Raspberry Pi questions

[Oleksandr Tymoshenko]

On 2012-12-25, at 9:57 PM, Tim Kientzle <tim at kientzle.com> wrote:

> On Dec 25, 2012, at 3:55 PM, Ian Lepore wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> This is so close to working.
> 
> I know what you mean….
> 
> I've almost got my scripts building bootable RPi images now using
> the new boot sequence that Oleksandr's been working on.
> 
> There's clearly been a huge amount of progress:  memory config
> now works, the HDMI video console works.
> 
> But I am still having a few inexplicable issues:
> 
> 1) Building U-Boot.
> 
> I'm trying to build U-Boot from the sources at
>     github.com/gonzoua/u-boot-pi.git
> They build but the result won't boot.   Can anyone
> point me to the U-Boot sources that do work?  For
> now, I'm using the binary blob that Oleksandr built.

u-boot.bin should be post-processed by this tool:
https://github.com/raspberrypi/tools/tree/master/mkimage

The rest file is proper binary to be booted by Raspberry Pi firmware.

> 
> 2) Random failure to mount root.
> 
> This is weird.  If I insert the SD card into my Mac and open
> the MSDOS partition, then eject, the card will boot (sort of,
> see below).  Otherwise, the kernel can't mount root.  I'm
> entirely baffled.
    Never heard of it before :( could you provide full dmesg for failed 
mountroot?

> 
> 3) Doesn't quite make it to multi-user.
> 
> When root does mount, it goes through the init
> scripts (generates SSH keys, etc), then prints the
> date and time and stops.  I know the kernel is running
> since I get insert/removal messages if I plug/unplug a
> keyboard, but getty never seems to launch on either
> HDMI or serial console.

Daisuke Aoyama posted patch that I believe should fix this problem. The root
cause for it is that timer setup is interrupted and as a result - timer never gets
fired. So system stuck waiting for interrupt.  If you boot with serial console -
pressing any key will generate UART interrupt and system will go out of 
freeze. I'm planning on merging this patch soon.