Marcin Juszkiewicz - sheevaplug

Another distribution said goodbye to ARMv5 devices

2014-01-15T01:13:00+01:00

Fedora 18 just became EOL. Most of the people do not care as F20 is present so they can run it on their PCs. But there is a group of users which may care.

All those people with ARMv5t hardware are left with Debian/armel now as there is no other big distribution supporting their devices anymore. Someone will ask “what about Ångström or Gentoo?” but who sane would build Gentoo on armv5te?

I do not remember when last time I used something with arm926 core (or similar - like Kirkwood). Probably few years ago when helped friend to get Sheevaplug booting into Debian.

But there are still Sheevaplugs, Guruplugs, *plugs and QNAP devices out there serving their users with selected services. And some of their owners will have to decide what next…

Let’s compare some cpu ;)

2012-11-28T11:30:00+01:00

When I bought Samsung Chromebook friend started “nbench” on it. So I did same on my conference laptop. None of devices won…

Idea of testing cpu power was sitting somewhere at back of my head and finally I decided to just run one simple command available on nearly every GNU/Linux based system: “openssl speed”. Sure, on some systems it will use hardware accelerators, on others (or not) some options enabled to get more speed (like ARM assembly version which is not enabled in Debian/Ubuntu systems). But it is something what anyone can run at home.

Devices in table are:

my Intel Core i7-2600K desktop
my Intel U7300 (ultra low voltage) conference laptop
Exynos5 Dual powered Samsung ARM Chromebook
Exynos4 Dual powered Tizen development platform (got rid of it today)
i.mx515 powered Efika MX Smartbook
Beaglebone with AM335x cpu
Sheevaplug (as only armv5te device which can compare with other entries)

Devices were running different versions of OpenSSL under different systems. It is listed in Google Docs document.

CPU	Core i7	U7300	Exynos 5250	Exynos 4210	i.mx515	AM335x	Feroceon 88FR131
Architecture	x86-64	x86-64	armv7a (a15)	armv7a (a9)	armv7a (a8)	armv7a (a8)	armv5te
MHz	3400	1300	1700	1000	800	720	1200
OpenSSL version	1.0.1c	1.0.1c	1.0.1c	1.0.0f	1.0.1a	1.0.0i	1.0.0d

md4	1111896	393198	328471	205906	143746	103068	119367
md5	693969	249301	224040	148089	85401	53365	86518
hmac(md5)	686511	248859	225839	149153	86728	54981	87651
sha1	721528	222770	147739	71233	49525	35446	38123
rmd160	247453	93500	106935	57790	40188	26318	30803
rc4	894615	225660	153949	86829	63770	29364	45036
des cbc	73703	27191	37811	21299	14966	8601	8829
des ede3	28091	10578	14183	7806	5526	3005	3130
seed cbc	78204	31181	39002	24361	17650	11671	13087
rc2 cbc	44327	13839	23691	15494	10897	7393	10699
blowfish cbc	133455	52004	49471	37540	23536	15654	20584
cast cbc	118852	49162	55326	31738	22848	15298	20590
aes-128 cbc	127378	95955	65360	22386	16477	10876	11697
aes-192 cbc	106141	81002	55973	18653	13912	9221	9968
aes-256 cbc	90487	69148	48564	16419	12091	7981	8677
camellia-128	187958	44403	58698	15447	23325	15507	14197
camellia-192	141346	33180	45867	12090	18300	12261	11138
camellia-256	141422	33272	45927	12050	18383	12247	11131
sha256	216766	86791	64334	23427	18148	12022	13040
sha512	336729	135935	31126	8877	5321	2484	3221
whirlpool	121211	47920	27820	4602	3840	2262	3085
aes-128 ige	122085	43018	63218	22126	15590	10469	11219
aes-192 ige	102133	36107	54269	18696	13355	8904	9647
aes-256 ige	87514	31001	47636	16307	11635	7735	8433
ghash	1938609	168034	35479		12136

Most interesting columns are U7300 and Exynos 5250 ones — 3 years old laptop which I bought for conferences compared to Chromebook. Looks like for next conferences/events I will rather go with Chromebook not UL30A. This will give me one or two hours of battery life less but it is much lighter device at same time. But have to test it first for few days to check is it comfortable enough for daily use.

