Pyun YongHyeon have helped me a lot with the network driver. The speed is still not good, but he have helped to make the network driver to more correct (better, more reliable). I will still need to ask him to check for the final version, but I believe I have fixed most errors he pointed out.

My agestar, which also uses CNS11XX devices comes with 32Mb memory, while the Emprex NSD-100 have 64mb of memory. I have added a code to autodetect the memory size. So one binary file should work on both devices.

The flash device in Emprex NSD-100 complies with CFI, and it was very easy to use with the existing CFI driver. I just need to write several lines of code. The next step is to boot freebsd directly from the flash (with the root filesystem on USB). Unlike in Linux, the flash device can not be accessed as partitions (not yet).

First, we need to write the kernel.bin to cfi0, because the first 132 kb is used by boot loader, we need to skip to somewhere > 132kb. To make it easy, i just skip 1 megabyte from beginning of flash.

dd if=kernel.bin seek=1 bs=1m of=/dev/cfi0

be very very very careful with the dd command. Without correct seek and bs, you may overwrite the bootloader. The command will take quite a long time to finish (3 minutes).

Next step is to set the initial boot command. In the boot loader, setup bootcmd to copy the data in ram to 0×1000000 from 0×10100000, then boot the device:

setenv bootcmd cp.l 0×10100000 0×1000000 0x1a0000\;go 0×1000000
saveenv

Now when we boot the device, we should go directly to freebsd.

I won’t provide binaries, but the latest source code is in:

http://p4db.freebsd.org/depotTreeBrowser.cgi?FSPC=//depot/projects/str91xx/src/sys/arm/econa&HIDEDEL=NO

I am still a bit worried playing around with the Flash, since I don’t have anything to restore it back in case I made a mistake. So I think I will leave this part for a while.

For everyone who have NSD-100 with Serial Port attached to it, you can try a precompiled binary thah I have prepared, or you can compile from source. To use the binary version, you will need a USB disk (at least 2GB in size), and a TFTP server. Actually you only need about 256 megabyte if you prepare your own disk instead of using my image.

Here are the steps for the binary version:

1. Download the disk image from here
2. Decompress (bunzip) the disk image, use dd to write to your USB disk
3. Since there is no boot menu, entering single or multi user mode is done by booting different kernel. Download the multi user kernel or single user kernel and put it in your tftpserver
4. Boot the kernel

To boot the kernel, you need to access your device using serial port. I think You need to hold the reset button to enter the boot prompt (mine always goes to the boot prompt because Bruce did something with the configuration area). You should see

STR9100>

prompt.

setenv serverip 192.168.1.1
(you can also 'saveenv' to save the TFTP server address permanently)
tftpboot 0x1000000 name-of-kernel.bin
go 0x1000000

To build your own disk image, make an empty disk.img with the size that you want. Goto /usr/src and then (modified from instruction to make i386 image by Warner Losh)

export TARGET_ARCH=arm
make buildworld
mdconfig -a -t vnode -f disk.img
fdisk -I md0
fdisk -B md0
bsdlabel -w md0s1 auto
bsdlabel -B md0s1
newfs /dev/md0s1a
mount /dev/md0s1a /mnt/
make installworld DESTDIR=/mnt
make distrib-dirs DESTDIR=/mnt
make distribution DESTDIR=/mnt
echo /dev/da0s1a / ufs rw 1 1 > /mnt/etc/fstab
echo ifconfig_DEFAULT=DHCP > /mnt/etc/rc.conf
echo hostname=demo >> /mnt/etc/rc.conf

To compare your boot experience here is is the bootlog for the multi user mode, and the single user mode.

For the latest kernel source, you can see the perforce depot at:

http://p4db.freebsd.org/depotTreeBrowser.cgi?FSPC=//depot/projects/str91xx&HIDEDEL=NO

Here is the current FreeBSD port status:

1. Timer is now working, previously the timer tick works, but the time counter was too fast.
2. EHCI and OHCI is working, but there is still some caching problem, so i need to modify usb_busdma.c, this modification is not clean. I can access USB disks, and USB network adapter.
3. Network driver works, but it is still very slow . I am still trying to understand better the DMA handling in FreeBSD. There is still one bug: you can not stop the interface and start it again. The stopping part works, ifconfig ece0 down, but the starting again part doesn’t.
4. Multi user works. I can also activate network services, such as sshd.

I am still waiting for my perforce account. But anyone willing to test it can contact me. I still don’t know the best method to release a patch against CURRENT for people to try, because changes happens very quickly.

Here is the latest boot log: bsd-24-may-2009.txt

The remaining drivers that needs to be written are the OHCI and network. The OHCI shouldn’t take too much time, but I think the network will take quite a long time.

