Buffalo NAS-Central Forums

That's the least that you could expect me to do. I'm really doing just what I promised.



Yes, I did. I sent him a longish e-mail about avr_evtd and how the source could be improved. But he has not replied back yet.

Actually, I think that I fixed some bugs of the program. Compiling the package on a 64-bit arch (x86-64) revealed some bugs coming from false assumptions (that the size of a pointer is the same of the size of an integer).

Also, his non-standard use of pointers to get the result of the open Unix syscall is just... non-standard. The system call just returns a file descriptor, which is documented as being an integer. It is -1 if the call has not succeded. The original test on the code was just seeing (in many places) if the result was different from 0 (which is a valid file descriptor, though, with high probability, it wouldn't be that case).

I also think that the code is a bit on the complicated side of things. Maybe it could be refactored? I think that that would be an improvement...



You are correct. The source code does nothing particularly tied to the PowerPC or to MIPS, and so, I develped the package with a 64-bit machine. (As you know, the Kurobox standard is quite slow for CPU-intensive tasks). The source of the Debian package is there, though (the .dsc file).

Anyway, I can provide you with a compiled version for powerpc, if you want. You would just have to tell me which version of libc you have installed, since the version that I have (the one in Debian testing) is newer than what you possibly have on your system.

Beyond that, I don't think that there is any problem. If you want, I can teach you how to compile a Debian package from sources.

Regards, Rogério Brito.

He is quite busy, I'd guess. Over the years has been an awesome contributor (avr-evtd, micro-evtd, Linux kernel for ARM9, the list goes on and on...). I'm sure he'll respond when he can.

_________________
LS1 (foonas, nfs, Tranmission & p910nd print server, Firefly for my Roku)
LS-HG500 (Lenny)
Various LS-Pros v1,v2 (unbricked w/ serial & jtag)
KuroPro, LS2 & KuroHG (foonas)
Working on davysweather.dyndns.org lately...

=> wooohooo!
wooohooo!
Unknown command 'wooohooo!' - try 'help'

Nice to know. BTW, I have a question: who is the author of the file http://downloads.nas-central.org/ALL_LS ... mimgtool.c ?

It seems to be a nice thing to get included into Debian, but Debian insists on having the copyright and the licence explicitly stated.

I see, from your signature, that you're working on foonas (and its variants). As far as I understand it, it is an initrd that is more complete than the one that is precompiled with kernel 2.4.33.3. Is that right?

If yes, which tools are you using to create it? I would be willing to help with this, and, if all the tools are Free, to include it on Debian also.

Thanks for your answer, Rogério Brito.

regarding the firmimg.bin material, mindbender knows... I think it may have been a gentleman from Japan... not sure... I will dig a bit...

as far as foonas goes, you can contact timtimred or NAiL here : irc.freenode.net #foonas

Yes, they are different in contents, capability and origin. The firmimg.bin that mindbender made is excellent, and at its time was the best EM image we had (EM = Engineering/Emergency Maintenance/Mode ... depending on who you talk to...). The foonas-em images are not initrd's but rather initramfs images, technically speaking.

To be perfectly accurate, I must consider changing my sig a bit... I am not a Debian developer... I just packaged up a pre-Lenny armel image that some of us use on the LSPro and the KuroPro ...

I do help out w/ foonas a bit here and there... The developer docs are all listed at foonas.org, iirc. Building foonas* requires OpenEmbedded/Bitbake and all the fixings to go w/ it.

_________________
LS1 (foonas, nfs, Tranmission & p910nd print server, Firefly for my Roku)
LS-HG500 (Lenny)
Various LS-Pros v1,v2 (unbricked w/ serial & jtag)
KuroPro, LS2 & KuroHG (foonas)
Working on davysweather.dyndns.org lately...