What interest me in ARM world

2012-09-29T21:04:00+02:00

When I published my last post about ARM boards there were many questions and suggestions with interesting devices. Thank You all for it.

But there were also suggestions about ARM9 or ARM11 based devices. So I decided that it is good time to write what interest me now in ARM world.

But first some inventory. I had/used/have several devices with ARM cpu:

StrongARM (armv4) one:
- Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 (which took me to ARM world)
ARM920 (armv4t) ones:
- Openmoko GTA01 bv3, bv4 (s3c2410)
- EDB9301 (EP9301 cpu)
- Sim-One (EP9307)
ARM926 (armv5te) ones:
- Sharp Zaurus sl-5600 (pxa250)
- Sharp Zaurus c760/sl-6000 (pxa255)
- Sharp Zaurus sl-c3000 (pxa272)
- Sheevaplug (kirkwood)
- Atmel devboards (at91sam9263, at91sam9m10)
- ST-Microelectronics/ST-Ericsson NDK-15, NHK-15 (st88n15)
- Nokia 770 (omap1710)
- Linksys NSLU2 (ixp425 iirc)
ARM1136 (armv6) ones:
- Nokia N810 (omap2430)
- Bug r1.0, r1.2 (i.mx31)
Cortex-A8 (armv7a) ones:
- Beagleboard B7, B7, C3 (omap3430)
- Nokia N900 (omap3430)
- Nexus S (exynos3)
- Genesi Efika MX Smartbook (i.mx51)
- Freescale Quickstart (i.mx53)
Cortex-A9 (armv7a) ones:
- Pandaboard EA1, A1 (omap4430)
- Archos G9 80 (omap4430)

All of that during last 8 years. Most of my ARM live so far was around ARM926 based devices (some of them still can not be listed here) and I do not want to go there again. Kirkwood core was fastest one with 1.2GHz clock and 512MB of RAM it was really fast machine. I only missed Serial ATA in my Sheevaplug (rev 1.0) but even with hard drive on USB it was nice improvement.

Then I played a bit with ARM11 processors. Ok, they were faster than most of ARM9 cpus but I already had experience with Sheevaplug. And after few months first Cortex-a8 board landed on my desk — I got Beagleboard B7 from Bug labs as test platform for their new device. This was improvement!

I still remember my reaction when connected it to normal LCD monitor and saw it used at 720p resolution (1680x1050 was a bit hard for omap3). Moved to Nokia N900 few months later and found that fast cpu means nothing when paired with slow storage and not enough memory for system.

So today I prefer to not look below Cortex-A9 (or comparable cores like ones from Qualcomm or Marvell). Hope to play one day with Cortex-A5 (which should replace ARM926 one day) just to see how low-end armv7a cpu behave.

And wait for ARMv8 to hit market.

Unbricked my old SheevaPlug

2012-07-13T10:25:00+02:00

Few months ago one of my friends borrowed SheevaPlug from me. About two weeks later he gave it back — bricked… I did not had time to play with it so it landed on shelf.

