#cubox irc log of Mon 03 Mar 2014

IRC log of #cubox of Mon 03 Mar 2014. All times are in CET < Back to index

09:38 bewees Can the cubox-i4Pro actually do 470 Mbps? Is there a working driver for the 470 Mbps in arm linux OSes?

09:40 jnettlet bewees, I have actually max'd out ioperf at 530Mbps

09:41 jnettlet sorry iperf

09:41 jnettlet been using ioperf earlier so it is in fingers muscle memory

09:41 bewees jnettlet What linux distru did you use?

09:42 jnettlet bewees, a bunch of different ones. It isn't dependent on userspace.

09:44 Koma rabeeh: thank you for the interest but no, I'm probably going to buy an cubox 4 pro but I want to monitor the everyday problems here in chan

09:44 Koma before making the buy

09:46 jnettlet problems? What problems?

09:46 jnettlet nonsense

09:47 bewees jnettlet Good to know, thanks. I

09:56 jnettlet bewees, I would like to note that currently the downstream and upstream speeds are different. RX is faster and can get over 500Mbps, TX is more around 400Mbps. We are still investigating that.

10:06 bewees Thanks for mentioning that. 450-500 Mbps RX would suffice me, I am just considering my network setup, where my powerline adapter could be rather the limiting factor than the cubox. I get a gigabit switch to test the speed of my powerline connection, if it's capable of around 400 Mbps TX then I could use the cubox as a decent backup system solution. Else I could try a dual band (600 mbit/s) wlan

10:06 bewees stick.

10:07 bewees (The cubox would be connect through ethernet, just the backup clients aren't connected via ethernet cable.

10:15 bewees I am little confused about this information "There is no on/off button as the CuBox-i is an always on computer." I think the cubox can be powered off with `shutdown -h now`? And if I want to start it up again I'd pull off the power plug and then put it back in?

10:29 _505 bewees, correct. but shutdown -h doesn't really do anything. it will stop the kernel, but the cubox-i is still on, although you cannot do anything with it until you power-cycle it

10:53 bewees _505 If the kernel stopped, will the cubox draw less power than in idle with a running kernel?

11:01 _505 not quite sure. Of course it will draw the minimum amount possible, but if the kernel is on and idle, I don't think the power consumption is that much higher.

11:01 dv_ i doubt it

11:02 dv_ i think with proper power management settings you can achieve the EU norms for standby anyway

11:05 bewees I see, then the only thing I'd have to worry about is the 4 watt idle of my HDD. So I'd have to hack something like, "if the cubox's kernel is down then power off the 12V external psu of the hdd'

11:10 jnettlet bewees, not yet officially. I plan on making halt turn off off all the cores but core0, disable DDR and ports and only run some code from iram with the soc running at its lowest bus speed.

11:21 bewees jnettlet I see, so the kernel would be shut down, but the arm's cores are still running. If it's possible I could connect a mosfet to a gpio of the cubox and run a script before shutting of the kernel, so that the GPIO pin would be low if turned off, which will switch the mosfet and turn off the psu of the hdd

11:25 jnettlet bewees, yes although the cubox-i doesn't have any gpios exposed. A hummingboard when they are shipped would be easier.

11:25 jnettlet your other option would be to use the 5volts on a usb port to trigger a relay that would power/unpower your hdd

11:26 jnettlet I plan on doing that to power/unpower my hummingboard by my tv's usb port because it doesn't support CEC

11:29 bewees jnettlet Ah, the hummingboard is just like the cubox-i4Pro without case?

11:29 jnettlet bewees, I don't think it will have the quad-core soc in it, as that really needs a good thermal design. I think a dual-core with 2gb will be available

11:30 dv_ bewees: the HB is a raspberry pi clone

11:30 dv_ well it has the same microSOM as the cubox-i , but the carrier board is different

11:30 bewees dv_ According to these specs that's not true: http://imx.solid-run.com/wiki/index.php?title=HummingBoard_Hardware (Got 1 gbit/s, spif etc)

11:31 dv_ from the form factor it is

11:31 bewees Ah I see what you mean

11:31 jnettlet bewees, but the header has lots of gpio and some i2c

11:32 bewees jnettlet So it's basically the CuBox-i2Ultra with 2gb ram and without case :)

11:32 bewees (and different form factor)

11:32 jnettlet bewees, I believe so. Don't quote me on the 2GB I haven't seen the final specs. They should be out within the next couple of weeks

11:33 bewees I see, didn't find the hummingboard on cubox website, so I will check later again, thanks.

