Hello. I am Lamar Owen, and I'm just beginning to dive into arm. I've developing a radio-frequency-interference (RFI) sniffer device using both the cheap RTL-SDR dongles as well as the Ettus Research USRP (older USRP1). I have several different arm SBC's to develop on, including some original RasPi model A's as well as a BeagleBone Black and a very new ODroid C2. I'm most excited about the ODroid C2, being a quad-core 2GHZ 64-bit processor and 2GB of RAM. Currently the C2 runs a very early Ubuntu 16.04, but I would love to pop C7 on the little beast.
Is there specific information I can get from the Ubuntu install that would be useful for C7 purposes?
On 04/04/2016 04:44 PM, Lamar Owen wrote:
Hello. I am Lamar Owen, and I'm just beginning to dive into arm. I've developing a radio-frequency-interference (RFI) sniffer device using both the cheap RTL-SDR dongles as well as the Ettus Research USRP (older USRP1). I have several different arm SBC's to develop on, including some original RasPi model A's as well as a BeagleBone Black and a very new ODroid C2. I'm most excited about the ODroid C2, being a quad-core 2GHZ 64-bit processor and 2GB of RAM. Currently the C2 runs a very early Ubuntu 16.04, but I would love to pop C7 on the little beast.
Is there specific information I can get from the Ubuntu install that would be useful for C7 purposes?
There are two blocking issues with the C2 right now. The first being boot requirements. Currently the aarch64 build for c7 requires uefi, so it won't work out of the box on that board.
The second problem is that the hardkernel folks traditionally haven't been the greatest about upstreaming support for their boards into the mainline kernel. The end result is that you're stuck running their kernel.
In theory you could create an arm64/aarch64 'userspace' build similar to what Fabian has done on the 32bit side, but I've not done any legwork around that. Is that something you'd have an inclination (and the free time) to help with?
On 04/05/2016 09:03 AM, Jim Perrin wrote:
On 04/04/2016 04:44 PM, Lamar Owen wrote:
... Is there specific information I can get from the Ubuntu install that would be useful for C7 purposes?
There are two blocking issues with the C2 right now.... In theory you could create an arm64/aarch64 'userspace' build similar to what Fabian has done on the 32bit side, but I've not done any legwork around that. Is that something you'd have an inclination (and the free time) to help with?
Jim,
Thanks for the explanation; this matches what I had kindof figured (but I had hoped I was mistaken).
Yes, I have the inclination and I have some time to work on this; what sort of tools will I need? I have the UART cable for serial console, and I'm currently using only MicroSD to boot.
I will say that while my employer is willing to pay me to get the little box running for the RFI sniffer (GNUradio required), and while I would vastly prefer C7 on it, C7 isn't a hard requirement for the sniffer project. It would make it easier for me, and I am the one in charge of the project here, since I can then do any dev work on my laptop and just build on the C2. With using Ubuntu it is a bit more difficult for me. I would think that this would be a desireable board to support, though, but I of course reserve the right to be wrong....
Thanks again!
On 04/05/2016 08:25 AM, Lamar Owen wrote:
Thanks for the explanation; this matches what I had kindof figured (but I had hoped I was mistaken).
Yes, I have the inclination and I have some time to work on this; what sort of tools will I need? I have the UART cable for serial console, and I'm currently using only MicroSD to boot.
I haven't tried, so I'm honestly not sure. You might be able to take the disk-image we put out for developers and copy its contents over the ubuntu image (you'd want to maintain the ubuntu contents of /lib/firmware and /lib/modules as well as the other kernel bits).
I will say that while my employer is willing to pay me to get the little box running for the RFI sniffer (GNUradio required), and while I would vastly prefer C7 on it, C7 isn't a hard requirement for the sniffer project. It would make it easier for me, and I am the one in charge of the project here, since I can then do any dev work on my laptop and just build on the C2. With using Ubuntu it is a bit more difficult for me. I would think that this would be a desireable board to support, though, but I of course reserve the right to be wrong....
If you can get it working, that would be fantastic. Ubuntu seems happy to do lots of one-off support like this, where I just don't have the cycles or patience. I personally don't think their model is sustainable or proper long-term, but opinions and whatnot.
On 04/05/2016 10:04 AM, Jim Perrin wrote:
I haven't tried, so I'm honestly not sure. You might be able to take the disk-image we put out for developers and copy its contents over the ubuntu image (you'd want to maintain the ubuntu contents of /lib/firmware and /lib/modules as well as the other kernel bits).
I'm assuming that this is http://mirror.centos.org/altarch/7.2.1603/isos/aarch64/CentOS-aarch64.img.xz ; is that correct?
...If you can get it working, that would be fantastic. Ubuntu seems happy to do lots of one-off support like this, where I just don't have the cycles or patience. I personally don't think their model is sustainable or proper long-term, but opinions and whatnot.
I think it's more that the manufacturers are choosing to support a particular Ubuntu or Debian, and their blobs for hardware support seem to be more 'accepted' in that ecosystem. But that's just my opinion. It may be that the supplied hardkernel kernel will work ok with a CentOS userland; and I may try the 32-bit userland on the hardkernel kernel as well.
For what its worth, there is a recent patchset on the arm-kernel list supporting the C2 (and other Amlogic S905-based boards) in 4.6 mainline. [1] So it may be that the 4.6 ARM64 kernel can be used as is; we'll see.
I see I have a bit to learn, but that's ok. That's part of the fun. I'll report back with what I find in a few days or a week or so.
On 04/05/2016 12:34 PM, Lamar Owen wrote:
On 04/05/2016 10:04 AM, Jim Perrin wrote:
I haven't tried, so I'm honestly not sure. You might be able to take the disk-image we put out for developers and copy its contents over the ubuntu image (you'd want to maintain the ubuntu contents of /lib/firmware and /lib/modules as well as the other kernel bits).
I'm assuming that this is http://mirror.centos.org/altarch/7.2.1603/isos/aarch64/CentOS-aarch64.img.xz ; is that correct?
Yup, that's the one. There are 4 partitions to it, and to me kpartx is the easiest way to abuse images like this.
I think it's more that the manufacturers are choosing to support a particular Ubuntu or Debian, and their blobs for hardware support seem to be more 'accepted' in that ecosystem. But that's just my opinion. It may be that the supplied hardkernel kernel will work ok with a CentOS userland; and I may try the 32-bit userland on the hardkernel kernel as well.
I'd be interested to know if the 32bit userland worked with their kernel.
For what its worth, there is a recent patchset on the arm-kernel list supporting the C2 (and other Amlogic S905-based boards) in 4.6 mainline. [1] So it may be that the 4.6 ARM64 kernel can be used as is; we'll see.
Yup. Some of the pieces are going in, so I'm a bit hopeful.
I see I have a bit to learn, but that's ok. That's part of the fun. I'll report back with what I find in a few days or a week or so.
Let me know if you have questions. I'll try to help as much as I can.
On 04/05/2016 05:38 PM, Jim Perrin wrote:
I see I have a bit to learn, but that's ok. That's part of the fun. I'll report back with what I find in a few days or a week or so.
Let me know if you have questions. I'll try to help as much as I can.
Thanks, Jim. The pointer to kpartx was the best thing I've seen in a while; why didn't I know about this tool before?! (my own fault, but I sure could have used kpartx in the past, but had never run across it).
I've joined a thread on the ODroid forums and have already gotten some good information and advice, and I plan to try this out this week, probably Saturday.
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Jim Perrin -
Lamar Owen