I was planning to clean up, and release the code today, but I was busy with something else, so may be I will release the code in the next few days. For those of you who are curious about the boot log, here it is:

KDB: debugger backends: ddb
KDB: current backend: ddb
Copyright (c) 1992-2009 The FreeBSD Project.
Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
	The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation.
FreeBSD 8.0-CURRENT #169: Sun May 10 01:25:55 WIT 2009
    yohanes@cameron:/usr/home/yohanes/freebsd/freebsd/src/sys/arm/compile/CNS11XXNAS
WARNING: DIAGNOSTIC option enabled, expect reduced performance.
Preloaded elf kernel "elf kernel" at 0xc12d30b8.
unknown CPU (ID = 0x66015261)
  WB enabled LABT
  16KB/16B 2-way Instruction cache
  16KB/16B 2-way write-back-locking-B Data cache
real memory  = 67108864 (64 MB)
Physical memory chunk(s):
00000000 - 0xffffff, 16777216 bytes (4096 pages)
0x1337000 - 0x3eaefff, 45580288 bytes (11128 pages)
avail memory = 61718528 (58 MB)
ULE: setup cpu 0
nfslock: pseudo-device
null: <null device, zero device>
random: <entropy source, Software, Yarrow>
mem: <memory>
econaarm0: <ECONA device bus> on motherboard
econa add children
econa add child econa_ic addr 7d000000
econa add child uart addr 78000000
econa add child timer addr 79000000
econa add child ehci addr f8000000
econa_alloc_resource start 00000000 end ffffffff, count = 00000008
econa_alloc_resource start 00000000 end ffffffff, count = 00000008
econa_alloc_resource start 78000000 end 78ffffff, count = 01000000
sys_res_memory
Alloc OK
econa_alloc_resource start 00000000 end ffffffff, count = 00000008
econa_alloc_resource start 00000000 end ffffffff, count = 00000008
econa_alloc_resource start 78000000 end 78ffffff, count = 01000000
sys_res_memory
Alloc OK
uart0: <Non-standard ns8250 class UART with FIFOs> mem 0x78000000-0x78ffffff irq 10 on econaarm0
econa_alloc_resource start 00000000 end ffffffff, count = 00000008
econa_alloc_resource start 78000000 end 78ffffff, count = 01000000
sys_res_memory
Alloc OK
econa_alloc_resource start 00000000 end ffffffff, count = 00000001
econa_alloc_resource start 0000000a end 0000000a, count = 00000001
sys_res_irq
Alloc OK
uart0: [FILTER]
uart0: fast interrupt
uart0: console (38461,n,8,1)
timer0: <Econa CPU Timer> mem 0x79000000-0x79ffffff irq 0,1 on econaarm0
econa_alloc_resource start 00000000 end ffffffff, count = 00000001
econa_alloc_resource start 79000000 end 79ffffff, count = 01000000
sys_res_memory
Alloc OK
econa_alloc_resource start 00000000 end ffffffff, count = 00000001
econa_alloc_resource start 00000000 end 00000000, count = 00000001
sys_res_irq
Alloc OK
STR9100 CPU Clock: 200 MHz
HZ = 100
reload value = 500000
IRQ Timer1 at int #0x0 clock 100000000(Hz)
timer0: [FILTER]
DONE timer
done00000000
ehci probe
ehci probe
ehci0: <CNS11XX USB EHCI> mem 0xf8000000-0xffffffff irq 24 on econaarm0
econa_alloc_resource start 00000000 end ffffffff, count = 00000001
econa_alloc_resource start f8000000 end ffffffff, count = 08000000
sys_res_memory
Alloc OK
econa_alloc_resource start 00000000 end ffffffff, count = 00000001
econa_alloc_resource start 00000018 end 00000018, count = 00000001
sys_res_irq
Alloc OK
add USB device
setup intr
ehci0: [MPSAFE]
ehci0: [ITHREAD]
init ehci
usbus0: EHCI version 1.0
probe and attach
usbus0: <CNS11XX USB EHCI> on ehci0
done
initcloks
enabling timer
Timecounter "CPU Timer" frequency 50000000 Hz quality 1000
Timecounters tick every 10.000 msec
usbus0: 480Mbps High Speed USB v2.0
WARNING: DIAGNOSTIC option enabled, expect reduced performance.
ugen0.1: <Cavium> at usbus0
uhub0: <Cavium EHCI root HUB, class 9/0, rev 2.00/1.00, addr 1> on usbus0
uhub0: 2 ports with 2 removable, self powered
ugen0.2: <Kingston> at usbus0
umass0: <Kingston DataTraveler 2.0, class 0/0, rev 2.00/1.00, addr 2> on usbus0
umass0:  SCSI over Bulk-Only; quirks = 0x0000
register sim 0
scanning the sim
umass0:0:0:-1: Attached to scbus0
(probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): TEST UNIT READY. CDB: 0 0 0 0 0 0
(probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): CAM Status: SCSI Status Error
(probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): SCSI Status: Check Condition
(probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): UNIT ATTENTION asc:28,0
(probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): Not ready to ready change, medium may have changed
(probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): (probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): TEST UNIT READY. CDB: 0 0 0 0 0 0
(probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): UNIT ATTENTION asc:28,0
(probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): Not ready to ready change, medium may have changed
Retrying Command (per Sense Data)
(probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): Retrying Command
pass0 at umass-sim0 bus 0 target 0 lun 0
pass0: <Kingston DataTraveler 2.0 1.00> Removable Direct Access SCSI-2 device
pass0: 40.000MB/s transfers
da0 at umass-sim0 bus 0 target 0 lun 0
da0: <Kingston DataTraveler 2.0 1.00> Removable Direct Access SCSI-2 device
da0: 40.000MB/s transfers
da0: 1906MB (3903578 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 242C)
GEOM: new disk da0
GEOM_LABEL: Label for provider da0s1a is ufsid/4a01b053676144f3.
GEOM_LABEL: Label for provider da0s1a is ufs/FreeBSDonUSB.
root_mount_prepare 100

