fvdw firmware on RPi

[fvdw]

today I was in the city and just looked in a PC parts shop and found one, a model b with 512MB ram, it is cheap (35 euro)

I loaded a standard arch-arm disk imagefor raspberry and it works, no need for keyboard or mouse or screen, ssh is enabled by default, I copied over the fvdw-sl discover daemon and it runs and the fvdw-sl assistant finds it :shock:

raspberry.JPG

Code: Select all

[    0.000000] Booting Linux on physical CPU 0x0
[    0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpuset
[    0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpu
[    0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpuacct
[    0.000000] Linux version 3.10.38-1-ARCH (nobody@root-armv6-copy) (gcc version 4.8.2 20131219 (prerelease) (GCC) ) #1 PREEMPT Sun Apr 27 13:01:46 MDT 2014
[    0.000000] CPU: ARMv6-compatible processor [410fb767] revision 7 (ARMv7), cr=00c5387d
[    0.000000] CPU: PIPT / VIPT nonaliasing data cache, VIPT nonaliasing instruction cache
[    0.000000] Machine: BCM2708
[

need to play a little with but I think this will work...

[Jocko]

:thumbup good new.

at least one feature won't run correctly : firmware upgrade because on the SD card the first partition must be used by the bootloader but we can easily fix it (by reuse the partition 6 which is useless with rpi)

[fvdw]

the raspberry seems to use partition 1 for the bootloader and partition 5 of the sd card for root file system

But we can work around that

fvdw-sl is already partly running :mrgreen:

raspberry1.JPG

[kevin39]

Wow is a great news, good work!

[fvdw]

I have it running now, it seesm ok and happy with the arm binaries of the arm5v processor as we use on the lacie's

Some remarks, despite the 512 MB ram and a processor running at 1 ghz it is not a very fast system, I think it also has to do with using a SD card as storage.
The Lacie with 256 or 128 MB and running at 800 Mhz seesm much faster.
Further the network card max speed is 100 Mbits/s, that means LAN speeds will never exceed 7 MB/s

I will release an image that can be written to an SD card soon for those that want to try it

[kevin39]

Oh... I though the RPi was a better system... I was already thinking to replace my Lacie by the RPi but my Lacie seems to rocks better finally ;)

It seems to have better replacement than the RPi. I found the banana pi, it seems to be pretty new but the hardware is a lot better.

http://www.bananapi.org
Tests & unpacking : http://hardware-libre.fr/tag/banana-pi/

[fvdw]

Almost ready with figuring out how to set it up for the raspberry

I think I have a version ready soon that can be tested, it is running now fvdw-sl 15-3 for some hours from a sd-card
Any volunteers ?

[rafesl]

I'll be getting one next month(birthday present from the mrs), and I'll happily assist getting it running, though that can only be for a few days, as it is destined to become a proxy server for the VLAN I'll be setting up for the kids (not that I dont trust them, but... well they are kids so I don't).

Rafe

[mdi]

Hi fvdw,
I've read your posts and I think it's great what you could achieve! Congrats!

I played for a while at home and at work with RPi's and I'd like to suggest something:
1. The boot partition, as you know, is on the SD.
2. I strongly suggest to have a USB pendrive or disk as a storage area, because when used as a disk, the SD can get damaged soon, in 1 or 2 weeks. Usually SD's cannot stand a great number of I/O operations. More, using a USB device allows for faster execution of the software.
3. If you don't replace the kernel, but try to use the standard RaspBian SO, that may be useful because you can easily upgrade it and you can easily select the rootFS partition to use just by chaning the 1 line cmdline.txt config file on /boot of that SO.
4. Using RaspBian, would also allow experienced users to use the RPi to run their services along with your NAS software. It could also allow you to make the fvdw firmware simpler and easier to maintain as you will have a robust up-to-date SO underneath with all the recent tools and commands at your benefit. Of course, this would probably mean that you'll need to change the nas firmware.... (not sure).

Again my compliments, as you've been incredibly faster it getting a RPi working with your firmware! :punk :applause

[Jocko]

2. I strongly suggest to have a USB pendrive or disk as a storage area, because when used as a disk, the SD can get damaged soon, in 1 or 2 weeks. Usually SD's cannot stand a great number of I/O operations. More, using a USB device allows for faster execution of the software.

Hi mdi,
You are right and it is already done. :mrgreen:

I changed some firmware files so that some usb partitions (linux partitions) can be mounted as internal partitions. Still need to check if there is no issue.

This change may be reuse for the 5big and 2big NAS to restore the shares settings of a disk previously unplug (currently you must manually create again the shares): my next job

So this challenge will be also useful for the other NAS