Apc8750

JUST PREPARING THE PAGE

Installing Slackware on apc-8750 http://apc.io/products/8750a/ http://apc.io/library/ https://github.com/linux-wmt/linux-vtwm http://arm.slackware.com/getslack/ http://ftp.arm.slackware.com/slackwarearm/

Creating a bootable micro sd card

  problem
  solution

Installing slackware

Creating a bootable micro sd card

 For this you need a custom built kernel and a initramfs image from slackware for arm distribution - uinitrd-kirkwood.img

Preparing the micro sd card

 You need at least three partitions, one vfat, one or more Linux partitions, and a Linux swap partition. Here is how the partitions I used look like under fdisk ran on host.

Disk /dev/sdc: 15.9 GB, 15931539456 bytes 64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 15193 cylinders, total 31116288 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: 0x00000000

  Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System

/dev/sdc1 * 2048 206847 102400 c W95 FAT32 (LBA) /dev/sdc2 206848 28878847 14336000 83 Linux /dev/sdc3 28878848 31116287 1118720 82 Linux swap

1st partition: make it bootable, and create a file system using mkfs.vfat 2nd partition: create a reiserfs ( or other ) file system using mkreiserfs

Now you need to make a custom kernel for booting into. I used linux-vtwm-testing available at https://github.com/linux-wmt/linux-vtwm Please refer to the link: for the config file which was used. also require a small initramfs image prepared from the boot media aviable at apc.io library. download it from here : initramfs_data.cpio.gz or use the following init scrip with the initrd.gz from apc.io library. init:

       #!/bin/busybox sh
       /bin/busybox mount -t proc /proc
       /bin/busybox mount -t sys /sys
       /bin/busybox echo /sbin/mdev > /proc/sys/kernel/hotplug
       /bin/busybox mdev -s
       /bin/busybox --install
       mkfs.ext2 /dev/ram0
       mkdir /root
       mount /dev/ram0 /root
       cd /root
       mkdir /flash
       mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /flash
       cpio -id < /flash/initrd-kirkwood.cpio
       exec chroot /root /bin/busybox init
       exec /bin/busybox init

Copy the initramfs_data.cpio.gz for to $KERNEL_SRC/usr area. In case you are building it on your own: gunzip initrd.gz mkdir initramfs_dat mountpoint initramfs_data || mount -o loop initrd fs create initramfs_data/init as shown above chmod a+x initramfs_data/init sync (cd initramfs_data ; find . | cpio -o -H newc | gzip > ../initramfs_data.cpio.gz )

Please note that the kernel uses a CONFIG_CMDLINE= for vga: CONFIG_CMDLINE=" mem=440M console=tty0 mbtotal=52M" for serial: CONFIG_CMDLINE=" mem=440M console=ttyWMT0,115200n8 mbtotal=52M" kernel is compiled on the host, using arm-2014.05 from arm.

Eg: export OBJ=/src/apc.io/obj.testing export KERNEL_SRC=/src/apc.io/linux-vtwm-testing export PATH=~/apc.io/apc-8750-master/u-boot/tools:$PATH export PATH=/opt/local/arm/arm-2014.05/bin:$PATH cp config.slackinst.vga $OBJ/.config cp initramfs_data.cpio.gz $KERNEL_SRC/usr

make -C $KERNEL_SRC O=$OBJ ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-none-eabi- zImage -j 3 mv $OBJ/arch/arm/boot/zImage $1/$2/ ; make -C $KERNEL_SRC O=$OBJ ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-none-eabi- dtbs cat $1/$2/zImage $OBJ/arch/arm/boot/dts/wm8750-apc8750.dtb > $1/$2/zImage_w_dtb mkimage -A arm -O linux -T kernel -C none -a 0x8000 \

    -e 0x8000 -n "My Linux" -d $1/$2/zImage_w_dtb $1/$2/uzImage.bin

Preparing the cpio archive:

       dd if=./uinitrd-kirkwood.img bs=64 skip=1 of=initrd-kirkwood.cpio.gz
       gunzip initrd-kirkwood.cpio.gz

Once both uzImage.bin and initrd-kirkwood.cpio copy them to the bootable vfat partition. create a slackware14.1 directory in the reiserfs partition of the micro sd card. copy slackware for arm distribution to the slackware14.1 directory. Now you are ready to boot the new disk, and install slackware from the pre mounted directory under /mnt/slackware14.1/slackware ( which is automounted as the selection for target is done ).