Fw: Bizarre clone attempt failures on Raspberry Pi2...

[Russell Haley]

Sorry, did Cc everyone...

Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone on the Koodo network.
  Original Message  
From: Russell Haley <russ.haley at gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, July 15, 2016 3:13 PM
To: Hal Murray
Subject: Re: Bizarre clone attempt failures on Raspberry Pi2...

On Fri, Jul 15, 2016 at 2:47 PM, Hal Murray <hmurray at megapathdsl.net> wrote:
>
> russ.haley at gmail.com said:
>> Isn't putting an non-functioning embedded system on a serial console to
>> debug standard procedure with ALL operating systems?
>
> My two cents...
>
> I have several Pi-s and I didn't use the serial port to get any of them going.

That's because you didn't have any boot issues. Debian, BuildRoot,
FreeBSD, and even MINIX 3 on Freescale iMX53, Freescale iMX6 and Begal
Bone Black will all halt if there is an error in the boot process and
force you to go to a serial console (Raspian has a video out I think).
The first question from a hardware engineer working on a board/BSP
will be, "What do you get in the serial console"?

> I think the answer to your question probably depends on the maturity of the
> system and the hardware available. If a system supports a keyboard and
> display, that's what I would try first since I usually have one handy. I
> have a 4 port KVM box. The 4th port moves to the current project as needed.
> I have adapters handy so it connects to almost anything... After I get the
> network going, I just ssh in. (after a while, the KVM cable moves on to the
> next project)
>
> I think work to get early console output on the display and input from the
> keyboard will be an important step in making a user-friendly environment.

I'm not saying otherwise. I am saying in my experience that video
output is probably not the expected outcome for the majority of
developers working in embedded systems. Yes, that would be great but
few systems will actually have a video out. Is it so important to
support this use case in the RPi? I can't answer that. But what I can
say is when I have asked questions like "why am I not getting any
output?" or "why isn't my board booting?" the answer invariably has
been: "Have you checked your serial output"? These answers have been
from here on this mailing list, and from live hardware engineers.

Cheers!
Russ

> I have the hardware gizmo for a serial console on the Pi. I'd get it out to
> debug something if the documentation (or email) clearly stated that was the
> right approach. I probably wouldn't think to try it without a reminder.
> I've don't plenty of low-level debugging. The serial port just wouldn't
> occur to me when working on a system that supports a keyboard and display.
>
>
> --
> These are my opinions. I hate spam.