plug with only green led on and no serial connection...I need a resurrection

[Dammuozz]

Hi everyone...

I own a plug that made me so proud of it...

I received it this year and it's been up working 24/7 from March 2010 or even before...with a 1TB HDD on samba sharing...ftp...web server...torrent...subversion server...ssh server

this evening I tried to install debian and while the u-boot was taking too much time to saveenv I made the worst thing I could probably do...I cut off the power


now the plug with got only the green led on and no serial connection.....I really need it back....any help wolud be so apreciated!!

sorry for my poor english...I hope to get it back soon but need some help...

do I need a JTAG board??



dammuozz

[Dammuozz]

up! need help!

is this the right forum section??

 
EDIT: tomorrow night I'll give this a try, think it's the solution....or at least I hope!!

http://www.plugcomputer.org/plugwiki/index.php/SheevaPlug_Installer

[Dammuozz]

keep getting this error....ideas??

****    Burning uboot and environment variables ... This will take few minutes ...
Open On-Chip Debugger 0.2.0 (2009-07-26-14:56) Release
$URL: http://svn.berlios.de/svnroot/repos/openocd/tags/openocd-0.2.0/src/openocd.c $
For bug reports, read http://svn.berlios.de/svnroot/repos/openocd/trunk/BUGS
2000 kHz
jtag_nsrst_delay: 200
jtag_ntrst_delay: 200
dcc downloads are enabled
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
 ****    openocd FAILED
 ****    Is the mini USB cable connected?
 ****    Try powering down, then replugging the Sheevaplug

dammuozz

[Mike Levin]

I take it you're talking about the SheevaPlug, given the installer you're looking at, right? Not the GuruPlug?

Yep, you and everyone else gets this error message. Until the maintainers of the official installer do some decent testing, I'll keep posting my unbrick fix:

http://shankserver.org/2010/09/unbrick-sheevaplug/

It comes down to making sure you have a reliable USB flash drive, and that you're using the Easy Plug Computer Installer http://sourceforge.net/projects/esia/ from sourceforge instead of the official installer.

If you have a GuruPlug, it is my understanding you will need a JTAG board. But if it's a SheevaPlug, you don't.

[Dammuozz]

no you're right...days ago I was confusing too....then I discovered that sheevaplug got an "internal" JTAG module and doesn't need the external one like the guruplug....

Yesterday I spent the whole afternoon trying to unbrick the sheevaplug with no success...


I've already came across the page you linked...but if I can remember it tells that you need a working u-boot to proceed....that's my point...

without a working uboot it can't help me....correct me if I'm wrong please...



I apologise for my english...hope you can understand what I wrote... :S


dammuozz

[Mike Levin]

So, you can't get to the Marvell>> prompt at all?

Maybe someone else can step in? Is the Marvell>> prompt a result of the bootloader, or even lower-level firmware?

It is my understanding that if you connect with the correct serial port settings, you should at least get a firmware prompt, right?

[Dammuozz]

I think that u-boot is some kind of BIOS in normal x86 computers....

I only get the JTAG when I connect sheeva to my laptop...when It used to be working there was 2: JTAG and serial

I used to connect with screen via an ubuntu terminal...


then If you think during the boot the "Marvell>>" comes always after the U-BOOT writings...don't know if writings is correct

I hope you understand however...


dammuozz

[Dammuozz]

@Mike Lewin: I'm still waiting for your answer to my previous question! plz!

BTW I had no luck with the sheeva installer v1.0 and wanted to try the sheeva installer 0.6 beta BUT I CANNOT DOWLOAD IT!

the link on the wiki gives me this message:

Fatal error - attempt to access unpublished file by non-admin user

can anyone help??


dammuozz

EDIT: I sent an e-mail to globalscale asking help. BTW I think I'll get no response

[Mike Levin]

@Dammuozz, I don't know if Marvell>> is from U-Boot or even lower-level boot software. Can someone clarify? Does U-Boot going bad wipe out the Marvell>> prompt?

[sfzhi]

@Dammuozz, I don't know if Marvell>> is from U-Boot or even lower-level boot software. Can someone clarify? Does U-Boot going bad wipe out the Marvell>> prompt?

Of course, the prompt comes from U-Boot. The "even lower-level boot software" (the boot-ROM) can not have any user interaction features, because it knows nothing about the peripherals connected to the chip.

[Dammuozz]

thank you sfzhi...

then I'm still stucked to the same point...I noticed if I run 'sudo php5 runme.php' without connecting the sheeva I get the same result as it was connected.


kinda weird =S

I think all I can do is to wait for sheevainstaller's team to patch the script......




dammmuozz

[Mike Levin]

Of course, the prompt comes from U-Boot. The "even lower-level boot software" (the boot-ROM) can not have any user interaction features, because it knows nothing about the peripherals connected to the chip.

