ArchLinux on the HP t5325 thin client

[rstepanov]

Hello folks! Am I the only one here who tries to run ArchLinux on the HP t5325 thin client? Device is booting the ArchLinuxARM-armv5te-latest now, however I'm getting troubles with the framebuffer now, most likely xgifb driver included in the 3.1.10-ARCH kernel tree has some bugs. Will try to build it from more recent kernels... Are there any more troubles waiting?

[rstepanov]

Framebuffer is okay now, can move further...

[moonman]

Did you build a custom kernel to get it to work? if so what did you modify? I don't have the device but I can try to merge you changes into the official kernel.

[rstepanov]

Hello, moonman!

Right now I'm not sure if the things I did were really necessary. I just merged this patch: http://tinyurl.com/pvxc4mq to the vanilla 3.1.10 kernel. Since XGI Volari Z11 and Z11m share the same device id, I'm not sure which one I have.

Actually the real problem was blank screen after boot even with the updated driver. After googling a bit I realized I need to modprobe fbcon to make fb console work. So now I enjoy it working: http://tinyurl.com/qymrg9j

Next I will try to find/build xgi driver for Xorg and most likely will try to run wayland.

[moonman]

Have you tried the linux-kirkwood package? the xgfb is already built as a module and the patch you applied may already be merged since it is 3.11.1 kernel

[rstepanov]

Thank you for great idea. This site lacks good quickstart guides for different devices, I didn't know about this package.

Right now I cut my serial console off the board (micro jst connector isn't arrived yet so I attached the wires directly to the board to make initial changes and after it was able to boot from internal storage I cut it to assemble the case) and uboot is not set up properly to boot from usb. First I need to make it boot from usb stick, then I will try linux-kirkwood. I'm too afraid to break working image on the internal storage because it was quite hard for me to make this: http://tinyurl.com/pn7cpo4

[rstepanov]

I can confirm that kernel 3.11.1 from linux-kirkwood package is okay for t5325, at least I was able to boot the system with it. One important thing I discovered about t5325 - since it uses HP modified uBoot, a call to wol (wake on lan) also checks for power button pressed after system is powered on. In this case uBoot runs usbboot sequence which is used to boot t5325 from usb stick.

[rstepanov]

Just in case somebody else is thinking of playing with t5325 I will put my progress here. Since t5325 has so small internal storage rootfs now lives on btrfs filesystem. This change allows to put almost twice as much data on the internal storage with compression turned on:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '
[root@t5325 ~]# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2 449M 223M 223M 50% /
dev 249M 0 249M 0% /dev
run 250M 340K 250M 1% /run
tmpfs 250M 0 250M 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 250M 0 250M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs 250M 0 250M 0% /tmp
/dev/sda1 15M 6.0M 7.8M 44% /boot
[root@t5325 ~]# mount | grep btrfs
/dev/sda2 on / type btrfs (rw,noatime,compress=zlib,noacl,space_cache)
')
uBoot environment changes:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '
btrfs_bootargs=console=ttyS0,115200 root=/dev/sda2 rw video=xgifb rootflags=subvol=__active,compress,noatime
btrfs_loadimage=ext2load ide 0:1 0x800000 /uImage ; ext2load ide 0:1 0x1100000 /uInitrd
thinpro=ide reset; wol; setenv bootargs $(btrfs_bootargs); run btrfs_loadimage; bootm 0x800000 0x1100000

usb_bootargs=console=ttyS0,115200 root=/dev/sdb1 rw rootwait video=xgifb
usbboot=setenv bootargs $(usb_bootargs); run bootusb; bootm 0x800000
bootusb=usb start; ext2load usb 0:1 0x800000 /boot/uImage

bootcmd=run thinpro
mainlineLinux=yes
arcNumber=2846
')