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Author Topic: Towards Microcore on Allwinner A10  (Read 78735 times)

Offline roberts

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Re: Towards Microcore on Allwinner A10
« Reply #75 on: August 28, 2012, 02:05:58 PM »
Actually I used busybox-1.20.1-config. Which I see Brian has not yet posted.

Curious that you used 1.17 ? Are you suggesting later ones from the same site have the same issue?
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Offline caminati

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Re: Towards Microcore on Allwinner A10
« Reply #76 on: August 28, 2012, 02:28:20 PM »
Actually I used busybox-1.20.1-config. Which I see Brian has not yet posted.

Curious that you used 1.17 ? Are you suggesting later ones from the same site have the same issue?

No, probably I have 1.17 around because more recent ones have standalone shell enable. Not sure why, I tried so many lately. However, also
http://www.busybox.net/downloads/binaries/1.19.0/busybox-armv6l
pings names fine, so no dns problem with it.

Offline roberts

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Re: Towards Microcore on Allwinner A10
« Reply #77 on: August 29, 2012, 09:22:20 AM »
I see the issue. Actually corrected it on Raspbian, next I will focus back on A10.
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Offline roberts

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Re: Towards Microcore on Allwinner A10
« Reply #78 on: August 30, 2012, 02:19:11 PM »
Another cut now posted with net applets now resolving names.
 http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/4.x/arm/armv7
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Offline caminati

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Re: Towards Microcore on Allwinner A10
« Reply #79 on: August 30, 2012, 02:33:16 PM »
Another cut now posted with net applets now resolving names.
 http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/4.x/arm/armv7

Thank you. What was the problem?
I'm a bit disappointed that for some weeks I won't have time to contribute further to this effort.
I'm glad it's coming up nice, anyway!

Offline roberts

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Re: Towards Microcore on Allwinner A10
« Reply #80 on: August 30, 2012, 05:40:36 PM »
The issue is that many distributions have enhanced/deviated from standard unix. Many have IMHO bloated up everywhere. So each platform I had tried their resolver infrastructure was preventing the network applets from working. Finally, I decided to setup a cross-compiler so that I could use Tiny Core. Success!
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Offline caminati

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Re: Towards Microcore on Allwinner A10
« Reply #81 on: August 30, 2012, 11:33:37 PM »
The issue is that many distributions have enhanced/deviated from standard unix. Many have IMHO bloated up everywhere. So each platform I had tried their resolver infrastructure was preventing the network applets from working. Finally, I decided to setup a cross-compiler so that I could use Tiny Core. Success!

Yes, I think we should use directly TinyCore even for compiling as soon as possible: as I said, I started that mainly to be able to use it, so why not for building, too?
I tcz-ed the binary toolchain from aboriginal, and it looks I can compile successfully on Core on Allwinner. My first attempts were towards compiling compilers and LIBCs anew, to make more modular toolchain.
I only built tcc so far, but it seems like you can't bootstrap a LIBC (neither klib, nor uclibc, nor musl) without the whole beast of gcc :(

Offline caminati

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Re: Towards Microcore on Allwinner A10
« Reply #82 on: August 31, 2012, 12:38:27 AM »
Good news: on https://github.com/amery/linux-allwinner there is some promise from last commit:

Quote
video: sun5i-disp: Initial fbcon support. …
based on Jari Helaakoski's 3ca6f75 for sun4i.
commit 59b89c9e95
amery authored 20 hours ago

Haven't tried that yet.

Offline roberts

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Re: Towards Microcore on Allwinner A10
« Reply #83 on: September 05, 2012, 11:26:32 PM »
Now posted a10Core-20120905.img.gz. This image has been updated to reflect Core's 4.6.1 base.
http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/4.x/arm/armv7
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Offline roberts

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Re: Towards Microcore on Allwinner A10
« Reply #84 on: September 06, 2012, 10:00:12 AM »
The image for Allwinner A10 currently supports the Mele family of arm computers using HDMI at 720p.
However, as Marco pointed out it works equally well on his Allwinner tablet with, for now, a connected usb keyboard.

To help the effort and try your Allwinner device you will need to copy the file named script.bin from your device. This file resides on nanda a vfat filesystem not easily accessible. I am sure you could use ADB to fetch it, but I prefer the standard Unix approach. Most Allwinner devices come already rooted.

How to get script.bin from your Allwinner device via ssh:
1. Install dropbear for Android, free in the Play Store and configure it.
2. Start dropbear SSH server on your Android Allwinner device.
3. From your x86 Core ssh root@ip number as displayed from dropbear Android server
4. mkdir /mnt/test
5. mount -t vfat /dev/block/nanda /mnt/test
6. ls -l /mnt/test              (look for script.bin)
7. Open another xterm on Core.
8. scp root@ip as displayed from dropbear Android server:/mnt/test/script.bin .
9. exit your ssh session.
10. Stop dropbear ssh server app on Android.

Now copy your script.bin to the sdcard containing the a10Core image that you downloaded.
Try booting your Allwinner device from your updated sdcard.

If it works please post here and state your device specific.

I would be interested to know if it works on A13 devices.
Perhaps I will host many script.bin file listed by specifc target name,

Or if you already have a script.bin working with a10Core please post.
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Offline karlmw

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Re: Towards Microcore on Allwinner A10
« Reply #85 on: September 06, 2012, 12:12:40 PM »
Tested successfully on 512MB mini-x  :-)
Booted from sdcard written with a10Core-20120905.img.gz
Mounted /mnt/nanda and /mnt/mmcblk0
Copied /mnt/nanda/script.bin to /mnt/mmcblk0
Rebooted - everything fine. 

Results in dmesg have improved:
Now there are no WEMAC errors since it knows not to bother.
A message about "[AXP]axp driver uning configuration failed(1579)" has gone as well.

EDIT: For completeness, I should add that the mini-x is using HDMI output, via a cable adapter to a DVI monitor.
« Last Edit: September 07, 2012, 01:59:35 AM by karlmw »

Offline roberts

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Re: Towards Microcore on Allwinner A10
« Reply #86 on: September 10, 2012, 12:13:35 PM »
Thanks!

I have posted mini-x_512MB_original_script.bin to http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/4.x/arm/armv7/
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Offline roberts

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Re: Towards Microcore on Allwinner A10
« Reply #87 on: September 10, 2012, 12:22:10 PM »
I am woking on a refresh of the base libraries. I want to align with Debain Wheezy
so that a tool that I have been working on for raspbianCore
(see: http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,13982.msg78620.html#msg78620).
Will also work for a10Core.

The result will hopefully be easy access to gain tcz extensions with very little effort,
while maintaining Core's philosophy of pristine boot, onboot and ondemand features.
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Offline roberts

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Re: Towards Microcore on Allwinner A10
« Reply #88 on: September 11, 2012, 01:27:46 PM »
Kernel source and defconfig files now posted. I have downloaded and rebuilt kernel to verify.
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Offline roberts

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Re: Towards Microcore on Allwinner A10
« Reply #89 on: September 11, 2012, 01:29:47 PM »
I have posted both mele scripts bin, one for HDMI and one for VGA.
http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/4.x/arm/armv7/
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