Thanks, sfzhi. I didn't think it was quite so obvious since Marvell's products are fully integrated boards. TTY communication doesn't constitute a peripheral--it's just sending bits back and forth on the built-in serial interface. If the manufacturer wanted to include a ROM-loaded command interface, they could.

[sfzhi]

TTY communication doesn't constitute a peripheral.

Actually, it does. One has to configure the corresponding pins to work as a serial port, which may be highly inappropriate if those pins happen to be connected to something totally different.

If the manufacturer wanted to include a ROM-loaded command interface, they could.

And apparently they did. But that feature does not get activated automatically for the reason I've just mentioned, so one has to actively request the BootROM serial interface, which effectively means providing the BootROM with the information about the connected peripherals. This is described in detail in the SoC chip documentation.

[Blüto]

Sounds like a dead power supply to me.

My SheevaPlug's PS died after about a year of use (aug 2009 - jul 2010) .

I haven't ordered a replacement PS yet because I still have one working plug, but when I do I'll buy 2 on the assumption that the other plug's PS will fail sooner or later.

[datti]

I had the same problem with my Sheevaplug (only the Green LED was on, impossible to connect to it). It all happened when I tried to update uboot as described in Martin Michlmayr's HowTo. I used a bad USB Stick and accidentally erased the old uboot without writing the new one to the plug! So I bricked it

The Sheevaplug Installer 1.0 was not easy to handle, as neither the ReadMe, nor the wiki are really up to date. But reading through the different posts helped my finally find a way to unbrick my Plug. I was not able to run Sheevaplug Installer on Ubuntu 10.04, but as the wiki only mentionned Ubuntu 9.04, I set up a virtual machine with 9.04. After installing all the dependencies and changing the MAC Address in my \sheevaplug-installer-v1.0\uboot\uboot-env\uboot-nand-custom.txt file and putting the new uboot.bin to the \sheevaplug-installer-v1.0\uboot folder, I started php runme.php nand as root and got this result:

Code:

Error: unable to open ftdi device: device not found
Runtime error, file "command.c", line 469:
     **** openocd FAILED
 **** Is the mini USB cable connected?
 **** Try powering down, then replugging the Sheevaplug

I received the same message on Windows XP, but Windows recognized the Plug, as it asked for the missing drivers when I first connected it to my Windows PC.

As I did not have an idea on how I could find a solution on windows, I continued with Linux (even though I consider myself still a newbie on that OS).

Running dmesg, i got this result:

Code:

[11191.190808] usb 2-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[11191.271294] ftdi_sio 2-2:1.0: FTDI USB Serial Device converter detected
[11191.271350] usb 2-2: Detected FT2232C
[11191.271409] usb 2-2: FTDI USB Serial Device converter now attached to ttyUSB0
[11191.304381] ftdi_sio 2-2:1.1: FTDI USB Serial Device converter detected
[11191.304414] usb 2-2: Detected FT2232C
[11191.304476] usb 2-2: FTDI USB Serial Device converter now attached to ttyUSB1

So the missing FTDI device was somewhat recognized and connected, and it was not dead.

Running lsusb helped me even more:

Code:

Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 0403:6010 Future Technology Devices International, Ltd FT2232C Dual USB-UART/FIFO IC
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 80ee:0021 
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

This line was important to me:
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 0403:6010 Future Technology Devices International, Ltd FT2232C Dual USB-UART/FIFO IC

I remembered reading about the PIDs that had to be changed on newer models (even though my model was older than the one mentioned). And so I replaced this line:

ft2232_vid_pid 0x9e88 0x9e8f

in the \sheevaplug-installer-v1.0\uboot\openocd\config\interface\sheevaplug.cfg file, by this line:

ft2232_vid_pid 0x0403 0x6010

And after running php runme.php nand again as root, I received this message after a few minutes:

Code:

NAND flash device 'NAND 512MiB 3,3V 8-bit' found
successfully erased blocks 0 to 4 on NAND flash device 'NAND 512MiB 3,3V 8-bit'

wrote file uboot.bin to NAND flash 0 up to offset 0x00074000 in 361.948944s

 **** U-boot should be up and running now. Open your console ...

The Green AND the Blue LEDs were now working and I was able to connect to my Sheevaplug again! And the version command showed me that the uboot update was also successful! I am now running the Debian installation on my unbricked Plug!

Give it a try, it might be the solution to your problem too I sure hope so!

BTW: I tried USBDeview with Windows, but while it recognized my Plug as an FTDI device connected to it, it did not give me the same PIDs as lsusb did.