IRC log of #cubox of Fri 14 Feb 2014. All times are in CET < Back to index

00:14 shadeslayer any clue what's the standard ship time to Europe?
00:14 shadeslayer i.e. if I order right now, will my order ship by 3/20/2014 or possibly upto a month after that, and then how long will it take for the box to arrive?
01:08 heap hi there
01:08 heap whats the best distro and uptodate for NAS on cubox pro?
09:08 heap hi there
09:08 heap whats the best distro and uptodate for NAS on cubox pro?:)
09:12 matoking @heap I'm thinking of ArchLinux
09:12 matoking But I have no experience since I'm setting up my Cubox-i for the very first time :)
09:13 heap i mean cubox pro, the old one
09:13 matoking Oh
09:14 matoking Sorry
09:14 matoking Aww dang the SD card slot in my laptop doesn't seem to work
09:22 jnettlet heap, the cubox pro should be able to handle just about any NAS distro that supports ARM.
09:22 jnettlet the only caveat would be if you plan on running a DLNA server on it that supports transcoding you probably want one that uses gstreamer so it can take advantage of the vmeta acceleration
09:25 heap jnettlet: ah thanks, what transcoding?
09:26 jnettlet transcoding is changing one media format to another.
09:27 heap ah okay, hm so the one which uses gstreamer, any tip?:)
09:31 jnettlet heap, I think rygel is the GNOME version that uses gstreamer. I can't think of any others off the top of my head
09:39 heap thanks i will take a look but i meant the distro on which it will run :)
09:43 jnettlet as I said above, basically any distro that supports ARM. As with any distro it is all about what you are most comfortable with.
09:51 heap well i thought there is some which is tunned especially for cuboxpro :)
09:57 matoking Okay there's a problem
09:57 matoking I can't mount my SD card on my laptop
09:58 matoking Can the boot file be modified with an editor like nano or vim?
10:00 heap jnettlet: or kernel tunned...
10:00 jnettlet it depends what type of boot file you are using. boot.scr, no. uEnv.txt, yes.
10:00 matoking I should note that the bootloader does not recognize my USB keyboard, but Android does
10:00 matoking Okay, I'll look there
10:00 matoking I have a Linux smartphone I can SSH to
10:00 jnettlet heap, most the Cubox specific distros are included in the cubox-installer script
10:01 jnettlet matoking, are you using the latest version of u-boot? If not then make sure you are using the bottom usb port
10:01 matoking Oh
10:01 matoking I'm not, actually
10:01 Marmotte matoking: you can rebuild boot.scr with uboot utilities
10:02 matoking Can I modify the boot file using the bootloader
10:02 Marmotte (I don't remember the name)
10:02 matoking Oh good
10:02 jnettlet mkimage
10:02 matoking I have the ArchLinux partition installed on an external HDD
10:02 matoking Connected using the USB 2 port
10:03 jnettlet then you will need to update u-boot to the latest version which enables both ports properly
10:03 matoking Dang
10:04 matoking How hard is it?
10:04 matoking Do I need to copy some files to the SD card
10:04 matoking or do I need to use a specific utility?
10:04 matoking Because if it's the latter I may be out of luck
10:04 jnettlet for the cubox-i you need to dd two files to the sdhc card.
10:05 jnettlet if you are on linux or OSX
10:05 jnettlet for windows you need a special utility
10:05 jnettlet The wiki is your friend. http://imx.solid-run.com/wiki/index.php?title=Building_the_kernel_and_u-boot_for_the_CuBox-i_and_the_HummingBoard
10:07 matoking Oh good
10:07 matoking I think I have a Live Linux installed on my USB stick
10:08 matoking And my desktop PC has an another SD card reader
10:08 matoking Wish me luck!
10:18 heap jnettlet: whats cubbox-installer script?
10:18 heap jnettlet: on the sd card was ubuntu
10:20 jnettlet heap, use the wiki. http://www.solid-run.com/mw/index.php/CuBox_Installer
10:25 heap thanks
10:26 matoking I had a hunch I'd have to do plenty of DIY to get stuff working
10:26 matoking And Cubox-i certainly doesn't seem to disappoint :P
10:32 matoking export CROSS_COMPILE=/usr/bin/arm-linux-gnueabi-
10:32 matoking Is this what I have to set in order to compile U-Boot?
