That was part of the series, that if you didn't have the correct firmware you had to set the arcnumber, and kernels wouldn't work, and a few other issues. I think ext2 support and zlib both were buggy straight from the manufacturer. Both Arch and Debian, I believe, require updating the firmware, rather then trying to program around broken software that has already been fixed. You even have to update the firmware on x86 before you can get support from anyone.

I am not saying the image creation is correct. I know EFI  requires DOS partitions, but we aren't talking about x86 either.  The EFI idea was good but the implementation is just totally borked. Even Apple had to get stuff changed to support HFS which is indicative of a poor design.




From: David A. Marlin <dmarlin@redhat.com>
To: Sean Omalley <omalley_s@rocketmail.com>
Cc: Derek Atkins <warlord@MIT.EDU>; Fedora ARM <arm@lists.fedoraproject.org>
Sent: Friday, December 14, 2012 8:47 AM
Subject: Re: [fedora-arm] F18 ARM Beta Test Candidate 2

On 12/13/2012 06:57 PM, Sean Omalley wrote:
Update your uBoot?
http://loginroot.com/installing-uboot-to-guruplug-server-plus/

While updating U-Boot is always an option, the images we make _should_ work with existing firmware.  We need to look for better ways to make the images.


d.marlin
=======





From: Derek Atkins <warlord@MIT.EDU>
To: David A. Marlin <dmarlin@redhat.com>
Cc: Fedora ARM <arm@lists.fedoraproject.org>
Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2012 5:02 PM
Subject: Re: [fedora-arm] F18 ARM Beta Test Candidate 2

David,

"David A. Marlin" <dmarlin@redhat.com> writes:
projects/LinuxCellPhone
> There are a number of pre-created F18 ARM Beta TC2 (Test Candidate 2) images available for testing, including: PandaBoard, Trim Slice, Versatile Express (QEMU) and Kirkwood.
>
> Images can be downloaded from:
>
>  http://scotland.proximity.on.ca/arm-nightlies/vault/f18-beta-tc2/

I just tried the Kirkwood image and it didn't work because the 1st
partition is EXT and not FAT.  UBoot on my GuruPlug doesn't support
that.

Also note that I suspect I'm also running into a known kernel bug with
the F17 release:  https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=42680
Unfortunately I don't know if there is a workaround for this, especially
considering that uImage-kirkwood reports that it is not compressed:

/media/boot/uImage-kirkwood: u-boot legacy uImage, 3.4.2-3.fc17.armv5tel.kirkwood, Linux/ARM, OS Kernel Image (Not compressed), 3291832 bytes, Mon Jun 18 00:58:01 2012, Load Address: 0x00008000, Entry Point: 0x00008000, Header CRC: 0xCDB8004D, Data CRC: 0x6C6E299A

Any ideas?

-derek

--
      Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
      Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
      URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA    N1NWH
      warlord@MIT.EDU                        PGP key available
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