Gentoo on VIA VAB-600 - can't compile kernel for U-Boot:-)

Januszzz · Last edited by Januszzz on Thu Dec 12, 2013 7:47 am; edited 1 time in total

Hello,

I've installed Gentoo on this board - VIA VAB-600:

http://www.viaembedded.com/en/products/boards/2070/1/VAB-600_%28Pico-ITX%29.html

The only thing which is left "stock" is the kernel from debian which was compiled by Via. It is bootable through U-Boot and all is fine.

But I miss some features in the kernel and would like to compile by myself. I do it by "make uImage" and u-boot recognizes it.

I've taken many tries and used the config extracted from the kernel delivered from Via, prepared my own config, taken different sources... but all kernels fail to start!

http://postimg.org/image/scpme4zxx/

I'm fully alone, because Via has no real support and says all is in BSP, while there are not even files they say they should be...

Any ideas?

Thank you!

schorsch_76 · Guru Joined: 19 Jun 2012 Posts: 450

From my expirience with arm boards (Raspberry pi and Beaglebone), they need a patched kernel. Stock kernel dont work most of the time. You should look where via has put the kernel sources for that board.

Januszzz · Posted: Fri Nov 29, 2013 8:27 pm Post subject:

Thanks. Thay say that kernel sources are in BSP package, while there is no sources here... They also say that board is highly compatible with 3.0.8 kernel and gave only some BINARY drivers in compiled kernel modules... completely useless except the BSP kernel itself.

I would say that may be not a complete disaster, but the board is not user friendly.

schorsch_76 · Guru Joined: 19 Jun 2012 Posts: 450

Since the kernel is GPL-2, they should give you that sources.

Januszzz · Posted: Sun Dec 01, 2013 10:52 pm Post subject:

All right,

some more mails to Via more and here we go - there are sources.

http://www.viaspringboard.com/via-vab-600-springboard-software-development-packages.html

These files include the same stuff as on main Via product site & more. Seems like they forgot to add stuff on main site :-/

Not good feeling about overall support & compiling those, but I'm to see yet how it goes.

Januszzz · Posted: Thu Dec 12, 2013 7:48 am Post subject:

and an update - I'm mostly done with kernel recompilation - it needs to be compiled using delivered GCC 4.5.2.

Exogw · n00b Joined: 04 Feb 2014 Posts: 1

Hello

I read thisthread about recompiling the kernel for the VIA VAB-600 springboard. Did you just recompile it to get some new options or did you upgrade the kernel to a newer one?

I want to run XBMC on the springboard but have some problems and maybe a newer kernel would help.

Cheers,
Horst

imrehg · n00b Joined: 20 Jun 2014 Posts: 1 Location: Taipei, Taiwan

Hi,

Now the Springboard kernel and u-boot sources are up on Github in the VIA repository (springboard-{kernel,uboot}-bsp). I did recompile the kernel before, eg. to enable cgroups support (that was needed for Arch that I was trying at the time) and that worked. When I enabled other features, I could get to a kernel that didn't boot, though not sure what's the reason. Now I have a serial-to-USB cable to watch for the early messages from the kernel over the UART, it will be easier to debug boot errors.

By the way, modified the u-boot settings a bit to enable booting from an SD card directly (instead of just flashing the internal storage), that should be useful for development and setting up a system.

In the meantime trying to get more support for the kernel and upstream it. Let's see how it will work...
_________________
Physicist, hacker.