ODROID-C1: upgrade kernel to >=3.19

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ODROID-C1: upgrade kernel to >=3.19

Postby attilaolah » Wed Jul 29, 2015 11:12 pm

I just bought a bunch of cheap WiFi dongles that run on the MT7601u chip. However, the manufacturer driver seems to be crappy enough to get rejected from the mainline kernel, and now I'm stuck with another driver, kuba-moo/mt7601u.

This driver works perfectly on other devices, like the Raspberry Pi. However, since the alarm on the ODROID-C1 is stuck at 3.10.80-8-ARCH, I cannot compile the kernel module, since it lacks the devm_kmalloc symbol, which has been included in the kernel in this commit, and is part of the mainline since 3.13.

Looking at the hardkernel/linux fork, it does have a 3.13 branch, so I'm wondering, why not use that one? In fact, what's holding us back from rebasing this to something like 4.1?
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Re: ODROID-C1: upgrade kernel to >=3.19

Postby attilaolah » Wed Jul 29, 2015 11:30 pm

Having another look at the README, it seems like the driver requires >= 3.19, and has been merged in mainline and will be part of 4.2. So while we're waiting for 4.2, it would be nice to have at least a somewhat recent kernel available.
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Re: ODROID-C1: upgrade kernel to >=3.19

Postby Holzhaus » Sat Aug 01, 2015 3:11 pm

This is the branch for the ODROID-C1:
https://github.com/hardkernel/linux/tree/odroidc-3.10.y
(Other branches are for other devices)

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')n fact, what's holding us back from rebasing this to something like 4.1?

Why don't you do it then? ;-)

I'd be in favor of a newer kernel too, but it's clearly not up to the ArchLinuxARM devs to tackle this. AFAIK a lot of the code that came from Amlogic is in really bad shape and thus can't be mainlined at the moment. Rewriting it will be a lot of work (and I mean A LOT, it's more than 8000 commits ahead of mailine).

Anyway, check this out:
http://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=111&t=12397
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Re: ODROID-C1: upgrade kernel to >=3.19

Postby attilaolah » Thu Aug 13, 2015 8:51 am

Thanks Holzhaus, the linked thread gives a pretty nice explanation to why they went with an older version.

I'll give the rebase a shot anyway — see if I can at least push it a little further, even if I don't reach the current state of the mainline. Not sure how on earth that ended up being 8000 commits, but maybe they cherry-picked mainline commits or something, which should make rebasing a little bit easier.

I'll post updates here in case I reach something interesting.
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Re: ODROID-C1: upgrade kernel to >=3.19

Postby attilaolah » Thu Aug 13, 2015 12:09 pm

It turns out it's not as bad as expected.

First, most of the extra commits are due to the merge of aufs. According to this comment, aufs won't be needed if we can rebase to a recent enough kernel that has overlayfs. So a rebase -i can get rid of a lot of commits.

Second, a lot of the commits seem to be backports, so applying them to more recent branches will make them empty.

I've managed to cut down the number of commits from 8000+ to 400+, just by excluding aufs. And that's still staying on 3.10.80. That number will likely go down even further as I continue rebasing to newer releases.
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Re: ODROID-C1: upgrade kernel to >=3.19

Postby WarheadsSE » Thu Aug 13, 2015 3:28 pm

AUFS & OverlayFS are quite different.
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Re: ODROID-C1: upgrade kernel to >=3.19

Postby v01d » Thu Aug 13, 2015 10:16 pm

@attilaolah
I'm having difficulties with the also old kernel for odroid u3 (v3.8), since it cannot be compiled with current gcc 5.2
I see you are attempting to update the kernel for the C1. Would you mind quickly describing how are you doing it?
If so, I could try to do the same for the 3.8 branch from hardkernel.

Thanks!
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Re: ODROID-C1: upgrade kernel to >=3.19

Postby fedux » Sat Oct 17, 2015 6:19 pm

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')'ve managed to cut down the number of commits from 8000+ to 400+, just by excluding aufs. And that's still staying on 3.10.80. That number will likely go down even further as I continue rebasing to newer releases.


@attilaolah, I've alse done that. I have 2 branches, one is -noaufs and another in -noextras (with a lot of removals) while I'm working on rebase onto 4.x. BTW, I also found a couple of merge mistakes by the hardkernel guys.

See https://github.com/fedux/linux/tree/odr ... y-noextras for example.
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