kernel source for r2 and working config please

[XFer]

I agree with PaceyIV, instead of a new Debian R3 it would be great to just have a new Kernel (source and .config), when you are ready.

For example, I already did extensive modifications to Debian R2 to suit my needs (packages, symlinks, conf scripts etc.), so it's absolutely OK now, apart from the kernel.

Also, to better clarify: I have absolutely nothing against you or linux-sunxi; they are working hard on 3.4 kernel and one day we'll have a working kernel; that's great.

My point is, that we Olimex customers should not be asked of tracing what the linux-sunxi community is doing: if some of us can/want to help their work, great, but I think we should see the result of their work here on this forum/wiki.
I mean, in my opinion you should at a certain point "present here" a stable milestone of their ongoing work.

Because frankly, as Philippe said, trying to keep in sync with the maze of branches, special versions etc. of their codebase is too daunting and time-consuming for a final customer who just needs a more-or-less working kernel.

Just try a "git branch -a" on their repository, and you'll see what I mean.
Again, I'm not criticizing their work, it's just a *very different job* from what I want to do with your boards.

Moreover: say I come out with a fix for a certain driver.
It's one thing to discuss the matter here, in a relaxed way, with one of your team, and then if needed, that Olimex guy could "properly" submit a "proper" patch to the sunxi mailing list.

But trying to interface directly the list maintainers, it's too much effort for me: I would certainly give up, because of the inherent difficulties (format, code style, iter to be followed, etc.).

Fernando

[Mouchon]

I spoke with Dimitar few minutes ago and he says he check and Linux-Sunxi Kernel 3.4 have all patches which he did to kernel 3.3. to generate image2 already merged to Kernel 3.4 tree so he now will try to build new image for Debian, Ubuntu and Slack based on Linux-Sunxi Kernel 3.4

I tried the stage/sunxi-3.4 and what you say isn't totaly true, ts is not working, till now i am unable to have lcd terminal working.

May be this only configuration issue but then provide minimum information to use the sunxi tree.
I, my point of view as Olimex customer this not the sunxi team that should take care of this but Olimex.

I can agree that you are not developper and that you concentrate your self on the electronic part. But then it will be nice that you clearly put on on your shop that this board is not ready to be used and that customer should best buy A10 or A13 board if they want to do something usefull.

Regards

Philippe.

[KNK]

+1 for information about the sunxi tree and configs used. Definitely include /proc/config.gz with the next kernel and in addition to the images (very happy about the Slackware one) - publish the compiled kernel and modules too.

I am also working on a deadlined-project, so in addition to supported features a list of missing kernel features (or todo list) on the product page will avoid many problems for both you and customers.
If one doesn't need a 'todo feature' he/she will just ignore it or otherwise ask about expected timelines.
If there is a frequently demanded 'todo feature' support questions - you will get information on what to best put your limited time on, in order to please more customers, so it's a win-win.

Please do not accept this as critics, but merely as suggestion for improvement. I am very happy with the product I bought and hope to order much more soon, when my project is completed.
Keep up the good work!

[olimex]

Why it's necessary to build three different images?

because most of our customers do not have knowledge to build linux from sources like us 12 months ago

having image which could be simple burned on SD card is easiest way for one to get started

...and still there are people who find it difficult to burn the image to SD card - read the forum, then imagine these people to build linux kernels and modules

[oliver]

@oliver:

I already wrote on the linux-sunxi board, with debug outputs and all, and had no support.
Kernel 3.4, pulled from stage, has nearly non-existent USB support for MIDI keyboards. 3.3 is MUCH better so I'm using 3.3 with some patches by me.

I saw your mail, possibly while working through a 800 mail backlog after a week of vacation. To summarize, the 3.4 USB driver IS the exact same driver with bug fixes, so saying that 3.3 is MUCH better is extremly strange. Maybe you HAVE found a regression! That's bad, but the #linux-sunxi or ML is your best shot. Know that only arokux has experience with the USB driver at this very moment. He is cleaning it up etc so he can get a short at trying to mainline it. His changes only landed yesterday in the linux-sunxi kernel, before it was only in hansg's repository. So you should have pretty much the same USB driver as before

I understand you linux-sunxi developers are busy with tons of stuff, I don't fault YOU for this: I'm asking OLIMEX, not you, to stand behind their product, following their own Olimex forum and assisting us in fixing kernel bugs TOGETHER, as in "Olimex staff and Olimex users together".