Yesterday I took it and decided to get it back to live. Requirements:

bricked SheevaPlug (v1.0 without SATA)
power cable
mini usb cable
usb thumb drive
OpenOCD (“apt-get install openocd”)
cross compiler (“apt-get install gcc-arm-linux-gnueabi” under Ubuntu)
U-Boot sources (HEAD of mainline)
Linux sources (also HEAD of mainline)
serial terminal (picocom, minicom, screen etc)
few terminals or terminal multiplexer (I used tmux)

Then:

Connected power and mini usb cables to SheevaPlug. Desktop recognized usb-serial device as /dev/ttyUSB1.
Connected to it with serial terminal. Nothing appeared there of course ;)
Run OpenOCD: “cd /tmp/;sudo openocd -f /usr/share/openocd/scripts/board/sheevaplug.cfg -s /usr/share/openocd/scripts”. SheevaPlug was detected.
Connected to OpenOCD: “telnet localhost 4444”.
Built U-boot:

export CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabi-
make mrproper
make sheevaplug_config
make u-boot.kwb

Copied “u-boot” to “/tmp/uboot.elf” and used “reset;sheevaplug_init;load_image u-boot.elf;resume 0x00600000” — landed in U-Boot ;)
There is “sheevaplug_reflash_uboot” macro but it was not working for me. So I used U-Boot to flash itself:

Marvell>> usb start
Marvell>> fatload usb 0:1 0x0800000 u-boot.kwb
Marvell>> nand erase 0x0 0xa0000
Marvell>> nand write 0x0800000 0x0 0xa0000
Marvell>> reset

Went to Ångström online image builder and built small busybox based image.
Unpacked tarball into /tmp/initfs, added /dev/ttyS0 node.
Built Linux kernel:

export CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabi-
make mrproper
make kirkwood_config
make menuconfig (set INITRAMFS_SOURCE to /dev/initfs)
make uImage

Copied “arch/arm/boot/uImage” to USB thumb drive and inserted it into SheevaPlug.
Booted image:

Marvell>> set ethaddr 'c0:ff:ee:c0:ff:ee'
Marvell>> set bootargs 'console /dev/ttyS0,115200 rw'
Marvell>> usb start;fatload usb 0:1 0x800000 /uImage;bootm 0x800000

Landed in nice and small Ångström distribution image ;)
Went to Ångström online image builder and built console image (task-base based).
Built Linux kernel (this time without initramfs):

export CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabi-
make menuconfig (unset INITRAMFS_SOURCE)
make uImage

Copied “arch/arm/boot/uImage” to USB thumb drive and inserted it into SheevaPlug.
Prepare NAND for UBI:

# mount none /dev -t devtmpfs
# udhcpc eth0
# opkg-cl update
# opkg-cl install mtd-utils
# ubiformat /dev/mtd2
# ubiattach -p /dev/mtd2
# ubimkvol /dev/ubi0 -N rootfs -s 490MiB
# ubiupdatevol /dev/ubi0_0 /media/sda1/angstrom-task-base.ubifs
# mount -t ubifs ubi0:rootfs /media/rootfs
# chown -R root:root /media/rootfs
# cp /media/sda1/uImage /media/rootfs/boot
# sync
# reboot

Another reconfiguration in U-Boot:

Marvell>> bootargs 'console=ttyS0,115200 rw ubi.mtd=2 rootfstype=ubifs root=ubi:rootfs'
Marvell>> bootcmd 'ubi part nand0,2; ubifsmount rootfs; ubifsload 0x800000 /boot/uImage;bootm 0x800000'
Marvell>> mtdids 'nand0=orion_nand'
Marvell>> set mtdparts 'mtdparts=orion_nand:512k(uboot),4m@1m(kernel),507m@5m(rootfs)'
Marvell>> save
Marvell>> reset

And now my SheevaPlug is operational again. Boots from NAND with latest U-Boot and Linux. There is around 440MB free still on NAND (not counting 4MB partition where kernel was expected to be). I can put it back on shelf now.

The only parts which I needed to compile were U-Boot and Linux kernel. I could skip bootloader and use binary image from Internet but prefer to know what my machines run (and building U-Boot is really easy). Initramfs support in Linux is real live saver as I did not had to play with initrd etc — just build image and boot it. The only problem was that devtmpfs was not auto mounted (even if option in kernel was selected).

