Tiny Core Linux
dCore Import Debian Packages to Mountable SCE extensions => dCore Armv7 => Topic started by: naf456 on January 13, 2013, 06:31:56 PM
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Sooo...
I've ordered a micro ARM based computer :
http://www.aliexpress.com/snapshot/212436416.html
I was originally just going to develop some android software like a launcher and some bits and bobs to make it feel more like a desktop computer,
but I have also been wondering about rolling a custom version of linux.
as it's ARM it's quite a lightweight machine, and so I thought debian or ubuntu or something would kill it - and I like the idea of a cloud based OS.
So what about TC on a one of these things. it'll be great for a little FTP / Media server box. 8)
the specs are : (if your to lazy to click the link (I don't blame you ;)))
Rockchip Rk3066 A9 dual core 1.6Ghz,
Mali-400 GPU (Quad Core 240MHz)
1GB of DDRIII,
not sure about the chipset - I mean , it's an SoC so I guess it doesn't have one / depends on the chip.
I've read somewhere there there is increasing support for the chinese SoC processors, however I'm not to sure how to get it rolling - as anything, I'm just have to experiment. ::)
And this is IF the bootloader is unlocked / unlockable - I suppose I have to do some more research.
EDIT : Mali-400 acceleration support looks pretty slim. Hasn't anyone just contacted Allwiner / Rockchip / who ever and asked nicely for the source code for the graphics libraries?
Might ring them up tomorrow - maybe not... ^_^
Hmm... Graphics programming has always intrigued me - it seems like a black art , only 92 year old masters can understand the functioning of a GPU... hmmm.... ???
Something even more too look into.
I suppose I still have my whole life to sit around and do absolute &"$& all.
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Rockchip has bad kernel support IIRC.
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Really, I thought ALLWinner was pretty much RK?
I've heard some guys running Ubuntu desktop on one.
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They're completely different manufacturers.
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Two different compaines, both in China, that make SoCs based on Arm technologies. Check out Wikipedia.
The Allwinner A1X is known for its ability to boot from an SD card GNU/Linux. That ability made it a popular target for Linux. The earyl Arm Soc (mk802) on a stick did not have the ability for a normal shutdown, not via software and no switch. Just unplug. Still Ubuntu and several other distros are avilable. Newer sticks do not have such issues. I prefer having more ports than a stick provides such as the $49.00 Cubieboard which includes a clear plastic case, or the $49.00 Mele a200. Both of these Allwinner devices are well supported with Linux, poweroff is normal. Core runs very well. Also the hackberry and the Mini-X are also well supported. Even many Allwinner A10 tablets can boot and run Linux for A10, albeit with tiny screen, impossible for me to read!
I am sure others are supporting the Rockchip Soc, just as many support the Broadcom that is in the Raspberry Pi. All are different. Arm Socs are not like x86. I have no plans for RockChip. I am considering the Samsung Quad as next target for import.
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Sorry if this is a stupid question but, is the TC kernel vanilla linux or have you guys modified it?
The reason I ask is because I might try to port it over myself >_<
I apologize about the thread to - kinda didn't relies the reason why you guys are porting it to arm is because of these sticks - I didn't realize how popular they were ???
Still an awesome concept - dual core computer in a stick - my PowerMac G4 is slower then these sticks bearing in mind it practically catches on fire and originally cost £3000 ^_^
There is no bytecode to turn off RK3033's? - so the guys at Rock chip were like - "Pft, Powering off devices are for losers"
forgive me for my little knowledge - I have only studied IA32 architecture a little bit. looks like I'll be heading down the library for some Assembly books again - this time on ARMv7 ;)
Oh and Linux 3.0 Kernel development - and get a book on Python - Hmm... overloading myself too much I think. Neither mind studying for my electronics course at college :o
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I am considering the Samsung Quad as next target for import.
I've just bought the Odroid-U2 board, and would be very interrested in this. :D
Best regards
Soren
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Sorry if this is a stupid question but, is the TC kernel vanilla linux or have you guys modified it?
