Dockstar Bricked, freezes at booting the kernel

[mikezby]

I messed up my dockstar. I got a series cable and got connection to it. Following "Hardware: Seagate DockStar Reflashing", which turns out not the fix for my case, I flashed original image. The system freezes at booting.
The following is the output when the dockstar is powered on. It would not proceed when NAND read: device 0 offset 0x100000, size 0x300000.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'U')BIT v0.6 by Jeff Doozan and Peter Carmichael

SoC: Kirkwood 88F6281_A0
DRAM: 128 MiB
NAND: 256 MiB
In: serial
Out: serial
Err: serial
Net: egiga0
88E1116 Initialized on egiga0
Creating 1 MTD partitions on "nand0":
0x000002500000-0x000010000000 : "mtd=3"
UBI: attaching mtd1 to ubi0
UBI: physical eraseblock size: 131072 bytes (128 KiB)
UBI: logical eraseblock size: 129024 bytes
UBI: smallest flash I/O unit: 2048
UBI: sub-page size: 512
UBI: VID header offset: 512 (aligned 512)
UBI: data offset: 2048
UBI: attached mtd1 to ubi0
UBI: MTD device name: "mtd=3"
UBI: MTD device size: 219 MiB
UBI: number of good PEBs: 1750
UBI: number of bad PEBs: 2
UBI: max. allowed volumes: 128
UBI: wear-leveling threshold: 4096
UBI: number of internal volumes: 1
UBI: number of user volumes: 0
UBI: available PEBs: 1729
UBI: total number of reserved PEBs: 21
UBI: number of PEBs reserved for bad PEB handling: 17
UBI: max/mean erase counter: 1/1
UBIFS error (pid 0): ubifs_get_sb: cannot open "ubi:silent", error -19
Error reading superblock on volume 'ubi:silent'!
UBIFS not mounted, use ubifs mount to mount volume first!
Using egiga0 device
ping failed; host 10.10.10.5 is not alive
(Re)start USB...
USB: Register 10011 NbrPorts 1
USB EHCI 1.00
scanning bus for devices... 2 USB Device(s) found
scanning bus for storage devices... 0 Storage Device(s) found
Hit any key to stop autoboot: 0

NAND read: device 0 offset 0x100000, size 0x300000

[hojnikb]

Just flash the latest custom u-boot from jeff and kernel should boot normaly.
This happens becouse newer kernels use somekind of machine id, which is a part of u-boot, and when kernel doesnt get this id, it doesnt know which device is running at.
http://jeff.doozan.com/debian/uboot/

[mikezby]

Hi hojnikb, thank you for the response. The problem is that I could establish SSH connection with dockstar. From my understanding, I have to boot into linux to update u-boot. Am I right? I am totally new in linux.


Thanks.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('hojnikb', 'J')ust flash the latest custom u-boot from jeff and kernel should boot normaly.
This happens becouse newer kernels use somekind of machine id, which is a part of u-boot, and when kernel doesnt get this id, it doesnt know which device is running at.
http://jeff.doozan.com/debian/uboot/

[hojnikb]

You need to boot to stock linux which is on nand device.
As you can SSH to your Docky that means you are running stock linux.

So bootup stock linux, ssh to it, run that script and that script should automaticly download the image and flash it.
Than just restart it and stick your flash disk or HDD with archlinuxarm and it should work

BUT BE CAREFULL WHEN FLASHING !!!!!!!!!!
IF YOU UNPLUG IT OR THERE IS POWER OUTAGE YOUR DEVICE WILL BE BRICKED AND ONLY THING THAT CAN SAVE IT IS JTAG REFLASH !

[mikezby]

sorry, my bad. I meant that I could not SSH. with serial cable I am only able to boot to u-boot, I guess. I get the prompt like Marvell>. How to boot to the stock linux?

[hojnikb]

I see.
Search around forums, there must be a toturial how to reflash dockstar.

[mikezby]

can anybody help me here?

Thanks.

[DocMCSE]

Mikezby, It has been a while since I've worked on my trouble that partly sounds like where you are. First thing that pops out at me is in your bootup I noticed the following:

scanning bus for devices... 2 USB Device(s) found
scanning bus for storage devices... 0 Storage Device(s) found

This tells me you do not have any USB drive plugged into your Dockstar, is this correct? When I found myself near this spot I was using one of those flask drives (or thumb drives they may be called) rather than an actual USB connected hard drive. In my case the thumb drive was either way too slow or had other issues that would not allow it to be used as my root file system. I corrected this by plugging an actual USB disk into another computer I have that runs Linux, partitioning it and installing the root file system to it.

[mikezby]

No, i do not have usb plugged. Should I? Could you give me more detail on how to partition it and install the root file. Thanks. Totally new to linux.


$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DocMCSE', 'M')ikezby, It has been a while since I've worked on my trouble that partly sounds like where you are. First thing that pops out at me is in your bootup I noticed the following:

scanning bus for devices... 2 USB Device(s) found
scanning bus for storage devices... 0 Storage Device(s) found

This tells me you do not have any USB drive plugged into your Dockstar, is this correct? When I found myself near this spot I was using one of those flask drives (or thumb drives they may be called) rather than an actual USB connected hard drive. In my case the thumb drive was either way too slow or had other issues that would not allow it to be used as my root file system. I corrected this by plugging an actual USB disk into another computer I have that runs Linux, partitioning it and installing the root file system to it.