[Gumstix-users] Potentially Bad Board

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Hello,

I unpacked my second Starter Pack (network, serial, xm4) today, plugged it
in, and watched it get half way through the boot process before throwing all
sorts of junk over the serial line. Once it finishes the primary boot
sequence (doesn't take long) it shows what's obviously a login prompt, but
won't take any keyboard input. It also constantly spams the login prompt
until i get this message:

INIT: Id "S" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes

The login prompt ceases spamming for a while, but then resumes with a lot of
garbage characters mixed in.

I tried rebooting and catching the U-Boot environment to reflash the board,
but it appears as though the serial port isn't catching the characters I'm
typing (I can't get U-Boot to stop the boot process).

The following is the relevant parts of my boot sequence:

============================================

U-Boot 1.2.0 (May 10 2008 - 21:17:19) - PXA270@400 MHz - 1604

*** Welcome to Gumstix ***

DRAM:  64 MB
Flash: 16 MB
Using default environment

Hit any key to stop autoboot:  0
Instruction Cache is ON
Copying kernel to 0xa2000000 from 0x00f00000 (length 0x00100000)...done
## Booting image at a2000000 ...
   Image Name:   Angstrom/2.6.21/gumstix-custom-v
   Image Type:   ARM Linux Kernel Image (uncompressed)
   Data Size:    1030044 Bytes = 1005.9 kB
   Load Address: a0008000
   Entry Point:  a0008000
OK

Starting kernel ...

Linux version 2.6.21 (otto@otto) (gcc version 4.1.2) #1 Mon May 12 10:24:19
PDT 2008
CPU: XScale-PXA270 [69054117] revision 7 (ARMv5TE), cr=0000397f
Machine: The Gumstix Platform
Memory policy: ECC disabled, Data cache writeback
Run Mode clock: 208.00MHz (*16)
Turbo Mode clock: 416.00MHz (*2.0, active)
Memory clock: 104.00MHz (/2)
System bus clock: 104.00MHz
CPU0: D VIVT undefined 5 cache
CPU0: I cache: 32768 bytes, associativity 32, 32 byte lines, 32 sets
CPU0: D cache: 32768 bytes, associativity 32, 32 byte lines, 32 sets
Built 1 zonelists.  Total pages: 16256
Kernel command line: console=ttyS0,115200n8 root=1f01 rootfstype=jffs2
reboot=cold,hard
PID hash table entries: 256 (order: 8, 1024 bytes)
Console: colour dummy device 80x30
Dentry cache hash table entries: 8192 (order: 3, 32768 bytes)
Inode-cache hash table entries: 4096 (order: 2, 16384 bytes)
Memory: 64MB = 64MB total
Memory: 62720KB available (1808K code, 196K data, 148K init)
Mount-cache hash table entries: 512
CPU: Testing write buffer coherency: ok
NET: Registered protocol family 16
NET: Registered protocol family 2
Time: pxa_timer clocksource has been installed.
IP route cache hash table entries: 1024 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
TCP established hash table entries: 2048 (order: 2, 16384 bytes)
TCP bind hash table entries: 2048 (order: 1, 8192 bytes)
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 2048 bind 2048)
TCP reno registered
JFFS2 version 2.2. (NAND) (SUMMARY)  (C) 2001-2006 Red Hat, Inc.
io scheduler noop registered
io scheduler cfq registered (default)
Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 80x24
pxa2xx-uart.0: ttyS0 at MMIO 0x40100000 (irq = 22) is a FFUART
pxa2xx-uart.1: ttyS1 at MMIO 0x40200000 (irq = 21) is a BTUART
pxa2xx-uart.2: ttyS2 at MMIO 0x40700000 (irq = 20) is a STUART
Probing Gumstix Flash ROM at physical address 0x00000000 (16-bit bankwidth)
Gumstix Flash ROM: Found 1 x16 devices at 0x0 in 16-bit bank
 Intel/Sharp Extended Query Table at 0x010A
 Intel/Sharp Extended Query Table at 0x010A
 Intel/Sharp Extended Query Table at 0x010A
 Intel/Sharp Extended Query Table at 0x010A
 Intel/Sharp Extended Query Table at 0x010A
Using buffer write method
cfi_cmdset_0001: Erase suspend on write enabled
Using static partitions on Gumstix Flash ROM
Creating 3 MTD partitions on "Gumstix Flash ROM":
0x00000000-0x00040000 : "Bootloader"
0x00040000-0x00f00000 : "RootFS"
0x00f00000-0x01000000 : "Kernel"
TCP cubic registered
NET: Registered protocol family 1
NET: Registered protocol family 17
XScale iWMMXt coprocessor detected.
VFS: Mounted root (jffs2 filesystem).
Freeing init memory: 148K
^N^L^H^F^F^LN<^L^H^^^L^X^@^L^L^H^L^X\^H^H^H^@^B^H^@^

[snipped a lot of garbage like the last line]
[once in a while, legible stuff comes through miked into a lot of garbage.
Some examples:
- INIT: version 2.86 booting
- INIT: Entering runlevel: 5
- /etc/rc5.d/S10dropbear: /etc/rc5.d/S10dropbear: 29: cannot open
/proc/mounts: No such file
- start-stop-daemon: nothing in /proc - not mounted
- Removing stale PID file /var/run/dbus/pid]

^A ^@^L^L^F^L0^B^L^X^L^@^P^@^H ^H^H ^@^H^@@^P^H^@(
OpenEmbedded Linux (none) ttyS0

Angstrom 2007.9-test-20080512 (none) ttyS0

============================================

At this point, the login prompt spams every second or so until init puts the
breaks on it.

It seems like /proc hasn't been mounted, and that something goofy with my
serial connection is going on. Has any one found a good way to fix a problem
like this? It seems that if I could convince U-Boot to talk to me, I'd be
able to fix this with a serial port flash.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

/jve

-- 
/jve