The reason I ask is because I might try to port it over myself >_<
I apologize about the thread to - kinda didn't relies the reason why you guys are porting it to arm is because of these sticks - I didn't realize how popular they were ???
Still an awesome concept - dual core computer in a stick - my PowerMac G4 is slower then these sticks bearing in mind it practically catches on fire and originally cost £3000 ^_^
There is no bytecode to turn off RK3033's? - so the guys at Rock chip were like - "Pft, Powering off devices are for losers"
forgive me for my little knowledge - I have only studied IA32 architecture a little bit. looks like I'll be heading down the library for some Assembly books again - this time on ARMv7 ;)
Oh and Linux 3.0 Kernel development - and get a book on Python - Hmm... overloading myself too much I think. Neither mind studying for my electronics course at college :o
Not vanilla, because of initramfs and zram. But those details are posted.
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I am considering the Samsung Quad as next target for import.
I've just bought the Odroid-U2 board, and would be very interrested in this. :D
Best regards
Soren
Drool ;) That's the one I have my eye on as well.
Will likely proceed when I get past the Scale Expo.
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Alright, zRAM sounds awesome. I would have thought compressing/uncompressing files would take up more CPU time then waiting for HDD to find files. what compression schema does it use? gzip?
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Alright, zRAM sounds awesome. I would have thought compressing/uncompressing files would take up more CPU time then waiting for HDD to find files.
Huh? ::)
Any particular scenario?
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Drool ;) That's the one I have my eye on as well.
Will likely proceed when I get past the Scale Expo.
Nice. 8)
It's really small compared to the RaspberryPi as it's got about 8 times the processing power at half the size. I think it's really going to fly with TC. ;D
With the hopeful succes of the Lima driver http://limadriver.org/ (http://limadriver.org/) the quad Mali-400 GPU's will pack additional punch for graphic or calculation heavy applications. I'm looking forward to unleashing the power of this little 2"x2" cutie. :)
Best regards
Soren
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Alright, zRAM sounds awesome. I would have thought compressing/uncompressing files would take up more CPU time then waiting for HDD to find files.
Huh? ::)
Any particular scenario?
I am in process of rebuilding the kernel for A10 (bye bye Bterm) so I can give you current info.
Since these arm machines are pretty much closed systems, I inlined the few modules that are needed.
Check that your kernel has BLK_DEV_LOOP, SQUASHFS, SCSI_WAIT_SCAN, and BLK_DEV_INITRD
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I can now confirm that Core and Tiny Core runs fine on the original mk802!
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Alright, zRAM sounds awesome. I would have thought compressing/uncompressing files would take up more CPU time then waiting for HDD to find files. what compression schema does it use? gzip?
It seems to use LZO.
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I can now confirm that Core and Tiny Core runs fine on the original mk802!
Awesome!
I'm actually currently not working on the port to the mk808. I'm actually researching into the possibility of creating a custom desktop environment at the mo ::)
I like FLWM but it's just not pretty enough :L
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Everyone has there favorites when it comes to desktop and GUI apps. That is why I now stay focused on just the Core. The latest Core is even more embedded.
As for the original mk802 with 1GB, it can be had so cheap and having 1 GB or ram makes such a difference. I will be showing the mk802, mele, cubieboard, and raspberry pi at Scale. This year it is all arm at the Tiny Core booth. Well almost, another team member will have x86-64. But even the demo vidoes will be running on arm. 8)
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This year it is all arm at the Tiny Core booth
Nice kit for an expo - I'm picturing the whole mess except for monitors in one decent sized cardboard box. :)
I'm curious to hear how much attention the booth draws from the general linux crowd, And of course to see pictures - a photo gallery on the forums or on the main web page would be cool.
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I can now confirm that Core and Tiny Core runs fine on the original mk802!
they've released a quad core MK402 version 4.0 based on rockchip rk3188
I think A31 quad core A7+sgx544MP2 version will come out soon
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Takin' in count this post:
http://www.newaydeals.com/testing-of-allwinner-quad-core-chip-a31-cpu/ (http://www.newaydeals.com/testing-of-allwinner-quad-core-chip-a31-cpu/)
And after reading Robert has the Samsung gpu-based in mind, makes me guess our next target will be Cortex A9, instead of the A15 or the Allwinner A31...
