ZyXEL NSA320 booted from USB...once!

[WarheadsSE]

Yeah.. google search time. It's all documented.

[iwonbigbro]

If only you could see the number of Google search browser tabs I have open. No luck unfortunately. Maybe I am missing something in my keywords.

[iwonbigbro]

Is there a way I can compile the kernel without using DTB? When I tried previously, it failed to boot.

[WarheadsSE]

I assume this is with linux-kirkwood?
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '
[whse@nsa320 ~]$ uname -a
Linux nsa320 3.12.2-1-ARCH #1 PREEMPT Fri Nov 29 22:03:42 CST 2013 armv5tel GNU/Linux')

[iwonbigbro]

Yes. I used the patch from linux-3.12.0-kirkwood-tld-3-bodhi.tar.bz2 (Here: http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?2,12096) and applied it to a standard 3.12.2 kernel from kernel.org. Patch applied okay, so I used the kirkwood config and rebuilt. Ran menuconfig and update extra bits, removed unwanted bits and it all built fine.

What fork of the kernel should I be using?

[moonman]

As far as I know bodhi uses our patch which you can always find on github https://github.com/archlinuxarm/PKGBUIL ... x-kirkwood
config is there too

[bodhi]

iwonbigbro,

moonman was right. I use the ALARM patch for NSA 310,320,325 in this build linux-3.12.0-kirkwood-tld-3-bodhi.tar.bz2. Big thanks to the ALARM guys here. Whenever I need a patch that we don't already have at doozan.com, we come here.

If you're building your own kernel using my patch set, the source should be from the kernel tree for that version, i.e. 3.12, not 3.12.2

-bodhi

[iwonbigbro]

Thanks for the heads up. I'll use the patch directly from the github repo you provided from now on. On a side note, how did you get the kernel to boot on the nsa320 without the device tree definition for this device? I am not fussed either way with the boot loader/device tree, so just be happy to get it working with a recent kernel.

When I flashed my LinkStation a few years back, I had to go through some arduous steps to get uBoot to boot a custom uImage, something like this in fact:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '
devio 'wl 0xe3a01c06,4' 'wl 0xe3811031,4' >$builddir/tmp/devio-$suffix
cat $builddir/tmp/devio-$suffix arch/arm/boot/zImage >$builddir/boot/zImage-$suffix
')

Do I need to do something similar for the nsa320 kernel?

[moonman]

Use the config provided in github. in short you need to disable dtb support and enable nsa320 under kirkwood implementations. Any reason you aren't using the rootfs provided ?

[iwonbigbro]

Yes, I'm trying to get my existing debian distro up and running. I'm porting it over from an MK802, so just require a new Kernel. I built a custom kernel on the MK802, so am trying to create a config file with the appropriate modules enabled for my USB devices, based on the kirkwood config. I'm essentially using the kirkwood config as a base and then running

$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '
make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabi- menuconfig
')

I had previously tried a build without the DTB support, which failed to boot also. I'll run up another build without DTB with a vanilla kirkwood config and see what that throws up. If I see the same errors, I'll post them and maybe someone can shed some light on them...