(iConnect) Force usb port to boot from?

Install Arch Linux ARM on other devices.

(iConnect) Force usb port to boot from?

Postby cr08 » Wed Oct 24, 2012 3:02 am

Long shot in the dark here. For reference I did figure out my prior issue I posted about in this forum (and forgot to update on, I apologize). Turned out to be some real odd router issues. Namely some security settings on the WAN configuration that were effecting LAN only communication somehow. Disabling a couple of them and my SSH connectivity is solid now. Not an ALARM issue thankfully. :)

But now I am digging more into this iConnect and wanting to turn it into a more robust NAS with our existing USB hard disks. Right now my boot device is a tiny microSD reader with a 2GB card in the usb port on the back and intending to use the front USB ports for hard disks/peripherals. What I want to know is if it is possible in U-Boot to tell it to only look at that rear port (or even any other identifier I can provider like VID/PID info for the card reader used) for booting into ALARM. Since I'd rather not have to manually unplug the drives every time I have to reboot or there is a random power blip causing it to reboot. This seems to be the case now where the front LED keeps blinking until I remove everything but the boot disk and it finally lets the system boot.

Appreciate the help! Thanks!
cr08
 
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Re: (iConnect) Force usb port to boot from?

Postby Philoo » Sat Oct 27, 2012 2:27 am

you need to to change the uboot sequence. from the alarm install script extract the fw_setenv binary. you can symlink it to fw_printenv.

fw_printenv will display all the uboot variables and you will see that it checks each port in turn. "just" remove the ones you do not want checked (and then save the uboot environment to the nand).

One word of advice though I found that the iConnect is a little weak on start up (not sure if it comes from the iconnect itself or from its power adapter) so use external power for your hard drive(s): I could not boot properly from my usb powered hdd if I had a webcam connected at the same time.

*edit* if you have set a serial connection you can test this manually.
Philoo
 
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Re: (iConnect) Force usb port to boot from?

Postby cr08 » Sun Oct 28, 2012 12:20 pm

Thanks. I actually looked over that a bit but didn't do a really thorough job. The related lines I saw for some reason I recall it being mentioned somewhere that U-Boot picks and chooses which port to label what at boot time. I may have been completely and totally mistaken on that part.

Any idea exactly what the port numbering scheme is on the iConnect? Experience tells me the rear port should be '1' but not sure on that. I'll have to play around with it though once I get my rootfs back up (Was trying to get glibc updated and made a stupid typo and killed much of the core binaries which left it braindead. Oops.). Worst case if I bork that part I should have my serial-usb adapter here within a week or two.
cr08
 
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