10:32 matoking Since there isn't an executable called arm-linux-gnueabi-, but a whole bunch of them with different names
10:33 matoking Wait, I think I figured it out
10:41 matoking Yes
10:41 matoking Compiled the bootloader and copied to the SD card using my Jolla
10:43 matoking Okay, what U-Boot utility can I use to modify the boot priorities
10:43 matoking I assume by that you meant commands you can use in the bootloader
10:47 matoking Darn
10:47 matoking It seems that U-Boot doesn't recognize my USB HDD
10:47 matoking usb storage brings up nothing and running usb start or usb reset doesn't help either
10:49 matoking Okay, is it possible to do in such a roundaway way that I first boot something from the SD card that boots up the actual Linux distro on the USB HDD?
10:56 matoking Okay turns out the bootloader doesn't recognize the top USB port yet
10:56 matoking Even though I downloaded everything from the Github repository which was supposed to have the latest version of U-Boot
10:56 matoking (AFAIK)
10:58 matoking @jnettlet What is the latest version of U-Boot I should use? I downloaded the one in rabeeh's Github repository and it doesn't detect the top USB port correctly
10:59 matoking That, or I updated the bootloader improperly
11:00 matoking Does anyone know which fork of U-Boot do I need to compile and install in order to use both USB ports in the bootloader?
11:00 matoking I'm talking about Cubox-i4Pro
11:56 warped-rudi Hi, anyone of the u-boot/kernel gurus around ?
11:56 matoking I don't think so :/
11:57 jnettlet well that is a little insulting
11:57 warped-rudi Hehe...
11:58 warped-rudi What component is responsible for setting up the memory timing ?
11:59 warped-rudi I see the ffect here, that a C1 shows a better cache transfer rate than a i4pro.
11:59 warped-rudi This is with Rabeehs, SPL u-boot.
12:00 matoking @jnettlet You mentioned that there is a version of U-Boot that supports both USB ports, but the one on rabeeh's repository didn't work
12:01 jnettlet warped-rudi, u-boot sets up the DDR timings, the kernel sets up the L2 cache
12:03 jnettlet matoking, hmm I thought that was fixed. it is a bug.
12:04 matoking Hmmm
12:04 matoking What's the device id for the bottom USB port
12:04 matoking As in, /dev/xxxxx
12:06 warped-rudi jnettlet, what I see here is that dd'ing a file from sd to /dev/null gives the expected result (i4pro is a little bit faster than C1) when the file is not yet cached.
12:07 warped-rudi However, when the file is already in cache, the C1 is faster than the i4pro by factor 1.5.
12:08 jnettlet warped-rudi, could be a result of SMP and cache coherency. Try to limit the number of CPU's to 1 and test
12:09 jnettlet trust me the DRR used by the i4pro is significantly faster. I have done a lot of hardware performance testing
12:10 jnettlet matoking, there is no specificy /dev/xxxx device for the usb port. It is a host port not a device.
12:10 jnettlet it will have a sysfs entry
12:10 matoking Oh, okay
12:11 warped-rudi jnettlet, Will try tonight. I have no reason not to trust you...
12:13 warped-rudi BTW, I had a bad dejavu with my i4pro two days ago: The micro-usb socket fell off. Just thw same way it did on the C1. Looks like only soldered on the pins, not on the body.
12:17 jnettlet warped-rudi, I would report that to the support email address.
12:21 warped-rudi I already mailed it to Rabeeh. But he apears to be a bit silent at the moment.
12:23 jnettlet He has been busy this week, and today is the weekend.
12:23 matoking Oh wow the SD card reader started working again
12:28 matoking Ah I'm stupid
12:29 matoking I had to enable the Automount on Attach option
12:35 matoking Okay it looks like I'm going to install ArchLinux on the microSD for starters
12:35 matoking But I'd like to boot from USB if possible
12:44 matoking What's the Wi-Fi interface in Cubox-i4Pro?
12:45 _rmk_ if anyone is looking at eSATA 2.5" stuff, note that I have here an interesting situation where a 2.5" SSD doesn't fit in a 2.5" eSATA box.
