piCore V8.0 working fine in RPi 2, but bits failing in Pi Zero

[Terry_J_C]

Hi,

With a lot of help from this forum I got several features I needed working in piCore V8.0.

However, I was working with my RPi 2 and I actually want to use a Pi Zero in my project, so I removed the SD card from the RPi 2 and plugged it in to my Zero.  Two things at least no longer work:

• Audio.  I get a very lengthy error message with multiple statements regarding alsa and PCM
• When I run wifi.sh, I get a message that says that no wifi device was found.

Both of these functions work properly when the SD Card is plugged into the RPi 2 and audio and WiFi work when I plug a Raspbian SD card into the Zero, so I'm thinking that there are some extensions missing that are required for the Zero, but not for the RPi 2.

Can anyone shed any light on what is happening here?

[bmarkus]

RPi Zero has an armv6 while RPi2 has an arm7 processor, therefore tehy are using different kernels. Just install kernel modules from the armv6 repo, same as you are having from armv7 repo. In such case SD card will work on all RPi boards.

[Terry_J_C]

RPi Zero has an armv6 while RPi2 has an arm7 processor, therefore tehy are using different kernels. Just install kernel modules from the armv6 repo, same as you are having from armv7 repo. In such case SD card will work on all RPi boards.

As with my config.txt question, the cause is obvious when explained.     Thanks for the info.

However, at the moment the solution is not so obvious.  I have been using tce-ab to search for and load extensions when running on the RPi 2.  I will have to do this further change from the RPi 2 as well, since I have no network functionality on the Zero.  How do I select the armv6 repo?  The default is presumably the armv7, but does this change when running on a v6 device, or is there a config file somewhere?

[Greg Erskine]

hi Terry_J_C,

I think you will need to manually do a "wget".

Main 2 repos:
http://repo.tinycorelinux.net/
http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/

Code: [Select]

repo directory structure

                              3.x
                              4.x   
                              5.x
http://repo.tinycorelinux.net/6.x/armv6/tcz/
                                  armv7
                                  armv8  <-- future
regards
Greg

[Terry_J_C]

I think you will need to manually do a "wget".

Main 2 repos:
http://repo.tinycorelinux.net/
http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/

I found the extensions at http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/8.x/armv6/tcz/ and, while booted into the RPi 2, downloaded the two kernel module extensions listed below using wget. I put them into a directory called /home/tc/tce.

• alsa-modules-4.4.20-piCore+tcz and associated .md5.txt file.
• wireless-4.4.20-piCore+tcz and associated .md5.txt file.

I then installed these two modules using:

tce-load -i <modulename.tcz>

The tce-load command returned OK in each case.

I then removed the SD Card from the RPi 2 and put it into the Zero, booted the Zero and the sound and wireless responses were exactly as before, eg failed.

So, are there any other modules that I need to load?  All the others that were associated with alsa and wireless seemed to have exactly the same names as their armv7 counterparts.  Should I load them too?  Are the armv7 extensions different to the armv6 ones when they have the same name?  Will they load alongside the armv7 extensions or overwrite them?

Finally, was my installation process correct?

[Terry_J_C]

I found the extensions at http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/8.x/armv6/tcz/ and, while booted into the RPi 2, downloaded the two kernel module extensions listed below using wget. I put them into a directory called /home/tc/tce.

.................

I then installed these two modules using:

tce-load -i <modulename.tcz>

The tce-load command returned OK in each case.

...............

Finally, was my installation process correct?

Answering myself, I suspect that my installation process was not correct.  I have just mounted the SDCard in my desktop PC running Kubuntu and examined the contents of the various directories.  Looking in mydata.tgz on the second partition, I can see that the /home/tc directory contains the two downloaded modules in the tce directory that I created for them when I used wget to download them.

However, when I look in tce/optional in the same partition, I can only see the v7 versions of those two modules, not the two that I loaded.

Can I repeat my question; did I use tce-load correctly? 

[bmarkus]

Move downloaded tcz's to tce/optional and add them to onboot list.

[Terry_J_C]

Move downloaded tcz's to tce/optional and add them to onboot list.

OK.  I'll try that, but I notice that the v7 modules are not in the onboot list. Will putting the v6 modules in that list affect the operation when running on the RPi 2?

[bmarkus]

You can have both versions loaded, kernel will use the proper one.

If a tce is not in the boot list but loaded than it is in a dep list of a loaded extension.

[Terry_J_C]

Wireless and sound now working on both RPi 2 and Zero 

Many thanks.

Any ideas why the tce-load command didn't work as advertised?

[curaga]

The -i command installs (for this boot), it doesn't add to onboot.lst or copy files around. You can use it to install from arbitrary paths, like a temp download dir.