11:34 jnettlet bewees, soonish

11:34 jnettlet I don't know how urgent your project is.

11:35 bewees It's a network backup solution, it could wait 2 weeks

11:35 bewees Do you know the pricing already for the hummingboard?

11:36 bewees (Worst case I could consider to open up the cubox-i4pro case and find a gpio from there)

11:36 _Rarity Hello. I'm installing Arch on my cubox i4Pro (as debian network wont work). I'm following this installation guide: http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv7/freescale/cubox-i . In step 8, they want me to copy a SPL file, which doesn't seem to exist. Should I ignore it?

11:37 mk01 _Rarity: definitely no ignore

11:44 _Rarity mk01: Thanks for the answer, I know the command is there for a reason, but I simply cant find any occurence of an "SPL" file

11:45 LangeOortjes _Rarity: I am using Arch and the SPL and u-boot files from https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B1Cqcbb-UsxzN0FQcWNMQ0JLOFE

11:46 mk01 _Rarity: http://imx.solid-run.com/wiki/index.php?title=Building_the_kernel_and_u-boot_for_the_CuBox-i_and_the_HummingBoard

11:49 LangeOortjes _Rarity: The way I read the installation document provided by archlinuxarm, it should ship with an SPL and u-boot file

11:50 LangeOortjes _Rarity: They are definitely on there: tar -ztvf Downloads/ArchLinuxARM-imx6-cubox-latest.tar.gz | grep SPL

11:50 LangeOortjes -rw-r--r-- 0 root root 39936 Feb 19 00:44 ./boot/SPL

11:51 zaher _Rarity, the files should be in /boot or /root/boot

11:52 LangeOortjes _Rarity: aaah I see where the guide goes wrong!

11:52 LangeOortjes _Rarity: in step 7 you are asked to move the files in root/boot/* to boot, so SPL and u-boot.img will be situated in the boot directory you created in step 4

11:52 zaher _Rarity: look at the wiki pages http://imx.solid-run.com/wiki/index.php?title=ArchLinux

11:52 LangeOortjes _Rarity: the commands in step 8 should then read

11:53 LangeOortjes dd if=boot/SPL of=/dev/sdX bs=512 seek=2

11:53 LangeOortjes dd if=boot/u-boot.img of=/dev/sdX bs=1K seek=42

11:54 _Rarity Lange0ortjes: Ah yes, thats it!

11:55 _Rarity Thanks

11:56 LangeOortjes _Rarity: np

11:56 zaher jnettlet: I compiled your 3.10 kernel for the HB. Everything seems to work except that I get no signal on hdmi after uboot

11:57 jnettlet zaher, can you post the output of dmesg?

11:57 zaher jnettlet: just a sec

11:59 zaher jnettlet: here http://pastebin.ca/2650283

12:00 jnettlet zaher, oh yeah I have a patch for that, that is on a solo board.

12:00 zaher yes, the old dev board

12:01 zaher can I have it please :)

12:01 jnettlet no

12:01 jnettlet :-) just kidding

12:01 jnettlet http://pastebin.com/1sc0Db1b

12:02 jnettlet just the .dts, so patch it recompile the dts and then copy it to your sd card.

12:02 jnettlet now reason to rebuild the kernel

12:02 zaher great, thanks. I'll try that tonight.

12:03 jnettlet I will push these changes sometime today.

12:04 bewees jnettlet For the hummingboard I can also use archlinux image and update the kernel automatically through pacman or do I have to compile my own kernel as zaher did?

12:04 jnettlet bewees, I don't know anything about arch sorry

12:05 zaher bewees: pepedog is doing a great job at packaging things quickly for CBi/HB

12:06 bewees Hm I see, I think the arch packages shouldn't differ between CBi and HB (I hope)

12:06 zaher usually not :)

12:06 zaher except in my case.