I could also use one of those “easy installers” made by PlugComputer community but I found such solutions more complicated (fetching binaries, finding requirements etc) than the one I used.

Sheeva SD controller + rootfs on SD == FAIL?

2010-03-02T16:31:00+01:00

Few days ago I decided to migrate from Ångström to Debian on my Sheevaplug. Fetched installer images, booted them and installed system to 4GB microSD card. All was fine.

System was running nicely until today…

MicroSD card started to generate timeouts, read/write errors and other not nice messages. End effect: not booting system. Now I started Ångström and plan to rescue as much as possible from card. Next attempt will be with rootfs on USB stick.

Sheevaplug updates

2009-10-30T14:32:00+01:00

Half year passed since I started using Sheevaplug at home. Currently it is my IRC station (with self-compiled irssi due to Perl problems in OpenEmbedded) and today it will also became central file server as I just received 1.5TB Samsung drive + USB enclosure for it.

It got several updates today:

Linux kernel 2.6.32-rc4 from Open-RD git tree
U-Boot 2009.08 from mainline Marvell branch
Samba 3.3.9 for sharing data over network
NFS kernel daemon for sharing storage for my devices

Yes, two storage serving daemons. Samba will provide access to multimedia data when NFS will be more used for developer board root file systems and such.

Now hard drive is working connected via ESATA but after copying it will be connected to Sheevaplug instead of my workstation.

Just to cut questions — I bought Welland ME-752H enclosure. It allows to use Serial ATA 3.5” drives and connect them by USB or ESATA interfaces. The bonus part is 2 port USB hub so I will not be out of USB ports in Sheeva ;)

Sheevaplug arrived

2009-05-15T12:22:00+02:00

Recently I joined group of Sheevaplug owners. It is amazing how small it is…

Simple tests shows that CPU is faster then OMAP3 used in BeagleBoard but this is not a surprise — 1200MHz compared to 600MHz makes a difference. And they are two different types of devices.

What use I have for it? Some native builds and it will be my local TFTP/NFS server — I just have to connect 4GB pendrive to it. Ah… I also have to install Ångström on it first as using Ubuntu is not in my style. Especially not with 512MB flash used as JFFS2 partition…

Some useful links for those who wonder how to get Sheevaplug working:

New interesting devices

2009-03-05T12:04:00+01:00

Recently few interesting devices appeared on a market. And they have high geek factor D:

SheevaPlug

SheevaPlug from Marvell contains MV88F6281 cpu running at 1.2GHz with 512MB of DDR2/800 memory. Other nice things are:

1GbE network controller
512MB of NAND for storage
USB 2.0 controller (up to 480Mbps speed)
RS232 serial port
ARM JTAG
SDIO slot
U-boot as bootloader

Everything in small package and for only 99 USD. I think that this will be nice addon to my collection of ARM devices (it is also one of fastest available ones).

Touch Book

Few days ago Koen Kooi wrote on his blog about Touch Book. It is ARM (TI OMAP3) based combination of tablet and netbook. Composed from two detachable parts it can be tablet (one part) or netbook (two parts connected).

There are few things in it’s design which make it special:

8.9” 1024x600 touchscreen
up to 15h on battery (in netbook mode)
two internal USB connectors to hide dongles inside
six USB connectors in total
just 0.9kg
no fans, no moving parts
opensource design
runs Ångström based distribution

Total price is 399 USD for netbook or 299 USB for tablet. Too bad that they offer selling to US only — but this can be handled by US friends D:

To get one or to not get one is tricky question. Current design lacks any video output so using it instead of laptop will be hard (no way to show presentation slides) but size, weight and battery time are interesting. I will definitely track their progress.

BeagleBoard C2

At the end of March new version (C2) of BeagleBoard has to be released. It has 256MB ram compared to 128MB of currently sold B7 version and also working EHCI USB port (B7 offers only one OTG port). I planned to buy this version but now I am not sure about it — Touch Book looks too interesting D: