[ARMedslack] A quick primer for the PI

Thu Sep 26 12:38:21 UTC 2013

I can't get it to boot at all.
If I turn the PI on I get the PER led solid on but the ACT led does this:
first faint on, the bright on for a second or do then it goes off and stays off.

I've tried 2 different SD cards supposing that the firs may have had some sort of compatibility issue but the second does the same thing.
I downloaded updated boot stuff from here: http://www.daves-collective.co.uk/raspi/system/raspi-boot-20120801-fw-1_dbs.tgz ... but nothing seems to change.
Is the PI finiky on where the dos partition should begin ? or on the formatting of it ?
mine starts at sector 2048 (1Mb from the beginning of the device) and is fat32 formatted

I suspect that its not booting because if I take out the SD and mount in on the PC fsck does not detect the filesystem dirty flag that I should have if the thing booted but showed nothing on the TV.

ATB
David

________________________________
 Da: stanley garvey <stanley at stanleygarvey.com>
A: "dowelld at netscape.net" <dowelld at netscape.net>; "armedslack at lists.armedslack.org" <armedslack at lists.armedslack.org>; Davide <louigi600 at yahoo.it>; Slackware ARM port <armedslack at lists.armedslack.org> 
Inviato: Giovedì 26 Settembre 2013 13:15
Oggetto: Re: [ARMedslack] A quick primer for the PI

On Sep 26, 2013 08:25 "Davide" <louigi600 at yahoo.it> wrote:

>
>>>I got a friend to lend me a PI  for a week ...
>
>>>I had a quick look at the community links for slackware on the PI but none really tell me what i want to know:
>>>what does the GPU  look  for in the SD ? (as fas as I know it's the GPU that loads stuff from SD into memory and then passes control to it)
>>>does it look for a second stage boot loader like a uboot image or does it load kernel and initrd ? (bootcode.bin)
>>>I'm supposing that the first partition (the dos one) is where this stuff should be put ?
>>>The content in there looks about right:
>
>>>root at darkstar:/tmp# fdisk  -l slackwarearm-14.0-8GB-20130623.img 
>
>>>Disk slackwarearm-14.0-8GB-20130623.img: 2558 MB, 2558967808 bytes
>>>4 heads, 32 sectors/track, 39046 cylinders, total 4997984 sectors
>>>Units = sectors of
 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
>>>Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
>>>I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
>>>Disk identifier: 0x00007091
>
>>>                            Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
>>>slackwarearm-14.0-8GB-20130623.img1              32       97663       48816    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
>>>slackwarearm-14.0-8GB-20130623.img2           97664      878847      390592   82  Linux
 swap
>>>slackwarearm-14.0-8GB-20130623.img3          878848    15751167     7436160   83  Linux
>>>root at darkstar:/tmp# echo $((32 * 512))
>>>16384
>>>root at darkstar:/tmp# losetup -o 16384 /dev/loop0  slackwarearm-14.0-8GB-20130623.img
>>>root at darkstar:/tmp# modprobe vfat
>>>root at darkstar:/tmp# mount /dev/loop0 /mnt/floppy/
>>>root at darkstar:/tmp# ls /mnt/floppy/
>>>COPYING.linux*                  config-raspberrypi-3.2.27*  start.elf*
>>>LICENCE.broadcom*               config.txt*                 start_cd.elf*
>>>System.map-raspberrypi-3.2.27* 
 fixup.dat*                  zImage-raspberrypi-3.2.27*
>>>bootcode.bin*                   fixup_cd.dat*
>>>cmdline.txt*                    initrd-raspberrypi.img*
>>root at darkstar:/tmp#
>
>
>>>I plan to play a little with a miniroot so I won't need an 8Gb SD :)
>
>>Hi David,
>Hi Dave ;)
> 
>>The GPU looks for
 bootcode.bin, which looks for and loads loader.bin. Loader.bin reads in
 config.txt (to configure the hardware) and loads start.elf (the GPU 
binary blob). Once it has configured the hardware, it then >loads 
kernel.img, and feeds it the contents of cmdline.txt.
>
>But on the readymade image from http://stanleygarvey.com/slackwarearm_rpi/index.php there is no loader.bin in the dos partition !
>Is there something wrong with this image or is loader.bin optional ?
>
>> Hi Davide, ther is nothing wrong with the image, I use it at home, it could be that loader bin is a new addition to the Fat32 boot partitionfor Debian variants. the boot layout I use has not changed since last Christmas.
>
>>So you have
 to have bootcode.bin, loader.bin, config.txt, start.elf, kernel.img, 
and cmdline.txt, then if you load a ramdisk image in the cmdline.txt 
file you need the ramdisk image file.
>
>> yes
>
>Is the initrd loading governed by config.txt ?
>
>> yes
>
>I see in there ramfsfile=initrd-raspberrypi.img
>Can I change that manualy with vi and load a different initrd ? or comment it out to not load an initrd at all ?
>
>> Yes you can edit the file with vi and load a different initrd. It is commented out in my config.txt as it is not required to boot a running system. initrd-raspberrypi.img is the installer, It has been left there so you can reinstall if you wish, it is a versatile-initrd that has been modified with a modified version of the mk-tegra.sh.
>
>When is the HDMI output initiated ?
>
>>Before the system comes up as the GPU boots the system.
>
>>  if you ate looking for a mini root try the installer image, it is 1GB and is the standard slackwarearm installer so has busybox and other stuff. you won't be able to install a full system on 1GB the 3rd partition is a stub and should be deleted and recreated to use the remaining space on whatever size card you have before stating 'setup'. you may be able to get a base slackwarearm systm (a)(ap) series on a 4GB card.
>Hope that helps,
>Stanley.
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