12:06 jnettlet nope, should just be different device-tree files. Which if you use the latest u-boot gets detected automatically with the default environment

12:06 bewees zaher I thought the HB is going to be releases in 2 weeks, do you have already an older version of HB?

12:07 zaher I have an old development version. Not production.

12:07 bewees Ah I see

12:07 jnettlet there is no production version of the HB

12:07 jnettlet yet

12:08 jnettlet really, we should call the old prototype the old name, the C1. It is pretty different from the production HB

12:09 bewees jnettlet Cracking open the CBi4pro is possible or not recommendable? (for the gpios=

12:09 kalasmannen date +%Y-%m-%d_%h-%m

12:09 kalasmannen oh yeah

12:09 kalasmannen wrong window AND wrong syntax

12:10 jnettlet bewees, well it voids your warranty. You can do it. You have to be very careful.

12:11 bewees I see, I'll wait the 2-3 weeks for the production version of the HB and if the pricing is less than the CBi4pro I'll choose the HB, else I'd risk voiding my warranty with the cbi4pro

12:12 jnettlet bewees, probably wise.

12:12 jnettlet the Hummingboard is definitely more of a hackers board.

14:37 LangeOortjes should the new u-boot automatically boot into a zImage with corresponding dtb?

14:38 tomlohave-away LangeOortjes: yes

14:38 jnettlet yes, if it is on the first partition in / or /boot and you have not saved an early environment in u-boot

14:39 LangeOortjes jnettlet: ah it's probably my previous u-boot configuration then

14:57 LangeOortjes Alright that worked, maybe a short explanation on resetting the u-boot environment to the default values would be nice.

14:58 rjc hi all

14:59 LangeOortjes rjc: hi

14:59 rjc could someone, please, advise - which *Extreme* models are overkill for CuBox-i http://www.sandisk.co.uk/products/memory-cards/microsd/

15:00 rjc I'm about to get a new card and was wondering if it's worth the money to get a high-end one

15:01 rjc what I'm basically after is whether I'll get the stated r/w speed under CuBox-i