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[UPDATE] 8) The Rk3188 Linux source code has been released:
https://github.com/aloksinha2001/Linux3188 (https://github.com/aloksinha2001/Linux3188)
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A big thank you to everyone involved in these efforts. I'm an old phart who hand built his first computer back in about 1980 (an S100 based system featured in Byte magazine). I hand etched the motherboards, hand soldered the components and hex keyed the boot strap loader for CP/M.
The work being done here is reminiscent of the "glory" days of computers when geeks were geeks and RAM chips were very afraid.
I have learnt a lot from playing with TC and am very grateful for the help everyone so freely gives.
I have an MK802 (1GB version) that I would like to put TC on. There is plenty of info available but I can't seem to find the start button. How do I download the core to the MK802 without pulling it apart to get at the sd card (assuming it has one and not on-board rom).
For what its worth, I also have a Zealz GK802 based on the Freescale iMX6 quad core chip. It runs really well and that would be a good candidate for TC. From what I have read Freescale is pretty open with data and firmware and there are a couple of Ubuntu / Xuntu type ports happening.
Be well.
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mk802 1gb does run Core. mk802 uses a micro SD card and is sometimes difficult to insert properly, at least it was for me. Poor vision here.
Anyway start by writing the a10Core image see:
http://tinycorelinux.net/4.x/armv7/README/README-1st.txt
As this image is for the Cubieboard 1GB you will have to get the proper files for mk802 1GB see:
http://tinycorelinux.net/4.x/armv7/hardware/README-bootloader.txt
The needed files for mk802 1GB are here:
http://tinycorelinux.net/4.x/armv7/hardware/mk802ii/
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Thank you Mr Roberts. Most kind. That will give me something to do today.
BTW: I came across an article on the Liliputing web site about Rockchip releasing the source code for Linux. Here's the Github link if that's of any interest.
https://github.com/aloksinha2001/Linux3188.
Cheers.
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Once you have the mk802 successfully booting to a prompt then to get wireless working see:
http://tinycorelinux.net/4.x/armv7/README/README-wifi.txt
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Just one small question. My MK802 is a sealed plastic unit with a single (empty) sd card slot available. I need to use an uploader program to update the Android image.
Are we talking about loading the TC sd card in this empty slot or do I have to break open the plastic case to get at the internals?
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You should use a USB to micro sd card reader for your regular computer. Download and write image to sd card.
The instructions posted are for using a Tiny Core computer, as I don't have or use Windows.
No need to break open the mk802, just very carefully insert the micro sd card into the open slot, it should feel springy and then click into place.
Then connect cables to mk802 and finally apply power.
The Android image is not distrubed. It remains totally untouched. With sd card in slot you will boot to Core, take out the sd card and you will boot to Android.
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Beaut. Thanks again. That's the bit that had me confused.
The fact that I can't boot into TC means I haven't got the process right yet. I'm not beaten yet though.
Be well.
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WooHoo. I'm on.
The missing bit is the need to pick the "manage labels" option in gparted and mark the partition bootable.
Now I can start playing with X11 and get a GUI up.
I haven't had this much fun for 111 days (since a heart triple bypass op).
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I have come across another problem.
When I try and grow the partition size in gparted from the 8MB that the DD xx.img creates to anything else (32MB or 2048MB) I get an error. When I mount the partition gparted reports that all the new space is used but DF shows the original size.
What else can I use to expand the partition.
I have attached the fault log in case you want to look.
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You are trying to grow a fat12 partition which is not supported.
Please see step 2 of the README-1st.txt and create as described.
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Thanks, that makes sense.
I misunderstood the Step 2 because when I set the partition to bootable, gparted reports it as a fat16 partition; which can support up to 2GB. I assumed this was the location for tce-setdrive and needed to be bigger.
Cheers.
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I am now up to installing the wifi but I get a series of errors when I try to run "sudo deb2sce wireless-tools armv7". I have attached the xterm oputput.
