ebox 2300sx is ready

[photonn]

Out of curiosity why did you go for puppy 2.14 instead of 3.X?

Simple answer ... the kernel patches I have (from the manufacturer: http://www.dmp.com.tw/tech/Vortex86SX/p ... .18-DMP.gz) are against the 2.6.18 kernel. So, I was restricted to using versions of puppy that run 2.6.18.

After soliciting advice from the guys on the irc channel, I settled on 2.14. In principle, all of this could be done again for any of the puppys that run 2.6.18 (I think the last version to run 2.6.18 was puppy 2.16.1)

One other problem you face is finding a puppy-unleashed-core file. I wanted to modify puppy 2.15CE at one time, but they did not release an unleashed-core file for that version.

For all I know, the patches might apply cleanly to newer kernels, they might not. You could certainly code the patches in by hand into a newer kernel. It just makes the early steps harder.

One advantage to a 3-series puppy would be the newer Xorg. I think the patching would be less on that package. At least, the patch for bug 6377 should be included already.

[simonxue21]

Hi. I'm a newbie to both Linux and ebox-2300SX. I've followed this great discussion list for a while. Great thanks to you all.

I just downloaded the puppy 2.14 iso for ebox-2300SX. After only a little bit trying, it boots up. The little bit of trouble I've met is the way I boot the ebox.

Currently, I use a CF card as the boot drive. Before I got the ebox-2300SX, I've tried to use the CF card to boot puppy 3.01 on my laptop (a ThinkPad T42). I use syslinux to make the CF card bootable. When I got ebox-2300SX and photonn's iso, I make the CF card bootable in the same way. However, when I use the CF card to boot puppy 2.14 on ebox, it complained "Mounting /dev/hda1 on /mnt/dev_ro1 failed: Invalid argument","VFS: Can't find an ext2 filesystem on dev hda1". After reading photonn's step by step, I figured out that the problem I met is because the wrong filesystem type. So I changed to used extlinux to make the CF card bootable. Then everything works perfectly.

Thanks again!

[simonxue21]

I found this puppy will create swap file on my CF card. I understand this is because photonn installed puppy on his/her hard drive. However, I'm using it on my CF card. Will this hurt my CF card?

[raffy]

There should be a "PMEDIA=ideflash" boot parameter in syslinux.cfg, to set the proper pupmode.

[wdlDonnie]

All flash memory has a write endurance specification. Commercial modules typically endure 100,000+ write/erase cycles. Some Industrial spec modules handle up to 3,000,000 cycles. Also, many flash modules have built-in wear leveling. This means that the write/erase cycles are distributed across the entire flash device. If you are using a 1GB flash module, for example, it should be able to endure at least 100,000GB of writes throughout its lifetime.

Using CF for swap space isn't ideal, but it may be the best (only?) solution for the time being.

[simonxue21]

Very clear explain, thanks.

All flash memory has a write endurance specification. Commercial modules typically endure 100,000+ write/erase cycles. Some Industrial spec modules handle up to 3,000,000 cycles. Also, many flash modules have built-in wear leveling. This means that the write/erase cycles are distributed across the entire flash device. If you are using a 1GB flash module, for example, it should be able to endure at least 100,000GB of writes throughout its lifetime.

Using CF for swap space isn't ideal, but it may be the best (only?) solution for the time being.

[simonxue21]

I'll try this. Thanks.

There should be a "PMEDIA=ideflash" boot parameter in syslinux.cfg, to set the proper pupmode.

[the_squire]

Thanks again to everyone who pitched in getting Puppy to work on the eBox 2300SX. I now have it installed and booting on an internal Embed Disk - woot!

But - wow! - is this box ever slow! It seems 5-10x slower than the eBox 2300 units I've worked with up to now. The BIOS setup screen claims the CPU is running at 300 MHz, so that part is correct at least. I don't know why the SX should be so much slower than the original device.

Oh well, maybe the eBox 4300 (soon to be released?) will be the answer to my RoHS requirements.

Peace.

Edited to add BogoMips values for several units:

• eBox 2300SX: 99.32
  eBox 2300: 400.95
  eBox 3853: 1593.95
  PIII - 1 GHz: 2011.42
  2.4 GHz Core 2 (Virtual PC): 4708.43

So yes, the 2300SX really is slow.

[tedson]

If your worried about write cycles on a CF card use a microdrive instead. You can still pick up the hitiachis pretty cheap

Amazon $24
Geeks $16 (referb)

They are basically tiny hard drives in CFII format. They are very slow compared to CF cards though.

Make sure you get Hatachi (used to be IBM) and not Seagate models. The Seagate models will not report themselves as "fixed" drives, which can make booting off them a PITA.

[the_squire]

The r6040 RDC NAPI driver is included in this package but I can't get it to load. The network wizard always reports, "Loading r6040 failed; try a different driver."

I've also tried to auto probe for the driver... without success.