09:38	bewees	Can the cubox-i4Pro actually do 470 Mbps? Is there a working driver for the 470 Mbps in arm linux OSes?
09:40	jnettlet	bewees, I have actually max'd out ioperf at 530Mbps
09:41	jnettlet	sorry iperf
09:41	jnettlet	been using ioperf earlier so it is in fingers muscle memory
09:41	bewees	jnettlet What linux distru did you use?
09:42	jnettlet	bewees, a bunch of different ones. It isn't dependent on userspace.
09:44	Koma	rabeeh: thank you for the interest but no, I'm probably going to buy an cubox 4 pro but I want to monitor the everyday problems here in chan
09:44	Koma	before making the buy
09:46	jnettlet	problems? What problems?
09:46	jnettlet	nonsense
09:47	bewees	jnettlet Good to know, thanks. I
09:56	jnettlet	bewees, I would like to note that currently the downstream and upstream speeds are different. RX is faster and can get over 500Mbps, TX is more around 400Mbps. We are still investigating that.
10:06	bewees	Thanks for mentioning that. 450-500 Mbps RX would suffice me, I am just considering my network setup, where my powerline adapter could be rather the limiting factor than the cubox. I get a gigabit switch to test the speed of my powerline connection, if it's capable of around 400 Mbps TX then I could use the cubox as a decent backup system solution. Else I could try a dual band (600 mbit/s) wlan
10:06	bewees	stick.
10:07	bewees	(The cubox would be connect through ethernet, just the backup clients aren't connected via ethernet cable.
10:15	bewees	I am little confused about this information "There is no on/off button as the CuBox-i is an always on computer." I think the cubox can be powered off with `shutdown -h now`? And if I want to start it up again I'd pull off the power plug and then put it back in?
10:29	_505	bewees, correct. but shutdown -h doesn't really do anything. it will stop the kernel, but the cubox-i is still on, although you cannot do anything with it until you power-cycle it
10:53	bewees	_505 If the kernel stopped, will the cubox draw less power than in idle with a running kernel?
11:01	_505	not quite sure. Of course it will draw the minimum amount possible, but if the kernel is on and idle, I don't think the power consumption is that much higher.
11:01	dv_	i doubt it
11:02	dv_	i think with proper power management settings you can achieve the EU norms for standby anyway
11:05	bewees	I see, then the only thing I'd have to worry about is the 4 watt idle of my HDD. So I'd have to hack something like, "if the cubox's kernel is down then power off the 12V external psu of the hdd'
11:10	jnettlet	bewees, not yet officially. I plan on making halt turn off off all the cores but core0, disable DDR and ports and only run some code from iram with the soc running at its lowest bus speed.
11:21	bewees	jnettlet I see, so the kernel would be shut down, but the arm's cores are still running. If it's possible I could connect a mosfet to a gpio of the cubox and run a script before shutting of the kernel, so that the GPIO pin would be low if turned off, which will switch the mosfet and turn off the psu of the hdd
11:25	jnettlet	bewees, yes although the cubox-i doesn't have any gpios exposed. A hummingboard when they are shipped would be easier.
11:25	jnettlet	your other option would be to use the 5volts on a usb port to trigger a relay that would power/unpower your hdd
11:26	jnettlet	I plan on doing that to power/unpower my hummingboard by my tv's usb port because it doesn't support CEC
11:29	bewees	jnettlet Ah, the hummingboard is just like the cubox-i4Pro without case?
11:29	jnettlet	bewees, I don't think it will have the quad-core soc in it, as that really needs a good thermal design. I think a dual-core with 2gb will be available
11:30	dv_	bewees: the HB is a raspberry pi clone
11:30	dv_	well it has the same microSOM as the cubox-i , but the carrier board is different
11:30	bewees	dv_ According to these specs that's not true: http://imx.solid-run.com/wiki/index.php?title=HummingBoard_Hardware (Got 1 gbit/s, spif etc)
11:31	dv_	from the form factor it is
11:31	bewees	Ah I see what you mean
11:31	jnettlet	bewees, but the header has lots of gpio and some i2c
11:32	bewees	jnettlet So it's basically the CuBox-i2Ultra with 2gb ram and without case :)
11:32	bewees	(and different form factor)
11:32	jnettlet	bewees, I believe so. Don't quote me on the 2GB I haven't seen the final specs. They should be out within the next couple of weeks
11:33	bewees	I see, didn't find the hummingboard on cubox website, so I will check later again, thanks.
11:34	jnettlet	bewees, soonish
11:34	jnettlet	I don't know how urgent your project is.
11:35	bewees	It's a network backup solution, it could wait 2 weeks
11:35	bewees	Do you know the pricing already for the hummingboard?
11:36	bewees	(Worst case I could consider to open up the cubox-i4pro case and find a gpio from there)