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Perhaps the wrong file is attached as I only see:
squashfs-tools.tcz: OK
deb2sce.tcz: OK
Which is to be expected.
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I have come across another problem.
When I try and grow the partition size in gparted from the 8MB that the DD xx.img creates to anything else (32MB or 2048MB) I get an error. When I mount the partition gparted reports that all the new space is used but DF shows the original size.
What else can I use to expand the partition.
I have attached the fault log in case you want to look.
See: http://gparted-forum.surf4.info/viewtopic.php?pid=29935#p29935
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Thanks @TinyPoodle.
@Mr Roberts:
I am a bit stressed because I can't send in my error file for a number of reasons. I can't pipe the screen output to a file (it just doesn't). I can't edit a file in vi because the commands don't work (yes I know about command mode). Anyway - one problem at a time.
Here's what I tried to send in the last attachment when I try and run "sudo deb2sce wireless-tools armv7" as part of the MK802 setup.
/usr/local/bin/deb2sce: line 4: useBusybox: not found
/usr/local/bin/debGetEnv: line 4: useBusybox: not found
/usr/local/bin/debGetEnve: cd: line 40: can't cd to /etc/sysconfig/tcedir
Connecting to distro.ibiblio.org (152.19.134.43:80)
wget: server returned error: HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
Using Package Index: debian_wheezy_main_armhf_Packages
Using debian Mirror http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian
/usr/local/bin/debQuery: line 4:useBusybox: not found
/usr/local/bin/debQuery: line 42: can't open /etc/sysconfig/tcedir/debian_wheezy_main_armhf_Packages: no such file
grep: /tmp/depfile: No such file or directory
wireless-tools is not a standard or meta package, exiting..
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I see the problem. The last command in step 2 is wrong. Should be and now corrected on web site:
$ tce-load -iw deb2sce.tcz
As it was trying to run an arm binary on x86.
The corrected command above is loading deb2sce.tcz for x86.
This allows importing for armv7 while on an x86 machine, as the two sudo debsce ....... armv7 is attempting.
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How about...
tc@box:/mnt/sda3/tce/optional$ tce-load -iw deb2sce.tcz
Downloading: deb2sce.tcz
wget: server returned error: HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
Connecting to distro.ibiblio.org (152.19.134.43:80)
wget: server returned error: HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
md5sum: deb2sce.tcz.md5.txt: No such file or directory
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I re-downloaded deb2sce.tcz as per step 2 as well as deb2sce.tcz.md5.txt and confirm both exist at /mnt/sda3/tce/optional.
tce-load is trying to download them again...Is this the problem...
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All the wgets are placing arm binaries onto the micro sdcard which eventually be placed in your a10 arm computer but is currently mounted on your tinycore x86.
The tce-load -iw deb2sce.tcz is downloading the x86 version so that from your tinycore x86 computer you will be able to import the final armv7 binaries to support wireless.
And at step4 you copy the two sces from /etc/sysconfig/tcedir/sce/ to the micro sdcard as instructed.
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I get that we are downloading the armv7 binaries in the first part of setp 2.
I also understand that we need to download the x86 version of deb2sce to do the remaining armv7 imports and that's what the "tce-load -iw deb2sce.tcz" command is doing. However I still get error when I run this. I have looked at the files on the server and I cannot see deb2sce.tcz in the x86 list.
Am I missing something else?
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Belay that last. I can see the deb2sce.tcz (but not the md5) in the x86 list on the web site, but not in appbrowser. But I still get the errors when I run the tce-load command.
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I tested tce-load -iw deb2sce,tcz on core v 4.7.7 x86 and was able to import from armv7 as instructed successfully. Therefore it would seem to indicate that if you are still getting useBusybox errors that such would indicate no tc-functions and that would indicate either you are trying to run this on a non-tinycore x86 system, or your tinycore x86 system is corrupt, or possibly very old (prior to useBusybox implementation).
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Yes, my TC is a bit old, I'll update and retry.
Thanks.
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OK, I've just built a new x86 TCL machine.