12:45 matoking I presume it could be found using lsusb, but it only finds the keyboard I have and two root hubs
12:45 matoking lspci doesn't work
12:54 matoking Ok, it's presumably eth0
12:58 matoking None of the packages that I need to connect to a wireless network appear to be installed
12:58 matoking wifi-menu, wpa-
12:58 matoking wpa_supplicant, netctl, etc.
12:59 matoking Ahh, eth0 is the physical Ethernet port, isn't it
12:59 matoking Darn
13:06 matoking Okay, is there any way I can connect to a wireless network using the default ArchLinux installation
13:07 matoking wifi-menu is probably what I would use but it fails because 'dialog' is not installed
13:12 matoking Ahh screw it I'll try Debian instead
14:07 matoking I get "Unable to set up timer: unexpected error" when trying to set up the Wi-Fi interface
14:09 xraxor check the forum,
14:33 matoking Found nothing on the forums
14:35 matoking I would probably install a package to help with solving the problem but that's kind of impossible when you can't get connected to the Internet in the first place
14:50 matoking Okay I feel like bashing something with this keyboard
14:55 matoking Is there anyone who has successfully set up a connection using the Wi-Fi interface?
14:55 matoking Please
14:57 ptl not me :(
14:58 matoking I've tried two distros and I can't connect to anything
14:59 ptl what are you trying to use? the graphical environment or the commandline?
15:00 matoking Commandline
15:00 matoking No choice since the basic installation is very bare
15:00 matoking And to install anything else I would have to, you guessed it, connect to the Internet
15:01 matoking I've been editing the /etc/network/interfaces file
15:01 matoking I'm trying to connect to an access point named WLAN, which at the moment isn't encrypted by WPA or anything
15:03 ptl the /etc/network/interfaces in the case of Ubuntu is deprecated in favor of networkmanager
15:04 matoking Oh shit
15:04 ptl you can try the command-line variation of networkmanager, or copy configuration files
15:04 matoking I think I got it
15:04 matoking YES!
15:04 matoking Okay
15:04 matoking The time was completely bonkers
15:04 matoking It was year 1929 according to Cubox-i so I changed it to the actual date
15:04 ptl under /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections you would have some text files containing the data for the wireless connection
15:04 ptl let me get and example for you.
15:05 matoking Well I'll install ssh and some other tools and get to work
15:06 matoking Okay I've SSH'd in
15:06 matoking I'll try restarting the whole thing and check if it works on boot
15:07 ptl matoking: http://pastebin.com/d7D0eNYC
15:09 matoking It appears to be that the time isn't set correctly on boot-up
15:09 matoking And it needs to be correct in order to connect
15:16 matoking That, and I still need to figure out how to install the OS on the external HDD I have
15:16 matoking This 4 GB microSD will run out quickly I think
15:27 matoking But is Cubox-i supposed to be able to track time by itself
15:28 matoking Or do I need to synchronize using a NTP?
15:31 _rmk_ matoking: synchronising via NTP is always a good idea :)
15:31 matoking Yeah
15:32 matoking But there in lies the problem
15:32 matoking To be able to connect to the Wi-Fi access point my time needs to be on sync
15:32 matoking And for my time to be on sync I need to connect to the Internet
15:32 _rmk_ but... there's two RTCs in the cubox-i4 - one is in the imx6 which isn't preserved across power loss, and an external one which is.
15:33 matoking Odd
15:33 matoking I'm using debian-jessi
15:33 matoking Should it work out of box?
15:33 matoking Normally it says the year is 1929
15:33 _rmk_ I've no idea how those kernels are setup
15:33 _rmk_ check the boot messages
15:33 matoking Which either means it's faulty or not working or my Cubox-i is a time machine
15:33 matoking How do I do that?
15:34 _rmk_ "dmesg | less" at a terminal prompt
15:34 _rmk_ search for "rtc"
15:34 _rmk_ here, I have:
15:34 _rmk_ rtc-pcf8523 2-0068: rtc core: registered rtc-pcf8523 as rtc0
15:34 _rmk_ snvs_rtc 20cc034.snvs-rtc-lp: rtc core: registered 20cc034.snvs-rtc-lp as rtc1
15:34 _rmk_ ...
