IRC #olimex 2022-12-31

[22:47:54] <joepublic> having a little trouble with my olinuxinos (seems to be the way with these things until set up and running smoothly)
[22:51:46] <joepublic> they are olinuxino-lime2 A20 boards, with ancient image on sd card booting 3.4(?) sunxi kernel, ethernet works great. With latest debian bullseye image on sd card from https://images.olimex.com/release/a20/, no ethernet. dmesg says it can't initialize their dma access.
[22:51:59] <joepublic> hopefully this is a faq with an easy answer.
[22:52:45] <joepublic> ethernet is kind of important for my use case for these devices.
[22:53:46] <Shane[m]> joepublic: olimex is on vacation til tomorrow
[22:53:58] <Shane[m]> ehh i don't have experience with that board, but if you give me the dmesg i can take a look O.o
[22:55:36] <joepublic> k, I'll give it a shot. will take few mins to save the dmesg to a usb stick or something
[22:57:52] <bill-auger> you could try the freedombox image https://ftp.freedombox.org/pub/freedombox/hardware/pioneer/stable/
[23:00:43] <bill-auger> there are at least three significant "genrations" if lime2, each with subtle differences/bugs - so some images will be better tuned to each model - freedombox targets the 2nd gen (rev F to G2)
[23:02:35] <bill-auger> the latest olimex image may target only the current 3nd gen (rev H an later) - if you have a first-gen, you may have to do do something more clever
[23:04:38] <joepublic> Here's the dmesg, https://paste.debian.net/1265832/ -- gets interesting with network failure at about 25 seconds
[23:06:04] <joepublic> I don't know what revision I have, but it's something like 2-3 years old as I recall
[23:07:14] <joepublic> "Made in Bulgaria 2015" is printed on the underside :)
[23:11:04] <bill-auger> its printed on the main board
[23:11:32] <bill-auger> near the SPI pads IIRC
[23:11:42] <joepublic> found it, "Rev. C"
[23:18:39] <joepublic> perhaps I am stuck with this ancient image and sunxi 3.x kernel. Hope not. Have downloaded the freedombox image to try.
[23:54:27] <bill-auger> joepublic: lime2 are very libre-frienfly - all the source code is available; so youre not stuck with anything
[23:55:19] <joepublic> I am limited by my skillset, which is admittedly stretched when working with these things.
[23:55:22] <bill-auger> your problem is most likely a mis-configured uboot - that is completely unrelated to the OS - you may need to compile your own uboot - thats all
[23:56:00] <bill-auger> if the "ancient" image works, install it, then simply upgrade the system with apt
[23:56:49] <bill-auger> im pretty sure apt would not try to clobber your bootloader - just look for that, and do not let it
[23:57:08] <joepublic> that was not a successful strategy and I lost a working sd card/ssd combo to the attempt.
[23:57:13] <bill-auger> do not allow it to over-write your boot-loader
[23:57:58] <joepublic> apparently my kernel is too old to update to a recent debian. upgrading to debian 10 was what was unsuccessful. the u-boot still works, but past that debian will not start.
[23:58:34] <bill-auger> then just install a new debian fresh
[23:59:16] <bill-auger> just do not allow it to over-write your boot-loader, and it sholud work