Sheevaplug installer - alpha-6 release - Testers needed

[elBradford]

I've never had much luck with timing critical serial and USB comms in a virtual machine..   Have you tried using a Ubuntu boot CD?   Or even better installing Ubuntu using Wubi  (Ubuntu on Windows, does not need partitioning)

I tried as you suggested and installed Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop using Wubi. It installed easily, and I ran the installer again. This time, NO keep_alive() errors. However, when I finally login I have the same problem - missing binaries. I did notice on the terminal when it was untarring the rootfs, it said bad magic (that's pretty much all it said actually). Might that have something to do with it?

Bradford

[elBradford]

I appreciate the replies so far, but I still can't figure this bastard out. I am considering sending it back, but I don't want to because when it works, I love my plug. Please give me any advice you think is pertinent.

[elBradford]

I tried once more, extracting the installer.tar.gz archive to my USB stick from my Wubi Ubuntu Desktop (9.04) install (previously I used 8.04 Ubuntu Server in a VM) and I got no bad magic error during extract of the fs, and I have all my binaries. Lesson learned: don't use VM for serial/usb transfers.

Now I need to figure out how to get it to boot from the sd card --- we really need a good article on the wiki that explains how to do that after using the alpha6 installer.

Bradford

[badcam]

Now I need to figure out how to get it to boot from the sd card --- we really need a good article on the wiki that explains how to do that after using the alpha6 installer.

Bradford

Yes, we need an updated Wiki. I don't ean to interupt, but may I suggest in the meantime that you take a look at this thread and it may help in reducing the issues you may have getting the SD Card to run as root:

http://plugcomputer.org/plugforum/index.php?topic=679.0

The Wiki actually is quite good, it does have notes about the Alpha6 update, and really, it was just me not following instructions properly. I also had issues with many of the SD cards I tried. They were all good quality (reasonable anyway) but I had to try a few. One thing that's not in the Wiki, is that you can do everything via the serial connection. Saves a lot of hassle. The threads worth a read anyway. I hope it helps.

Cheers and Good luck.

[mgillespie]

Reading on the Wiki about UBIFS, and it seems zlib of the image offers better performance, I notice the current alpha6 uses lzo compression.  Any plans to change for "alpha7"?

Is there a easy way I can change my setup?

[tspyrou]

I tried this from my fedora 11 machine and it worked well. The sheevaplug loaded all of the new software and I have it running on my network, have logged in with ssh, installed apache and all if well.

I would like to see a way to connect my plug after I am done configuring it and to create a backup and binary I can use to create clones of my setup. If this in the enhancement plan? Is there an easy way to do it that you can describe.

From uboot I assume some incantation of nand write and a usb stick should be possible.

It would be great if the backup feature were added.

Tom
 

[pekkaa]

[Edit: I noticed that there already is a thread for installed 1.0 that addresses some of the problems I reported below. Sorry to bother you ...]

I got my brad new plug yesterday. I need usb serial to connect my Arduino board. The default kernel did not include it, so I tough it was a good idea to upgrade the firmware using installer 1.0. I eventually managed to get the plug running with new kernel, but the process was not as smooth as it could be. The problem seems to be that the documentation is not upgraded with the latest installer version (1.0.0, 10 Sep 2009).  The problems were relatively easy to overcome with some linux experience, but they may cause frustation to linux newbies.

I faced at least the following problems:

- Wiki http://plugcomputer.org/plugwiki/index.php/SheevaPlug_Installer download link did not work. However, the link seems to be fixed at the moment I am writing this.

sheevaplug-installer-v1.0/README.txt is not quite accurate:


"3.  Edit the ~/work/sheevaplug-installer/installer/uboot-custom.txt file to burn
     the correct MAC address according to the MAC address on the back of the
     Plug (change the ethaddr value)"


There was no uboot-custom.txt file. I edited uboot/uboot-env/uboot-nand-custom.txt instead.


"4.  Populate the USB stick with a all files inside the installer directory.
    NOTE: that the files should be written to the root directory of the USB stick.
          For example if the recovery directory is sheevaplug-installer and USB
          stick mount is: /media/usb run on the host Linux PC:
          sudo cp -a ~/work/sheevaplug-installer/installer/* /media/usb/
5.  Copy the following to the USB stick root directory:
      a. Root file-system (packed into rootfs.tar.gz)
      b. Kernel (named uImage)
      c. Kernel modules (packed into modules.tar.gz)
      d. Init ramdisk (uImage.initrd)
    If you do not have all, you can download from:
      a. http://plugcomputer.org/index.php/us/resources/downloads (distro, kernel(LSP), uboot)
      b. http://plugcomputer.org/plugwiki/index.php/Main_Page     (distrio,uboot)
      c. http://sheeva.with-linux.com/sheeva                      (mainline kernel+modules)"

What is the step 5 for? Step 4 already copies the files to USB stick root directory.


"12. On the host PC, change the working directory to ~/work/sheevaplug-installer
    and run the runme.php file (or the runme.exe on Win host PC). (on Linux PC you should be root in order to do that)"


It could help newbies if you tell that running runme.php means "php5 runme.php".