15:34 _rmk_ rtc-pcf8523 2-0068: setting system clock to 2014-02-14 12:29:56 UTC (1392380996)
15:35 _rmk_ rtc0 is the external rtc, rtc1 is the internal
15:36 matoking Yep
15:37 matoking Found three lines
15:37 matoking The third line being the "setting system clock to 2014-02-etc" line
15:37 matoking Hmm
15:37 matoking It seems to connect on boot now!
15:37 matoking And date is reported correctly as well
15:37 _rmk_ what was before the : ?
15:38 _rmk_ on that line
15:38 matoking rtc-pcf8523 2-0068
15:38 matoking So yes
15:38 matoking It seems to be working now
15:38 _rmk_ okay, so it's using the external rtc, which should be correct
15:39 _rmk_ and should be battery backed... exactly which cubox-i model do you have?
15:39 matoking Cubox-i4Pro
15:39 _rmk_ that should be fine
15:39 matoking Anyway, things are looking far better now
15:39 _rmk_ it's entirely possible it wasn't initially set - mine wasn't when it arrived
15:40 matoking Now I'll try booting it up with just the power supply plugged in
15:41 matoking If I can connect using SSH I can set it up properly
15:43 ptl you can also use the serial/USB cable
15:43 matoking I like to keep things tidy :)
15:43 matoking Anyway
15:44 matoking At the moment only problem I have is that I can't boot from USB
15:44 _rmk_ so... projects for this afternoon: (1) reduce size of the micro-usb connector on the cable, so it and an esata plug can live next to each other, and (2) file the esata box so the ssd fits.
15:49 matoking The USB HDD is recognized correctly
15:49 matoking Time to set up a NAS!
16:47 matoking Oh boy I already exhausted the 4GB microSD
16:47 matoking That didn't take long
16:47 ptl o0
16:48 matoking Okay is there any way I can make the OS run on the USB HDD too
16:53 matoking Sorry, my laptop froze
16:53 matoking Anyway, how can I make my USB HDD work in tandem with the root filesystem or whatever you call it
16:53 matoking Is a symlink or something all I need to do?
16:54 _rmk_ you want the kernel to load off SD and then mount the root filesystem off USB HD?
16:54 matoking Yeah, that would be great
16:54 matoking Although it didn't seem to work the first time I tried
16:54 matoking So I resorted to the SD card
16:55 _rmk_ you need root=/dev/sda to be passed to the kernel
16:55 matoking And if I copy what I already have on my SD card to the HDD and pass that kernel parameter
16:55 matoking Everything would work as normal except that it's running on my HDD and not the microSD?
16:56 _rmk_ should do - how are you planning to do the copy?
16:57 matoking Well I have mounted it to /media/hdd
16:57 matoking And I have a sda2 partition with the filesystem ext4 and nearly 2 TB of free space
16:57 matoking So, will I just copy everything there?
16:57 matoking Using cp?
16:58 _rmk_ cp -a, but avoid copying /media/hdd itself and any lost+found :)
16:58 sickness I'd always go for rsync over cp ;)
16:59 _rmk_ rsync can be more heavyweight for a pure local copy
16:59 matoking Okay, if I copy everything from root except for /media and /lost+found it should work fine
16:59 _rmk_ yep
17:00 _rmk_ remember the -a though
17:00 purch cp -aRx rocks
17:01 purch x for one file system only
17:01 _rmk_ yep
17:01 _rmk_ -a imples -R
17:01 matoking Okay, if there was some sort of exclude option
17:02 _rmk_ what you could do is rename /media/hdd/lost+found to something which doesn't clash, and then remove the new lost+found and move it back
17:02 _rmk_ must keep it in /media/hdd though
17:03 purch _rmk_: hmm, so it looks like
17:04 matoking Oh and turns out that while the SD card has a total capacity of about 4 GB the partition the OS resided in was only 2 GB
17:05 matoking Now, if I could remember the utility that you use to change kernel parameters on boot...