Manual root filesystem specification:
  <fstype>:<device>  Mount <device> using filesystem <fstype>
                       eg. ufs:/dev/da0a
  ?                  List valid disk boot devices
  <empty line>       Abort manual input

mountroot> ufs:da0s1a
Trying to mount root from ufs:da0s1a
warning: no time-of-day clock registered, system time will not be set accurately
start_init: trying /sbin/init
Enter full pathname of shell or RETURN for /bin/sh:
# ls /
.snap		dev		media		root		usr
COPYRIGHT	etc		mnt		sbin		var
bin		lib		proc		sys
boot		libexec		rescue		tmp

My wife just bought Nokia 5800, a Nokia series 60 5th edition phone. It means that i need to finish my SymbianBible port for 5th edition (mostly done, beta version is on symbianbible google groups). My wife also asked me to port MultiCounter to her new phone (done, not yet uploaded).

I have cleaned up the 2.6.29 port of STR9104 Soc, but i will need to clean up again, because of the new documentation from www.cnusers.org. I have also started the freebsd port, but the progress is not much yet.

When the NSD Emprex 100 arrived, i realized that I need more network ports. I only have 4 ports on my WRT54GL and all of them have been used. After looking at hubs and routes prices around chiang mai, they are in 500-1000 baht range, that is not cheap so I decided that I should just buy something a little bit more expensive that I can hack. I saw DLink DIR-300 sold at relatively cheap price 1490 baht (43 usd, cheap for Chiang Mai price), this is 700 baht (20 usd) cheaper compared to WRT54GL, with almost same hardware spec (4 Mb ROM, 16 Mb RAM). I spent some time installing openwrt on this router, because I was so confused with the factory built interface.

I am planning to go to Indonesia for 10 days, so during that time, I don’t think I will be able to do much hacking, but I want to still continue studying freebsd. So I decided to install FreeBSD on our EEE PC 901. This was not difficult, but it took quite some time to setup everything.

Here are some of the things that i’ve done on the EEE PC: setup FreeBSD ARM cross compile, setup Linux ARM cross compilation, setup LXR for FreeBSD current sources. Unfortunately WIFI is still not supported on EEE 901, and all (I only have 2) of my USB bluetooth doesnt work.

Note: I haven’t made tha 64 Mb Linux Kernel Image. I was affraid that someone made a mistake flashing it to 32 Mb device, which will made it unusable. Of course serial port can still save it, but not every one can make a serial port. With the new documentation I found, I will be able to make kernel image that can autodetect the memory size.

and the config file:

http://tinyhack.com/agestar/config-2.6.29-star

or if you want the image that i already compiled and test (image is compiled with 32 MB memory). This is NOT a FIRMWARE

http://tinyhack.com/agestar/zImage-2.6.29

when i have the time, i will work on creating a new firmware image.

Some changes:

• The machine ID is now registered in http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/developer/machines/
• The network problem instability has now been fixed
• Added new configuration option to select memory size based on your board memory (16, 32, or 64 mb). Note: selecting values larger than the supported size will cause crash.

