[Arm-dev] Gigabyte MP30-AR0

[Gordan Bobic]

On 12/03/16 15:52, Jeremiah Rothschild wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 12, 2016 at 10:10:45AM +0000, Gordan Bobic wrote:
>> On 11/03/16 22:51, Jeremiah Rothschild wrote:
>>> On Fri, Mar 11, 2016 at 08:02:40PM +0000, Gordan Bobic wrote:
>>>> On 11/03/16 17:56, Jeremiah Rothschild wrote:
>>>>> On Fri, Mar 11, 2016 at 05:03:46PM +0000, Michael Howard wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 11/03/2016 16:45, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
>>>>>>> On Fri, Mar 11, 2016 at 10:31:20AM +0000, Michael Howard wrote:
>>>>>>>> 5 seconds only to be precise, at least on my board :)
>>>>>>> I found TFTP to be slower and more unreliable than that.  However my
>>>>>>> TFTP server is dnsmasq running on an old box,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> That could be the reason then. Sdcards are painfully slow so you get
>>>>>> what you pay for metaphorically speaking. No big deal either way I
>>>>>> guess but I much prefer tftp here on a completely 1Gb network and a
>>>>>> tftp server on a 24/7 Xenserver VM.
>>>>>
>>>>> Both methods are a little unorthodox - at least in my experience.
>>>>
>>>> In the ARM world, booting the kernel straight out of u-boot is the
>>>> norm. It is how the boot process works on the vast majority of ARM
>>>> devices. It is loading UEFI at all that is unorthodox. UEFI and BIOS
>>>> before it are very much x86-isms.
>>>
>>> To clarify, it's the SD/TFTP booting that I find unorthodox for a
>>> functional, disk having server. I know there are many use cases but,
>>> personally, as a sys admin, I'd typically only go down that route for
>>> operations like kickstart, rescue, etc.
>>>
>>>>> Is there
>>>>> a spinning disk based solution perhaps, too? I would imagine the chain
>>>>> could be loaded from any storage resource. Can it be hacked onto an extra
>>>>> OS drive partition or something?
>>>>
>>>> UEFI requires a FAT partition anyway that you could also use for
>>>> this.
>>>
>>> Nod. I do have the /boot/efi partition. Further leveraging it, or another
>>> partition, would be sweet.
>>>
>>>> The main question is whether u-boot that ships with this board
>>>> actually supports SATA. If it does it would be trivially easy to
>>>> make that work. Ask me again in 48 hours and I'll be able to tell
>>>> you whether that works on this particular Gigabyte board. :)
>>>
>>> Interesting. I'm new to U-Boot but it never occurred to me that it wouldn't
>>> detect all of my devices. That said, I have 2x SSD's in here yet:
>>>
>>> MP30AR0# scsi info
>>> SCSI dev. 0:  device type unknown
>>> SCSI dev. 1:  device type unknown
>>> SCSI dev. 2:  device type unknown
>>> SCSI dev. 3:  device type unknown
>>> SCSI dev. 4:  device type unknown
>>> SCSI dev. 5:  device type unknown
>>
>> 6 devices? There are only 4 SATA connectors on the motherboard. I
>> connected a single SATA device (just a normal 250GB SATA disk) and
>> it seems to have detected that fine, and can read partitions and
>> ext4 contents (ext4ls scsi 0:1) from it.
>
> Seems I had to first issue the `scsi init' command:
>
> MP30AR0# scsi init
> SATA1 link 0 timeout.
> No drive connected
> SATA1 link 1 timeout.
> No drive connected
> AHCI1 0001.0300 32 slots 2 ports 6 Gbps 0x3 impl SATA mode
> flags: 64bit ncq pm only pmp fbss pio slum part ccc
> Target spinup toTarget spinup took 0 ms.
> AHCI2 0001.0300 32 slots 2 ports 6 Gbps 0x3 impl SATA mode
> flags: 64bit ncq pm only pmp fbss pio slum part ccc
> scanning bus for devices...
>    Device 0: (4:0) Vendor: ATA Prod.: CT240BX200SSD1 Rev: MU01
>              Type: Hard Disk
>              Capacity: 228936.5 MB = 223.5 GB (468862128 x 512)
>    Device 1: (5:0) Vendor: ATA Prod.: CT240BX200SSD1 Rev: MU01
>              Type: Hard Disk
>              Capacity: 228936.5 MB = 223.5 GB (468862128 x 512)
> Found 2 device(s).
>
> MP30AR0# scsi info
> SCSI dev. 0:  (4:0) Vendor: ATA Prod.: CT240BX200SSD1 Rev: MU01
>              Type: Hard Disk
>              Capacity: 228936.5 MB = 223.5 GB (468862128 x 512)
> SCSI dev. 1:  (5:0) Vendor: ATA Prod.: CT240BX200SSD1 Rev: MU01
>              Type: Hard Disk
>              Capacity: 228936.5 MB = 223.5 GB (468862128 x 512)
>
> Should be fairly smooth sailing from here, I think/hope.

I just tried it. Simply copy the two .fd files from the USB stick to 
/boot/efi, and change the u-boot variable thusly:
MP30AR0# setenv load_tianocore '
scsi init;
fatload scsi 0:1 0x82000000 mp30ar0_tianocore_ubt.fd;
fatload scsi 0:1 0x1d000000 mp30ar0_tianocore_sec_ubt.fd;'

At this point I think we are also ready to make the UEFI boot the 
default action, so:

MP30AR0# setenv bootcmd 'run load_tianocore run_tianocore'
MP30AR0# save
MP30AR0# reset

Enjoy. :)

Gordan