I don't see a setting in the BIOS to enable/disable the Ethernet port and I've tried changing the PCI latency, to no avail.

Any hints?

[raffy]

Take note of the module that is loaded by default and then try to blacklist that one using the System - Boot Manager (if the Boot Manager is in the menu, that is).

[simonxue21]

I think it's because that this ISO has not been fully optimized. After booting, I found the free memory left is only 9M. Compared with the 128M RAM, this is too little. As photonn said, this ISO has many possibilities to be optimized.

Thanks again to everyone who pitched in getting Puppy to work on the eBox 2300SX. I now have it installed and booting on an internal Embed Disk - woot!

But - wow! - is this box ever slow! It seems 5-10x slower than the eBox 2300 units I've worked with up to now. The BIOS setup screen claims the CPU is running at 300 MHz, so that part is correct at least. I don't know why the SX should be so much slower than the original device.

Oh well, maybe the eBox 4300 (soon to be released?) will be the answer to my RoHS requirements.

Peace.

[raffy]

Search here for "onebone" and you will find interesting reads. Onebone is Puppy without GUI.

[the_squire]

Because I've installed this version of Puppy to an internal IDE disk, there's quite a lot of memory available, even while running X. The 'free' command run in a console reports 74780 available - that's KB.

Using the 'PupScan Interface Information' utility from the System menu, I've scanned for PCI modules. The display shows:

Code: Select all

DESCRIPTION:  Device unknown
VENDOR:  17f3  DEVICE:  6040  KERNEL MODULE:  r6040

... so it seems the Ethernet device is recognized at least at some level and there's enough configuration information to let the system know the name of the kernel module involved.

When I issue lsmod, very little is reported:

Code: Select all

Module                  Size  Used by
usb_storage            83904  0 
lp                     12872  0 
parport_pc             32452  1 
parport                35400  2 lp,parport_pc
usbhid                 41056  0 
ehci_hcd               28936  0 
ohci_hcd               17796  0 
usbcore               122756  5 usb_storage,usbhid,ehci_hcd,ohci_hcd
nls_iso8859_1           4352  0 
nls_cp437               6016  0 

Raffy: I've looked into onebone but it seems it's based on a slightly older kernel and when I experimented with it before (using an eBox 2300) I couldn't find the usb-to-serial driver I require. Otherwise, I agree the onebone approach would be very interesting for my project, since I don't need a GUI and I normally configure my Puppy 2.13-based system to skip launching X by default. Is there any thought towards generating an updated onebone, one based on the 2.6.18.1 kernel?

[beesfan]

I'm having trouble installing v1 puppy to my ebox. I wrote the iso to CD and try to install from a CD drive that has a ide-usb interface. The installation starts, then I get:

Looking for puppy in done
Looking for pup_save.2fs in done

Cannot find Puppy on 'idecd' boot media.
PUPMODE=1 PDEV=1

I have tried with various boot options using the pmedia= and pfix= commands, but with no change.

Any ideas what is going wrong?

Thanks for any help.

[raffy]

It should be PMEDIA=usbcd or PMEDIA=usbhd, although am not sure if version 2.14 is able to handle that. You should be better off installing to USB or CF in another PC, then use that for booting the machine.

the_squire, what am referring to are the CLI (console-based) applications.

[photonn]

At the boot prompt, type either "puppy PMEDIA=usbstorage" or "puppy PMEDIA=usb-storage"

Both of these work for me. Using PMEDIA=usbcd or PMEDIA=usbhd has never worked for me.

[the_squire]

the_squire, what am referring to are the CLI (console-based) applications.

Thanks for trying to help - I appreciate it very much. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what you mean, sorry.

Puppy v2.14 doesn't seem to have the System - Boot Manager application you mentioned. I have seen it in v3.00 so I think I would recognize it in v2.14 if I saw it.

I don't think any module gets loaded by default - I think the lsmod output I quoted would have shown that, but I'm a Linux n00b so I probably don't know what I'm saying. Is there a better command to use to check for loaded modules? I take it there is something in the oneBone thread that I missed?

Edited to add:

It seems the 'hard disk install' procedure I went through didn't copy the required drivers (or I messed up somehow). Anyway, I managed to get Ethernet working by manually copying the mii.ko and r6040.ko modules to my disk and manually loading them using insmod. Woo hoo!

For some reason, I have to run dhcpcd *twice* before it will get an IP Address. I run it once, wait a minute, slay it, then run it again ==> SUCCESS! Kinda of a pain, but at least I have a fighting chance now.

[nadavkav]

i got an eBox 2300SX and a compact flash on which i have copied the puppy 2.14 ebox version.

while booting, i get as far as "loading modules..." and not anymore

how can i enable more debug messages to see what is happening ?
or break before that stage to see the kernel's log ?

nadav

[nadavkav]

i got a little farther...
i've cahnged the book command line and added pmedia=usb-storage
and set the logging level to 5 and now i got some kernel debugging
and i get stuck just after "fuse init (API version 7.7)"