=> wooohooo!
wooohooo!
Unknown command 'wooohooo!' - try 'help'

rbrito, here is the original page (I believe!) that 'bender got it from... translated...

http://translate.google.com/translate?u ... l=ja&tl=en

and "raw"

http://www.geocities.jp/trstat/firmhack.html#imgtool

_________________
LS1 (foonas, nfs, Tranmission & p910nd print server, Firefly for my Roku)
LS-HG500 (Lenny)
Various LS-Pros v1,v2 (unbricked w/ serial & jtag)
KuroPro, LS2 & KuroHG (foonas)
Working on davysweather.dyndns.org lately...

=> wooohooo!
wooohooo!
Unknown command 'wooohooo!' - try 'help'

Thanks for that information. I already grabbed the programs. Just as a small update on what I've been doing these days, I have sucessfully compiled a very recent 2.6.27-rc5 kernel for my Kurobox and it is working perfectly (well, actually, it has a bit of a problem which should be fixed in the 2.6.27-rc6 kernel).

If a Debian package of such a kernel is desired, please let me know.


Regards, Rogério Brito.

P.S.: It is always nice to know that your device won't "die" due to lack of support. I guess that with the discontinued support for André's kernel, going upstream is the way to go.

And browsing http://www.kernel.org/, I see that 2.6.27-rc6 was released today. Now, time to go compiling this kernel.

Regards, Rogério Brito.

Just as promised, there is a Debian package for avr-evtd on Debian proper now, as you can see in http://packages.debian.org/avr-evtd .

Also, the kernel 2.6.28-rc3 has two patches by me and another one (by Guennadi Liakhovetski) that fixes the timer of the boxes (this was a regression in the 2.6.27 kernels).

Pleases, install the avr-evtd package from Debian, customize the configuration files and install popularity-contest, so that the packages that you use actually get counted in Debian's statistics.


Regards, Rogério Brito.

P.S.: Using my standard Kurobox with a recent kernel and many types of services (including mt-daapd/firefly media server) and the box is with a small cpu usage (and a load of 0.00 processes) .

rbrito, well done!

you are hereby officially "hero for the day" ...

I've been hoping this would happen for a long time... If I understand correctly micro-evtd (the ARM-ish counterpart) is also in Debian now.

_________________
LS1 (foonas, nfs, Tranmission & p910nd print server, Firefly for my Roku)
LS-HG500 (Lenny)
Various LS-Pros v1,v2 (unbricked w/ serial & jtag)
KuroPro, LS2 & KuroHG (foonas)
Working on davysweather.dyndns.org lately...

=> wooohooo!
wooohooo!
Unknown command 'wooohooo!' - try 'help'

Hi, davy_gravy. It's been quite a long time since I last posted anything here (many things have been keeping me busy). Anyway, now that lenny has been released, I will get back to make some updated packages (including the avr-evtd package that I have uploaded to Debian).

Perhaps I can even package the micro-evtd thingy, but I don't have the hardware to test, but if both avr- and micro-evtd share a good amount of code, perhaps that could be merged?

Well, at least, the repository is @sf.net.

Anyway, now, my intention is to proceed with something like what Martin Michlmayr did with the Kuro Pro, merging the installation into the Debian installer. The only thing now is to decide how to getting the bootstrap process without being painful (well, I went through a very tortuous path when I was installing and I want to summarize that).

BTW, do you happen to know if the stock uBoot supports the Kuroboxes/Linkstations without the need of any patches?

Since I have my kuro working with a pure installation of Debian (that was my first plan, when I "arrived" here), to complete my task, the only things that aren't provided by a distribution are:

• Linux (unfortunately, the 2.6.29 kernel has problems with the MTD devices, but I have already reported this to kernel.org's bugzilla). I'm using a self-built kernel with a script that packages the kernel and modules into a Debian package, so that everything is under the control of dpkg.
  
• the MTD/flash contents (which are the essentially the precompiled http://downloads.nas-central.org/LS1_PP ... 2.0-r2.bin and http://downloads.nas-central.org/ALL_LS ... irmimg.bin).

Of course, since I am running Debian's sid (and even one or another package from experimental), I would like to have the rest consisting only of Free Software and compiled recently.