I still get the busybox not found error when I run "sudo deb2sce wireless-tools armv7".
The deb2sce script file has "useBusybox" in it; I can see that. But the only Busybox I can find anywhere is Busybox-httpd so that doesn't seem to make sense.
What have I missed.
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Hi athouston
The dependency file for deb2sce.tcz lists squashfs-tools.tcz but the repository contains squashfs-tools-4.x.tcz.
Try installing squashfs-tools-4.x.tcz and see if that changes anything.
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useBusybox is a function in /etc/init.d/tc-functions which is part of the base system and used many many scripts throughout the system. Your error would still indicate that your base system is not correct.
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You may wish to wait as many changes are forthcoming to Allwinner A10 (armv7) Core including the deb2sce suite being included in the base system.
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Hi Mr Rich,
Thanks. Squash 4.x is already installed. This is a totally clean system, built from the "latest" tinycore iso (4.5.6) that I downloaded Sunday. I downloaded tc-install and used that. The only other things I downloaded were for on-demand; Chromium and GParted.
I find it hard to see where I could have gone wrong with the build by doing that way. I know this is off topic and you want to move this part of the thread I'm fine with that. I obviously need to get my x86 version working properly.
Mr Roberts... I look forward to the new ARMv7 release. It can't arrive in time for the start of the project I want to work on so that's going to have to stay Android for the time being. At least I can progress until it does.
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Regarding your use of x86 Tinycore to import with target armv7...
Version 4.5.6 is not the latest x86 version. In fact it is nearly a year old (released 11 July). Your "issue" regarding useBusybox would in fact not be solved until and unless you install x86 version 4.7. The latest as shown on our initial web page is fact version 4.7.7
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Thanks. I downloaded the file called tinycore-current.iso last Sunday (Aus time) and that's what gave me 4.5.6.
I'll redo it now.
Cheers.
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I just checked my iMac files and I have only one Tinycore-current.iso file anywhere and it is dated 7/7/12. I downloaded it from http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/4.x/x86/release/TinyCore-current.iso, according to the download history.
A 12 month old cache problem is pretty unlikely....????
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athouston
we have moved to dot net, pls consider changing bookmarks to forum to
http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/
Since this post is in army, you may wish to look at
http://tinycorelinux.net/ports.html
but if your device is x86 then the current link is now
http://tinycorelinux.net/4.x/x86/release/TinyCore-current.iso
good luck
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Praise the cook and pass the gravy... I have a working A10Core thumb stick.
Crikey batman, what a marathon. The amount of work you guys have done on this is amazing. BIG, HUGE, THANK YOU.
I built a new x86 TCL from scratch and have bookmarked the forum as suggested.
At item 12 in the A10 wifi setup where it says to edit sceboot.lst and add wireless-tools, etc, I assume you mean to add "loadsce wireless-tools wpasupplicant" to the sceboot.1st file. Is this correct. Where should that file be - /mnt/sda3/tce/sce ??. I ask because I can't run iwconfig and I assume that's the reason.
Its often easier to work with computers than people because you only have to punch information into a computer once. I'll get there...
Cheers.
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Oh DOT NET.. Ha Ha.. I just got that.. If the pun was intended.. Nice one son.
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Just edit the file sceboot.lst and add, e.g.,
vi sceboot.lst
wireless_tools
wpasupplicant
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Thank you Robert. That is all working.
My next trick is to pull apart the X-install scripts to understand how to import from Debian. My focus is on getting a Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) client working so I can connect to clients and on getting Erlang running as that's the base for a potential PhD thesis involving BigData analysis.
I am looking at Google as my office (maybe) but I am old school and might still look at some version of Linux office. Obviously printing is going to be one of the first considerations. My printers all support LPD printing so I don't imagine that's going to be too hard.
As an aside, the WIFI performance of the MK802 under TCL is MILES better than under the Android system it comes with.
Thanks again and be well.
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Glad to hear of your progress. As I stated earlier, many changes are planned and hopefully will be available soon.
The planned changes should make for a very much easier experience. But then again most all arm devices are more of a kit than a turnkey and therefore require much patience.