ipodlinux-devel

[Ipodlinux-devel] bootloader? new kernel?

[David P. <dpi...@ma...>]

Dani,

That's terrific that you got a bootloader working! After reading the 
list archives more carefully, now I think I see why my install wasn't 
working. I didn't disable the firewire.

Kind of a side note to what you guys are working on, but I'd like to 
attempt an update of the kernel to version 2.6. The latest uClinux 
patch (2.6.0-test4) does not have the armnommu supported. Can you offer 
any advice with regard to what is involved in porting uClinux for the 
2.6 kernel to the g3 iPod?

Also, how are you able to look at the firmware? It just seems like a 
binary file to me, but I assume there is some way to take a look inside 
if you guys are able to look at it for clues.

Thanks,
Dave

Re: [Ipodlinux-devel] bootloader? new kernel?

[PALFFY D. <dpa...@ra...>]

On Mon, 10 Nov 2003, David Piasecki wrote:

> Dani,
>
> That's terrific that you got a bootloader working! After reading the
> list archives more carefully, now I think I see why my install wasn't
> working. I didn't disable the firewire.

Please try the next version too, it should be much better.

> Kind of a side note to what you guys are working on, but I'd like to
> attempt an update of the kernel to version 2.6. The latest uClinux
> patch (2.6.0-test4) does not have the armnommu supported. Can you offer
> any advice with regard to what is involved in porting uClinux for the
> 2.6 kernel to the g3 iPod?

I didn't look at it yet. Even if we had an armnommu patch for 2.6, we
should convert many drivers to new APIs... So I think it's not for the
faint of heart... I know the framebuffer, the input layer and soundcard
support has changed much. Also, you should look at the generic parts of
{arch/,include/asm-}m68knommu to have an ide about what the generic arch
stuff changed.

> Also, how are you able to look at the firmware? It just seems like a
> binary file to me, but I assume there is some way to take a look inside
> if you guys are able to look at it for clues.

Take the part of the binary you want to look at (using dd), and
$ arm-elf-objdump -D -b binary -m arm -z binary_file
to see the assembly dump.

--
Dani
			...and Linux for all.

Re: [Ipodlinux-devel] bootloader? new kernel?

[Bernard L. <le...@bo...>]

Ok, just tried that with my 2nd generation iPod and it all worked fine!

One note, in the HOWTO:

"6. Copy it back to the iPod. The file will be only the required size.
This
  is about 4.5 MB for the 2.1 Apple sw and one linux image.
                                                                                
$ sudo dd if=firmware.bin of=/dev/sda1"

This should say if=my_sw.bin not if=firmware.bin.

Regarding the 2.6 kernel.  I think it should be a really good kernel for
embedded devices but at the moment without the armnommu port its not
really practical.  Or rather, I'd prefer to spend my time directly on
the iPod stuff and leave the armnommu stuff to the arm gurus ;)



On Tue, 2003-11-11 at 20:07, PALFFY Daniel wrote:
> On Mon, 10 Nov 2003, David Piasecki wrote:
> 
> > Dani,
> >
> > That's terrific that you got a bootloader working! After reading the
> > list archives more carefully, now I think I see why my install wasn't
> > working. I didn't disable the firewire.
> 
> Please try the next version too, it should be much better.
> 
> > Kind of a side note to what you guys are working on, but I'd like to
> > attempt an update of the kernel to version 2.6. The latest uClinux
> > patch (2.6.0-test4) does not have the armnommu supported. Can you offer
> > any advice with regard to what is involved in porting uClinux for the
> > 2.6 kernel to the g3 iPod?
> 
> I didn't look at it yet. Even if we had an armnommu patch for 2.6, we
> should convert many drivers to new APIs... So I think it's not for the
> faint of heart... I know the framebuffer, the input layer and soundcard
> support has changed much. Also, you should look at the generic parts of
> {arch/,include/asm-}m68knommu to have an ide about what the generic arch
> stuff changed.
> 
> > Also, how are you able to look at the firmware? It just seems like a
> > binary file to me, but I assume there is some way to take a look inside
> > if you guys are able to look at it for clues.
> 
> Take the part of the binary you want to look at (using dd), and
> $ arm-elf-objdump -D -b binary -m arm -z binary_file
> to see the assembly dump.
> 
> --
> Dani
> 			...and Linux for all.
> 
> 
> 
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Re: [Ipodlinux-devel] bootloader? new kernel?

[PALFFY D. <dpa...@ra...>]

Hi!

> Ok, just tried that with my 2nd generation iPod and it all worked fine!

Nice. I hoped they're similar enough to work with this loader.

> One note, in the HOWTO:
>
> "6. Copy it back to the iPod. The file will be only the required size.
> This
>   is about 4.5 MB for the 2.1 Apple sw and one linux image.
>
> $ sudo dd if=firmware.bin of=/dev/sda1"
>
> This should say if=my_sw.bin not if=firmware.bin.

Thanks, I'll correct it. There are typos, too. And some bugs in the c
code that don't appear with my gcc 2.95.3 but might appear with a
different gcc or different optimizations, mostly regarding the last
assembly bx. entry should be a global bound to a specific register. That
way the bx could use a fixed register and would be no danger of the
generated code trying to read entry again from (already overwritten)
memory. Or the entry address could be written to somewhere in the sram and
loaded after memmove again.

> Regarding the 2.6 kernel.  I think it should be a really good kernel for
> embedded devices but at the moment without the armnommu port its not
> really practical.  Or rather, I'd prefer to spend my time directly on
> the iPod stuff and leave the armnommu stuff to the arm gurus ;)

That's what I think, too.

--
Dani
			...and Linux for all.

Re: [Ipodlinux-devel] bootloader? new kernel?

[David P. <dpi...@ma...>]

Just thought you'd like to know that I also had success installing the 
bootloader. It worked with both firmware versions 1.22 and 2.1. It took 
me a while because the compiler I was using had some trouble with the 
while loop that traverses through the command line options. I had to 
compile it on a redhat machine instead of yellowdoglinux, and then it 
worked fine. Very cool!

I'm still having trouble with accessing the root filesystem. I'll try 
doing everything from scratch again and see if I can't get it to work.

Thanks for the tip on porting the kernel. I suppose I'll leave that to 
the experts to hammer out. I thought it would be good to have, but I 
suppose it'll come soon enough.

Dave