Unfortunately, it seems that kurobox.com has closed its doors (well, at least, I can't access it for some weeks now) and it carried a patch that LNI used to patch an older uBoot (I was thinking of recompiling both uBoot, the EM-mode kernel + early userspace so that I could drop some of the functionality that I don't need and include other things that I do need).

Anyway, I updated the patch that LNI used for the 2.4.33.3 kernel so that it applies cleanly to 2.4.37 (a bit of manual work). Of course, it would be much better to use a newer kernel (say, with ext4/btrfs or with some features of ext3 that may make the filesystem unmountable with kernels that are not recent enough).

I don't know if foonas-em already provides everything that I need (and, if it does, it would be a nice thing to have all-things firmware included in the distribution).

Well, so I am close to completing the task of having a pure Free Software-based Kurobox (with quite decent uptimes and running all sorts of servers). The step after getting everything free will be to compile things with a smaller libc (say, uclibc or dietlibc or any other alternative that can free some precious space on RAM).

So, that's how things have progressed. I think that I will make more of what I am doing available for others at my newer site (http://rb.doesntexist.org/).

Regards, Rogério Brito.

Hi RB, good to hear from you ...

1. I'll be happy to try your avr-evtd deb whenever you need it tested

2. I'm not sure how merging them would work... avr-evtd is ppc/mipsel, while micro-evtd is strictly ARM. I'm thinking that someone has it packaged in Debian already, Per Andersson, I think. http://packages.debian.org/stable/utils/micro-evtd

3. That sounds like a good challenge/project ... it is a great idea and a goal that would be appreciated by users if it works!

4. By stock uboot, you mean the vanilla sources? No, they need patches. Some of the patches we still use are at LNI's site http://www.linuxnotincluded.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/ and also at foonas.org 's git repository : http://git.foonas.org/?p=openembedded.git;a=tree . I think most of us are using the newer uboot version that supports a flat device tree.

5. kurobox.com is now accessible via this link : http://buffalo.nas-central.org/index.ph ... robox_Wiki I think that all of the downloads in the old site have been moved to here : http://downloads.buffalo.nas-central.org/


6. mindbender's 2.4.33.3 firmimg.bin has been very useful for a lot of us. Many of us have switched to foonas-em since it has more support for other things like xfs in it, and some other nice features.

ext4 support will be a good thing in any future em-mode image, as well as btrfs (if they both will fit).

late now for me, must get some sleep, thanks for your efforts...

davygravy

_________________
LS1 (foonas, nfs, Tranmission & p910nd print server, Firefly for my Roku)
LS-HG500 (Lenny)
Various LS-Pros v1,v2 (unbricked w/ serial & jtag)
KuroPro, LS2 & KuroHG (foonas)
Working on davysweather.dyndns.org lately...

=> wooohooo!
wooohooo!
Unknown command 'wooohooo!' - try 'help'

Hi, Davy.


Can you try the one for PPC from Debian? I am planning on releasing a new upstream version (1.7.4) and I will make things easier for the MIPS(el) to be built on Debian from the stock sources.

Please, take some care, as the default config file is set to use the /dev/sdaX devices instead of the /dev/hdaX devices that some kernels support. But this is completely changeable.

I'm not really sure if the projects have that much differing code (now, they seem to have, but I think that I will be revamping the code a little and the differences could be merged and we could have two (one) actively maintained project).

Anyway, since I care about it, I am still working on the SVN tree of avr-evtd (and it has changes that have not yet been released).

It seems that one or another piece of is missing, unfortunately. I even thought about setting up a mirror...

I contacted him and he was very kind in giving me directions. I will try to reproduce things as well as I can and see what happens. I will keep the board posted.

Oh, BTW, if you could check out the new rtorrent from Debian, please let me know if it works well. These are some good times, when we have fresh, brand new code for our slighly old devices. (I am one of the maintainers of rtorrent---we are now a team of three people).

Thanks, Rogério Brito.


http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/p ... /changelog