tried to use this old uboot version with your tutorial and it didn't work. I don't remember the error message and that's why I installed from scratch (an hour ago) and now it works. I guess because of the new SATA images you provide.
So right now it seems to work the way I initially wanted it to work. I'd like to thank you for your effort and patience.

By the way - I just found another contradiction. "or if your're running version 3.4.27 you have to upgrade". Your linked pingtoo image has the version 3.4.27.

[tbm]

Well, I don't have an eSATA plug so I cannot test why the NewIT uboot doesn't work with debian-installer, although I thought that this worked for other people.  I'll wait for someone with an eSATA plug to figure out what u-boot works and then I'm happy to update my page.  I'll then also fix the contradictions.

[pizzulicchio]

Good day!
I'm trying to install debian on my esata sheevaplug using an esata box with a 2.5 " sata hard disk inside.
 I have used  your guide: http://www.cyrius.com/debian/kirkwood/sheevaplug/install.html but i'm not be able to boot debian after  installation is finished.

i have set this environment:

setenv mainlineLinux yes
setenv arcNumber 2678
saveenv
reset



I have used the the uImage and uInitrd of Debian Testing Squeeze installer for eSata sheevaplug uploaded using a TFTp server... And i have started the installer with:

setenv bootargs console=ttyS0,115200n8 base-installer/initramfs-tools/driver-policy=most
bootm 0x00800000 0x01100000

I have done the installation using the guided partitioning method and using the entire disk. Partman makes a small boot partition in ext2, a swap partition and a root partition in ext3.
Finished the installation my plug reboots so i reconfigure my plug to boot from esata.

setenv bootargs_console console=ttyS0,115200
setenv bootcmd_sata 'ide reset; ext2load ide 0:1 0x01100000 /uInitrd; ext2load ide 0:1 0x00800000 /uImage'
setenv bootcmd 'setenv bootargs $(bootargs_console); run bootcmd_sata; bootm 0x00800000 0x01100000'
saveenv

but when i try to start the system:

Marvell Serial ATA Adapter
Integrated Sata device found
[0 1 0]: Enable DMA mode
Device 1 @ 0 1:
Model: WDC WD1200BEVS-22RST0 Firm: 04.01G04 Ser#: WD-WXE808NWD688
Type: Hard Disk
Supports 48-bit addressing
Capacity: 114473.4 MB = 111.7 GB (234441648 x 512)
** Bad partition 1 **
** Bad partition 1 **
## Booting image at 00800000 ...
Bad Magic Number
Marvell>>

What is going wrong?
I'm using the only u-boot avaiable: http://www.newit.co.uk/u-boot/uboot-sata-090903.bin
Any help/suggestion is very appreciated.
Thank you