GoFLEX Home to boot from mtd0

[habibie]

Recently, I received a used and bricked Seagate GoFLEX Home unit and managed to recovered it. The previous owner had hacked it to run ALARM using steps of instruction outlined here. As such, it is no longer able to boot from its mtd0 partition. To me, not being able to use the 256 MB MTD partition is a waste. So, I read this [HowTo] Boot to Pogo OS on GoFlex Home using Mainline U-Boot several times before decided to go ahead. So far, I have the u-boot updated to the mainline u-boot without a problem. Also, I have proceeded through step #5 of [HowTo] Boot to Pogo OS on GoFlex Home using Mainline U-Boot and now am able to see what is on mtd0. ATM, I am reluctant to proceed to step #6 and #7 which requires to download/install a uboot-mtd0-orig-goflexhome.kwb file into the root directory of the mtd0 partition. Aside from this, I also have another Seagate GoFLEX Home up running with its original firmware whose bootcmd environment is shown below. What I would like to know is if my GoFLEX Home (already updated with the mainline u-boot) will be able to boot from mtd0 using the original bootcmd as shown below. Can anyone confirm this before I proceed?
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '-bash-3.2# fw_printenv bootcmd
bootcmd=nand read.e 0x800000 0x100000 0x300000; setenv bootargs $(console) $(bootargs_root); bootm 0x800000
-bash-3.2#')

[grayman4hire]

Sorry, don't really understand your question.

Why would the bootcmd from your unmodified GoFlex Home work on your GoFlex Home running the latest mainline uboot? Of course it wouldn't work.

Your bootcmd should be what is documented in hydro's tutorial.

Also, shouldn't you need to use blparam to list the stock uboot env? Or is blparam only used on the Pogoplugs?

[moonman]

IIRC blparam is jist for ppv4 because there was a thread a long time ago about fw_setenv messing up the uboot environment, which might not be the case anymore.

[hydro]

habibie, as explained in step 6, the uboot-mtd0-orig-goflexhome.kwb did not work for me, I applied uboot.mtd0.dockstar.original.kwb instead. Just follow the commands in the code blocks. Unfortunately some line breaks might make it difficult to differentiate between user input and console output, step 7, for example, has only three long input commands, no console output.

The modifications to the U-Boot environment performed in step 7 will cause mainline U-Boot to chainload the stock bootloader that has become accessible through the uboot.mtd0.dockstar.original.kwb file (which being present in the ubi filesystem alone has no effect). This stock bootloader uses a different environment, as grayman4hire already indicated. Be careful with the blparam command, there is no need to use it at all.

Btw. netconsole mentioned in step 9 will not work with mainline U-Boot. To make it work I had patched and recompiled the uboot-goflexhome package, you can find the binary package and also the source package on my site.

[habibie]

Hydro,

Thank you.

[grayman4hire]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('hydro', '
')Btw. netconsole mentioned in step 9 will not work with mainline U-Boot.

[hydro]

I wasn't very precise when I stated that netconsole doesn't work with mainline U-Boot. In fact mainline U-Boot is compiled with support for netconsole, but the preboot command, commonly used to start it, is missing. The fsload command is missing, too, but not required for the GoFlex Home.

[grayman4hire]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('hydro', 'I') wasn't very precise when I stated that netconsole doesn't work with mainline U-Boot. In fact mainline U-Boot is compiled with support for netconsole, but the preboot command, commonly used to start it, is missing. The fsload command is missing, too, but not required for the GoFlex Home.

[hydro]

All correct. I think someone has to submit a pull request.