The other news is that Bruce M Simpson has donated me an Emprex NSD 100 for porting FreeBSD to it. I have started my work, but the progress will be slower from the Linux at the beginning, because:

1. I am more familiar with Linux kernel compared to FreeBSD kernel
2. Currently FreeBSD kernel itself doesn’t support many ARM devices yet, so to find an exmple of something I need to look at NetBSD, (and it helps, for example the Faraday 526 processor support is already in NetBSD).
3. I am rather busy this and coming month (planning to go to Indonesia for about 10 days)

I haven’t looked again on Debian installer for Agestar, but I have built a new firmware for Debian on Agestar using the latest kernel patch (faster network). If you have installed Debian using the instruction in here, you can download zImage-20092008 to Agestar, and then do:

dd if=zImage-20092008 of=/dev/mtdblock1

If you haven’t installed Debian, then when following the instruction, but instead of using star.bin use star-20092008.bin. To make it clear, use zImage-20092008 to update existing installation, and star-20092008.bin for new installation (starting from the original Agestar firmware). If you made a mistake, then you need a serial port to unbrick your Agestar. NOTE: the web update method only works on agestar, other models can work by using serial port and latest patch for kernel source (2.6.29 or later).

If you are interested to make your own firmware, this is what you should do:

1. Download armboot.bin and put it to a directory
2. Download mergefile.c to the same directory as armboot.bin
3. Compile mergefile.c (just do cc mergefile.c -o mergefile)
4. Compile your kernel according to the instruction at http://tinyhack.com/2008/09/08/how-to-compile-kernel-for-agestar/ to create zImage, copy/move it to the same directory as armboot.bin
5. Type ./mergefile to merge armboot.bin and zImage to star.bin.

You can use star.bin to flash (replace) original firmware. If you already installed Debian, and you want to update your kernel, you only need to build zImage and do dd if=newzImage of=/dev/mtdblock1.

1. Download vanilla kernel from kernel.org (use version linux-2.6.25.4)
2. Extract kernel , and apply this patch file (patchfile-20080907.gz)
3. Download initramfs.cpio.gz put it in the kernel directory and extract it
4. Download my configuration file config-20080907 put it into kernel directory, rename it as .config
5. Install an arm compiler, your distribution may have them (for instance in Debian you can use aptitude with emdebian.org repository), or download from codesourcery.com.
6. Edit Makefile, find CROSS_COMPILE and change the value to the location and prefix of your compiler. For example, of your compiler is /opt/arm/920t_le/bin/arm_920t_le-gcc, fill in /opt/arm/920t_le/bin/arm_920t_le- (without the gcc part)
7. To configure the kernel, type “make menuconfig”
8. Type make to build zImage

NOTE: the zImage is NOT a FIRMWARE. You can write zImage to /dev/mtdblock1 on the agestar to update your kernel but not through the web interface. I will write another tutorial on how to make zImage into a firmware that can be flashed using the web interface.

If you want a newer kernel, start from the current kernel, and keep on patching with the next incremental patch until you reach the kernel number that you want. This is not always easy, because sometimes a patch will conflict with the changes that i have made.

Kari Ahtiala who owned several NAS devices (SLUG, NCB3AST, NCH3AHT), said that you can just move your disk from NSLU (SLUG) to Agestar just fine:

after upgrading the firmware, boot the Agestar without the disk, ssh to it, plug in the disk, mount it and chroot to it, and then mount -t proc /proc proc, and everything works as if the Agestar had been booted off the hard drive.

This is fine if you want to just borrow the disk for testing or cloning purposes. To convert it to be used on the Agestar exclusively, I copied /etc to /etc-slug (so I can revert by "mv etc etc-agestar" and "mv  etc-slug etc" and enited fstab, network/interfaces and modules and issued the command "e2label /dev/sdb1 /" as you instructed.

And here are some tips from him:

I pretty much cloned my SLUG so the Agestar is now a NFS and Samba server, Web server and X server. The Xfce4 applications are usable on the Agestar – Mousepad is an OK editor and Thunar is OK for a file manager (these have a habit of Segfaulting, though, but at least X works: xterm, kpat, xpat2 and spider!). Using "ssh -CY" instead of "ssh -X" doesn’t seem to make much difference.

Usbmount is very useful: plug in a USB drive and it is accessible on your local network if you share /media via samba. Just edit /etc/usbmount/usbmount.conf: the default filesystems are ext2 and ext3 but you can add vfat and ntfs but you need to add some options:
FS_MOUNTOPTIONS="-fstype=ntfs,rw,errors=remount-ro,dmask=0000,fmask=0000 -fstype=vfat,dmask=0000,fmask=0000"

To get read-write on an NTFS drive, you need to cheat a bit: first install ntfs-3g and then
ln -s /usr/bin/ntfs-3g /sbin/mount.ntfs (this is because ntfs-3g is a program and the old ntfs is a module).

A tip from me is that if you have a problem with your Agestar, just search google for your problem, and add "NSLU" "debian" (or NSLU2 debian). The solution for debian NSLU2 should apply to Agestar with Debian.

NOTE: the web update method only works on agestar ncb3ast, other models can work by using serial port and latest patch for kernel source (2.6.29 or later).