17:06 matoking sysctl
17:08 _rmk_ you mean the root= thing? probably something in uboot
17:08 matoking Oh yeah
17:09 matoking I saw uEnv.txt on root
17:09 matoking Maybe that's it
17:10 purch one favorite to sysctl is vm.swappiness = 1
17:11 matoking Ah yes
17:11 matoking uEnv.txt
17:11 matoking root=/dev/mmcblk0p1
17:11 purch I think mostly stuff under /proc can be set in sysctl
17:11 matoking Looks like this will be a piece of cake
17:15 matoking Okay, time to boot up and hope for the best
17:16 matoking Yeah got a kernel panic
17:17 matoking And it seems I should've used /dev/sda instead of /dev/sda2
17:21 davorin ehm../dev/sda as rootfs? don't think so...
17:21 matoking Using root= kernel parameter?
17:21 matoking It did list it as a possible root filesystem
17:21 davorin like above with "root=/dev/mmcblk0p1", device "mmcblk0", partition "p1"
17:22 davorin but with usb(sata its just 1, 2, 3, ... for partition...
17:22 matoking You mean like /dev/sda2?
17:23 davorin if that is your rootfs, yes
17:23 matoking I did and it caused a kernel panic
17:23 davorin you have copied over to usb drive?
17:23 matoking Yes
17:23 davorin ehm..and what is inside /etc/fstab now?
17:23 davorin still /dev/mmcblk0p1 or /dev/sda2?
17:23 matoking /dev/sda /media/hdd ext4 defaults 0 0
17:24 davorin not /dev/sda2 ?
17:24 matoking I would remove it but I can't save anything on my SD card now for some reason
17:24 matoking Nope
17:24 davorin .../dev/sda is never a filesystem....
17:24 matoking Well I have no idea why it listed it as a valid option before crashing
17:25 davorin how did you create sda2?
17:25 davorin fdisk?
17:25 matoking I used the make-sdcard script to create a U-Boot and an ArchLinux partition
17:25 matoking The U-Boot partition is redundant
17:26 davorin don't remember how i did it with my esata drive on arch linux though (o;
17:27 matoking Well it's booting up now
17:27 matoking Yeah it says it mounted the ext4 filesystem
17:27 matoking Which is the USB HDD
17:28 matoking Yeah
17:28 matoking lsblk says sda is mounted as /
17:29 matoking :P
17:30 matoking So yes, my USB HDD is now chugging along by running the root filesystem
17:30 matoking I don't know if root=/dev/sda is some kind of special case, but it allowed it
17:30 davorin so you boot into rootfs from usb drive...
17:30 matoking Yes
17:30 davorin then the fstab entry iis odd
17:30 davorin s/iis/is/
17:31 matoking Yeah, it is
17:31 matoking But I'll simply truncate it
17:31 davorin there should be / as path, and not /media/hdd
17:31 davorin or do you have another entry in fstab with "/" ?
17:31 matoking I had /dev/sda mounted as /media/hdd
17:32 matoking I'm not exactly sure how the script created the partitions
17:32 matoking Never really looked into it
17:32 davorin anyway..gotta go..valentine's diner (o;
21:00 matoking Hey, what do you think is the best software to use for a NAS?
21:00 dxtr I use freenas
21:01 dxtr But I'm considering replacing it with openindiana because I'm on parental leave and bored
21:03 matoking Something that can be fairly easily used with both Windows and Linux machines
21:03 matoking I've been trying my hands with Samba, but I can't seem to get it to work
21:03 matoking I also tried SFTP and vsftpd, but I'm getting an upload speed of 200 KB/s
21:04 matoking A bottleneck somewhere, because I did a write test with the result of about 15 MB/s
21:05 matoking Oh, FreeNAS does look like a really good option
21:05 matoking How come I can't find it in the package repositories
21:13 matoking Okay, FreeNAS is probably out of the picture because I can't find a build for Cubox-i
21:18 matoking Got Samba working but the upload speed starts at around 600 KB/s but plummets to around 100 KB/s
21:18 matoking What gives?
22:36 Guest76144 hi
22:37 sickness hi
22:43 Guest76144 would anyone who recently recieved their's like to share their order number?
22:44 Guest76144 I ordered and I know its pretty delayed but wanted to get an extremely rough estimate