Then if the fixes find their way in linux-sunxi, much better, but I'm an Olimex customer (hopefully for more than a single developement board) and I'm mainly interested in having the Olimex board up&running, don't have much time for Allwinner boards in general.

Hope this clarifies things.

Fernando

I don't think you can expect this from Olimex with a 45E dev board. You should think of it more like 'here, we sell you a board, just so you can verify the hardware should work, we pre-installed this testing image we got from the Allwinner SDk. Good luck with your purchase'. If you want software support, you either have Allwinner, or buy a devboard from them. But prepare to to fork up 3000 USD or more for 'just' a dev board.

They sell you a bare board and 'help' a bit with the software, they don't offer full support on the software, that's not even really under their control.

[hnb2907]

I'm really looking forward to getting my A20 board working fully for my requirements.  As mentioned before, it's a great board, but it's not well supported or documented yet.  When it is better, I'd like to ditch my r-pi's and replace them with more of these. 

I've been using Linux on PC's, Sun workstations, industrial/consumer products and raspberry-pi's since 1994.  In the past I've built kernels on PC's.  I'm not an expert, but I'm definitely not a beginner, and for the first time I'm struggling!

After too many late nights and hours wasted, I still don't fully understand where to get the correct source/patches/instructions, to build the kernel on my A20... 

This isn't a complaint, I'm really hoping the feedback will help make the product successful.   

[oliver]

Why it's necessary to build three different images?
I come from the Spanish board igepv2 (http://labs.isee.biz/index.php/Main_Page).
They posts uBoot source and binary, kernel source, kernel zImage and modules in a separate way.
They also provide tutorial to install debian, ubuntu etc...

Why should I download GB of new images (Debian relase 3 etc..) if I only need a new kernel image and related modules?

Well firstly, because you need 1 u-boot per architecture right now, so u-boot-sun4i; u-boot-sun5i and u-boot-sun7i. Then it needs to be compiled with memory timings build in (for now). Same for the kernel, it's a multi-platform kernel, but works on either sun4i or sun5i or sun7i. Development moves so quickly, that having pre-build binaries is messy, but we used to have daily built stuff at dl.linux-sunxi.org.

Once stuff slows down a bit, it's worthwhile to have precompiled stuff. But with the sunxi-bsp it's really easy to compile stuff for your platform. Warning: The BSP might not work fully due to changes with u-boot right now.

[PaceyIV]

Why it's necessary to build three different images?
[...]

Well firstly, because you need 1 u-boot per architecture right now, so u-boot-sun4i; u-boot-sun5i and u-boot-sun7i. Then it needs to be compiled with memory timings build in (for now). Same for the kernel, it's a multi-platform kernel, but works on either sun4i or sun5i or sun7i. Development moves so quickly, that having pre-build binaries is messy, but we used to have daily built stuff at dl.linux-sunxi.org.

It's not what I meant.
It isn't necessary to build a new SD card image for Debian release 3, a new image with Ubuntu and a new one with  Slack for the Olimex A20 board. We're talking of Olimex A20 board: we are in this section of forum. We don't interesting about sun4i, sun5i or other platform.

I understand why Olimex do this for newbie, but if they (newbies) have already put something in the rootfs, why they should lost this work with an entirely new SD card image? For what? Just a kernel update?

It would be nice if Olimex posts the SD card image as a starting point for new users, but also the compiled uImage and a zip with modules and source code with the config. Every users should be able to substitute a file in the microSD (the uImage) and extract a file into the root path (the modules zip).

[XFer]

Know that only arokux has experience with the USB driver at this very moment. He is cleaning it up etc so he can get a short at trying to mainline it. His changes only landed yesterday in the linux-sunxi kernel, before it was only in hansg's repository. So you should have pretty much the same USB driver as before

Sorry, this does not make any sense.
With 3.4, none of my MIDI keyboard is recognized, regardless of the USB port I connect to.
With 3.3, after a few fixes (which I don't know how to apply to 3.4 because the whole USB tree is different), I get 1 MIDI keyboard correctly working, on every USB port (and this is with Hans saying I should not use the OTG mini-USB port...).

I don't think you can expect this from Olimex with a 45E dev board. You should think of it more like 'here, we sell you a board, just so you can verify the hardware should work, we pre-installed this testing image we got from the Allwinner SDk. Good luck with your purchase'

NOT-AT-ALL.

They sell a "OLINUXINO" board, the board MUST work with a Linux of sort.
Here in the EU, we have customers' rights.

But I'm not worried, I'm sure we'll get a working Linux in the end, sooner or later (hopefully sooner).

Fernando

[olimex]

https://github.com/hehopmajieh/OLinuXino-A20

in above repo are instructions how to build Kernel 3.3 (used in R2) and 3.4 which we use in the new image build we prepare

Note: Kernel 3.3 is based on Android SDK Kernel and may contain GPL violations which are behind our control, it's not recommended to use it nor to improve/contribute to it for development and improvement please stick to Linux-Sunxi community Kernel 3.4, which have everything working except the LCD touchscreen. We look into the TS issue to solve.

[Mouchon]

Thanks a lot i will try to stay with 3.4

https://github.com/hehopmajieh/OLinuXino-A20

in above repo are instructions how to build Kernel 3.3 (used in R2) and 3.4 which we use in the new image build we prepare

Note: Kernel 3.3 is based on Android SDK Kernel and may contain GPL violations which are behind our control, it's not recommended to use it nor to improve/contribute to it for development and improvement please stick to Linux-Sunxi community Kernel 3.4, which have everything working except the LCD touchscreen. We look into the TS issue to solve.

[Tom]

Hmm, when i bought the device, i thought that a board called olinuxino is built with linux in mind. It would be more appropriate to call it androidino.
What about opengl support or vpu decode, can we expect it to be available in the future ?
(Hope it did not sound impolite, i know that a sub 50€ board will never be perfect).

[KNK]

I am not cross compiling (using the A20 with remote drive over the network) and hence no ARCH and CROSS_COMPILE flags are provided, but i get an error during compilation:

block/partitions/sunxi_nand.c:7:22: fatal error: plat/mbr.h: No such file or directory
compilation terminated.
and
drivers/ata/sw_ahci_platform.c:42:29: fatal error: plat/sys_config.h: No such file or directory
compilation terminated.

tried adding CFLAGS="-I_full_path_to_plat" to make, but still the same error ... any suggestions?

EDIT: Ahhh compiling the wrong branch ... starting over

EDIT 2: Not to increase the number of posts
I've got another error while native compiling:
/usr/src/linux-sunxi/arch/arm/mach-sun7i/pm/standby/mem_printk.c:168: undefined reference to `memcpy'
... used the fix to char* posted here http://irclog.whitequark.org/linux-sunxi/2013-07-14

[oliver]

Hmm, when i bought the device, i thought that a board called olinuxino is built with linux in mind. It would be more appropriate to call it androidino.
What about opengl support or vpu decode, can we expect it to be available in the future ?
(Hope it did not sound impolite, i know that a sub 50€ board will never be perfect).

Well the olinuxino runs linux just fine, it supports the 3.4 kernel just fine, not all drivers are ported yet of course, but this is work in progress and takes time. There's only a very few of us.

Android is also still linux

Having said that, I would expect that anybody buying this board, just to run linux, knows to do a little research before of what works and what doesn't. But even so, just going in knowing nothing, it does work and work well.

OpenGL support is being worked on by Luc Verhagen (libv) and Connor Abbot (cabbot) and is progressing VERY nicely!!
VPU support is being worked on by a lot of people and the first status report is jpeg, mpeg12 and h264 actually working without any binary blobs.
http://linux-sunxi.org/Reverse_Engineering/Cedar_Status

Mainlining support is progressing, albeit slowly, mostly due to lack of manpower.

And here is where most developer resources go into. Migrating and mainting 3.4 kernels is 'as needed' basis. Lack of time mostly.

Can any of this be blamed on Olimex? How?! They sell you an allwinner board for developers and hobbiests. The product they sell, is a PCB with chips on it, not a full featured computer. For convienience they supply some images, but that does not go with the product!

[KNK]

Is this the best place to report bugs for 3.4 kernel?

There is a bad symlink in ./arch/arm/mach-sun7i/include/mach - sys_config.h points to ../plat/sys_config.h
As the link is used only in:
./drivers/net/wireless/rtl8189es/os_dep/linux/usb_intf.c
and
./drivers/gpu/mali/mali/platform/ca7-virtex820-m400-2/mali_platform.c
i think it is better to change the .c files and remove the symlink completely.