11:36	_Rarity	Hello. I'm installing Arch on my cubox i4Pro (as debian network wont work). I'm following this installation guide: http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv7/freescale/cubox-i . In step 8, they want me to copy a SPL file, which doesn't seem to exist. Should I ignore it?
11:37	mk01	_Rarity: definitely no ignore
11:44	_Rarity	mk01: Thanks for the answer, I know the command is there for a reason, but I simply cant find any occurence of an "SPL" file
11:45	LangeOortjes	_Rarity: I am using Arch and the SPL and u-boot files from https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B1Cqcbb-UsxzN0FQcWNMQ0JLOFE
11:46	mk01	_Rarity: http://imx.solid-run.com/wiki/index.php?title=Building_the_kernel_and_u-boot_for_the_CuBox-i_and_the_HummingBoard
11:49	LangeOortjes	_Rarity: The way I read the installation document provided by archlinuxarm, it should ship with an SPL and u-boot file
11:50	LangeOortjes	_Rarity: They are definitely on there: tar -ztvf Downloads/ArchLinuxARM-imx6-cubox-latest.tar.gz \| grep SPL
11:50	LangeOortjes	-rw-r--r-- 0 root root 39936 Feb 19 00:44 ./boot/SPL
11:51	zaher	_Rarity, the files should be in /boot or /root/boot
11:52	LangeOortjes	_Rarity: aaah I see where the guide goes wrong!
11:52	LangeOortjes	_Rarity: in step 7 you are asked to move the files in root/boot/* to boot, so SPL and u-boot.img will be situated in the boot directory you created in step 4
11:52	zaher	_Rarity: look at the wiki pages http://imx.solid-run.com/wiki/index.php?title=ArchLinux
11:52	LangeOortjes	_Rarity: the commands in step 8 should then read
11:53	LangeOortjes	dd if=boot/SPL of=/dev/sdX bs=512 seek=2
11:53	LangeOortjes	dd if=boot/u-boot.img of=/dev/sdX bs=1K seek=42
11:54	_Rarity	Lange0ortjes: Ah yes, thats it!
11:55	_Rarity	Thanks
11:56	LangeOortjes	_Rarity: np
11:56	zaher	jnettlet: I compiled your 3.10 kernel for the HB. Everything seems to work except that I get no signal on hdmi after uboot
11:57	jnettlet	zaher, can you post the output of dmesg?
11:57	zaher	jnettlet: just a sec
11:59	zaher	jnettlet: here http://pastebin.ca/2650283
12:00	jnettlet	zaher, oh yeah I have a patch for that, that is on a solo board.
12:00	zaher	yes, the old dev board
12:01	zaher	can I have it please :)
12:01	jnettlet	no
12:01	jnettlet	:-) just kidding
12:01	jnettlet	http://pastebin.com/1sc0Db1b
12:02	jnettlet	just the .dts, so patch it recompile the dts and then copy it to your sd card.
12:02	jnettlet	now reason to rebuild the kernel
12:02	zaher	great, thanks. I'll try that tonight.
12:03	jnettlet	I will push these changes sometime today.
12:04	bewees	jnettlet For the hummingboard I can also use archlinux image and update the kernel automatically through pacman or do I have to compile my own kernel as zaher did?
12:04	jnettlet	bewees, I don't know anything about arch sorry
12:05	zaher	bewees: pepedog is doing a great job at packaging things quickly for CBi/HB
12:06	bewees	Hm I see, I think the arch packages shouldn't differ between CBi and HB (I hope)
12:06	zaher	usually not :)
12:06	zaher	except in my case.
12:06	jnettlet	nope, should just be different device-tree files. Which if you use the latest u-boot gets detected automatically with the default environment
12:06	bewees	zaher I thought the HB is going to be releases in 2 weeks, do you have already an older version of HB?
12:07	zaher	I have an old development version. Not production.
12:07	bewees	Ah I see
12:07	jnettlet	there is no production version of the HB
12:07	jnettlet	yet
12:08	jnettlet	really, we should call the old prototype the old name, the C1. It is pretty different from the production HB
12:09	bewees	jnettlet Cracking open the CBi4pro is possible or not recommendable? (for the gpios=
12:09	kalasmannen	date +%Y-%m-%d_%h-%m
12:09	kalasmannen	oh yeah
12:09	kalasmannen	wrong window AND wrong syntax
12:10	jnettlet	bewees, well it voids your warranty. You can do it. You have to be very careful.
12:11	bewees	I see, I'll wait the 2-3 weeks for the production version of the HB and if the pricing is less than the CBi4pro I'll choose the HB, else I'd risk voiding my warranty with the cbi4pro
12:12	jnettlet	bewees, probably wise.
12:12	jnettlet	the Hummingboard is definitely more of a hackers board.
14:37	LangeOortjes	should the new u-boot automatically boot into a zImage with corresponding dtb?
14:38	tomlohave-away	LangeOortjes: yes
14:38	jnettlet	yes, if it is on the first partition in / or /boot and you have not saved an early environment in u-boot
14:39	LangeOortjes	jnettlet: ah it's probably my previous u-boot configuration then
14:57	LangeOortjes	Alright that worked, maybe a short explanation on resetting the u-boot environment to the default values would be nice.
14:58	rjc	hi all
14:59	LangeOortjes	rjc: hi
14:59	rjc	could someone, please, advise - which Extreme models are overkill for CuBox-i http://www.sandisk.co.uk/products/memory-cards/microsd/
15:00	rjc	I'm about to get a new card and was wondering if it's worth the money to get a high-end one
15:01	rjc	what I'm basically after is whether I'll get the stated r/w speed under CuBox-i